Korea's Air Safety Saga Revisited

Source: airlinereporter.com

About a year ago I wrote a post about communication culture and air safety within the context of Korean Air's attempt to improve its formerly woeful safety record. I had more or less forgotten about the post until last weekend, when its hits shot through the roof following the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 in San Francisco on Saturday. One reader responded with the following comment:

"Whew, this article helped calm my nerves immensely as my 14 year old gets ready to fly out on Korean Air after today's crash in San Francisco with Asiana. Thanks!"

As of today, the investigation into the crash of the Asiana 214 on landing at San Francisco International Airport, which killed two passengers and injured 182, is ongoing and the cause of the disaster has yet to be identified. What is known is that for whatever reason the Boeing 777's descent into SFO was too low and too slow and that the plane struck the sea wall at the end of the runway before losing the tail section of the plane and spinning out of control on the runway.

Thus far the most disturbing finding has been that of the two Chinese adolescents who died in the disaster, one was actually struck by an airport firetruck rushing to the scene, although it is not yet known if she was alive at the time. Other reporters have questioned why there was an apparent delay in the evacuation of the plane following the crash. The latest findings suggest there were no mechanical problems with the plane, putting the putting the focus of the safety probe squarely on the two pilots, of whom one was landing the 777 for the first time at SFO and the other was a relatively inexperienced training captain.

While it's still to early to say for sure, for the time being it appears likely that pilot error of one sort or another is the primary cause of the crash. Not surprisingly, the advent of the Asiana 214 disaster led some commentators familiar with South Korea's checkered air safety history to wonder aloud if this latest disaster represents a re-emergence of an old problem of fatal cockpit communication breakdowns rooted in an authoritarian aviation culture. As I outlined in my August 2012 post about Korean Air, it was the deadly crash of Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509 outside London that precipitated vast, sweeping changes to the airline's training practices.

Since the advent of Korean Air's human resource management reforms, South Korea's flagship airline has enjoyed a virtually spotless safety record - and a vastly improved reputation. Meanwhile, its main rival and the country's second-largest carrier Asiana (which also had its safety rating briefly downgraded by the FAA in 1999 together with KAL) has also enjoyed a growing reputation for both customer service and safety over the same period. Between 1999 and 2013, Asiana has experienced only two serious incidents - a near-miss over Los Angeles due to an ATC error and a crash of a cargo 747 off Jeju Island resultant from a cargo fire - neither of which were the result of pilot error.

While NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman has stated that she intends to look into communication between the pilot and co-pilot during the flight, thus far there appears to be no evidence that the crash of Asiana 214 was the result of poor cockpit communication. A Washington Post article suggests the two men were indeed communicating effectively and had decided to abort the landing within seconds of the warning bells sounding. Meanwhile, the US media's quickness to question whether Korea's traditionally hierarchical culture was to blame for the crash drew ire from many Koreans. One unidentified airline pilot was quoted in South Korea's Chosun Ilbo daily as follows:

"It's true that captains acted in an authoritarian way in the cockpit in the past, but that's almost nonexistent now. It's unimaginable for a captain to ignore the first officer in an emergency."

Regardless of how the Asiana 214 inquiry turns out, it appears that South Korea's much-vaunted air safety culture reforms of the late-nineties have indeed proven to be the "real deal" and that bad communication was not the killer in the case of Flight 214 to San Francisco. And while it may well turn out that Captain Lee Kang-kook and First Officer Lee Jeong-min (who was flying the plane at the time) made mistakes that caused one of the worst passenger air disaster in recent memory, it would appear that there was nothing intrisically Korean (or Asian) about their errors.

When Bad Communication Kills - The Korean Air Saga

Last week the Calgary Herald announced that South Korea's flagship airline was "very interested" in establishing nonstop flights to Alberta through Calgary, making YYC the airline's third Canadian destination after Vancouver and Toronto. This is hardly surprising considering Alberta's current economic ascendency, as well as Korean Air's continuing runaway success. The past decade has seen the airline emerge as one of the world's largest, most prolific and top-ranked carriers, with its resplendent new hub at Seoul-Incheon International Airport increasingly predominant among East Asia's top airports.

While few people familiar with Korean Air's recent market onslaught (or, for that matter, with the increased Asia-Pacific presence in Alberta's oil industry) would have been surprised by last week's headline, those familiar with the carrier's history might well marvel at how far it has come since it very nearly got banned from Canadian skies altogether. By the late 1990s, Korean Air had developed an unfortunate reputation for having its planes fall out of the sky. Following the airline's most recent fatal incident in 1999, when a cargo 747 plowed into the earth right after takeoff from London's Stansted Airport, the Canadian government told the airline it was considering revoking its landing privileges at Canadian airports. Meanwhile, Delta Air Lines and Air France suspended their partnerships with KAL and the US Federal Aviation Authority downgraded its safety rating - while the US military banned its personnel from using the airline.

The airline's rap sheet from the 1970s to the 1990s was indeed egregious. Between 1970 and 1999 Korean Air racked up over 700 fatalities and lost a total of 16 aircraft in a string of disasters. The most famous incident occurred in 1983 when a KAL Boeing 747 strayed off course into highly restricted Soviet airspace over Sakhalin Island and was shot down by an Su-15 Interceptor in a case of apparent mistaken identity, killing 269 people. In an incident 14 years later, an overtired captain dealing with bad weather and malfunctioning ground equipment smashed his 747 into Nimitz Hill in Guam, killing 206 out of 231 passengers. And in another alarming although non-fatal incident in the early 1990s, a domestic flight from Jeju to Daegu performed a belly-landing after the flight crew had failed to lower the landing gear.


Culture or Language....Or Simply Bad Practices?

In the aftermath of the Stansted crash, Korean Air, now threatened with the possibility of international blacklisting, enlisted the help of an official from Delta Air Lines to conduct an audit of the airline's flight operations. Since virtually all the airline's accidents had resulted from human error rather than structural problems to the aircraft or other such non-human variables, the investigation focused exclusively on KAL's flight crews, covering everything from pilots' command of the English language (the lingua franca of commercial aviation) to the airline's hiring and training procedures. It was investigations of the latter that produced the smoking gun. The firm hired to audit the airline's training procedures noted that the KAL crews were "trapped in roles dictated by the heavy weight of their country’s cultural legacy," namely a Confucian culture in which subservience to authority was considered paramount.

The 1999 crash proved to be particularly telling. The cause of the accident was discovered to be a malfunctioning attitude indicator on the captain's side of the controls, which led him to bank the jet until it spun out of control. More tellingly, it was discovered that the first officer's indicator had been working perfectly but that he had failed to inform his commanding office that he was jeopardizing the flight. Studies of the flight's voice recorder shed further light on the climate in the cockpit leading up to the crash, in which an overbearing and increasingly agitated captain had instilled such a climate of fear that none of his subordinates dared question his decisions - even in an apparent life or death situation. The audit also laid blame on Korean Air's longstanding policy of hiring pilots directly out of the ROK Air Force, a practice which exacerbated the strict hierarchical culture among KAL flight crews.

Following the audit, Korean Air announced vast, sweeping changes to its HR practices. The airline stopped hiring its pilots out of the military. Major changes were made to its training procedures, and edits were made to instruction manuals so as to reflect the unique characteristics of Korean culture. The moves were astonishingly successful. Since the Stansted crash, Korean Air has not had a single fatal accident and apart from a single incident in 2007 when a KAL 737 accidentally landed on an unoccupied taxiway at Akita, Japan, instead of the intended runway, the airline has not had a single accident of any kind.

Did language do this?

The Korean Air turnaround is a remarkable success story by any standard. How, then, was it achieved? Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, writes extensively on the Guam disaster (KAL 801). In his analysis of the accident, he contends that the Korean language itself may have hindered effective cockpit communication. Gladwell points out that the Korean language has six conversational levels indicating hierarchy; for example, you would speak differently to your father than to your younger sibling, and different still to your grandfather. In the case of Flight 801, the captain was tired and losing focus while the first officer, who was also subordinate to the captain in military ranking, could do little except 'hint' at a potential danger, and only indirectly. In other words, within the hierarchical structure of the Korean language, he had no means of yelling "You're too low! Pull up NOW!!!"

Others, however, have questioned this prognosis. In a review of Outliers in Asiance magazine, Korean-born American author Sae Park disputes Gladwell's language theory, noting that the author failed to consult a Korean speaker when analyzing the (translated) transcript of Flight 801's flight recorder. Park contends, upon further examination of the transcript, that the flight engineer (who was in fact older than the captain) was not speaking to the captain in a particularly deferential manner, and that while the first officer did refer to his commander as kijang nim (lit. 'honourable captain'), this is no different than referring to a judge as 'Your Honour' in English. And while she concedes that hierarchy rooted in traditional Korean culture (and compounded by military strictures) may well have exacerbated existing problems in the cockpit, Park argues that the notion that the Korean language contains intrinsic barriers to saving a plane in a time of crisis is ridiculous.

What, then, was the problem at Korean Air - and how did it get its act together so quickly? While a militaristic cockpit culture grounded in traditional Korean Confucianism was without doubt a major factor (a fact that the airline itself acknowledged), Sae Park also notes that by the 1990s the airline was facing a pilot shortage as a result of its rapid route expansion through the 1980s andearly 1990s - paralleling the country's explosive economic growth. While a pilot shortage may have contributed to the airline's poor safety record during that time, as it has with other airlines in the past, this situation may ironically have helped it in the long run. By the time of the Guam and Stansted crashes, KAL had already begun recruiting non-military pilots and training them in-house so as to alleviate its shortage of pilots. In the aftermath of Stansted, these already existing processes were simply made universal.

Nevertheless, the real story at Korean Air was the new standards that former Delta vice-president David Greenberg helped introduce. These included rigourous new training and testing standards and new 'cockpit culture' standards, as well as reforms to company promotion and transfer practices that put an end to placements based on connections and friendships. The airline also purchased new crash-warning systems and other technology and began hiring more foreign pilots, a move the airline hoped would both alleviate its pilot shortage and help create a better cockpit communication culture. Whatever the airline did, it appears to have worked, as Korean Air's safety record since the Stansted disaster has been virtually spotless.


Orientalism vs. Universal Best Practices

In her critique of Outliers, Sae Park accuses Malcolm Gladwell of ethnocentrism in his analysis of Flight 801 and Korean Air's onetime safety issues. While Park acknowledges that the rigidly hierarchical cockpit culture that once defined Korean Air's operations was indeed a safety liability, she criticizes Gladwell for making broad generalizations about Korean culture - and the Korean language - that, in her view, amounted to linking Asian-ness (or at least Korean-ness) with one's likelihood to crash a plane. (Call it 'Flying-While-Korean'.) "Implicitly, this logic also privileges western culture," she asserts. "The 'other' is blinded by cultural demands to the point that they are helpless to even save their own lives if it goes against their heritage, while in the west we're lucky to have the rationality to see through such false premises."

It's not just 'eastern' culture.

While Park has a point, it should be noted that modern-day best practices in cockpit communication have been arrived at through decades of trial and error and can in no way be said to be intrinsically 'western'. In fact, cultural characteristics generally associated with 'western' culture have also been implicated in fatal air accidents. In 1978, in one of the worst air accidents in pre-9/11 US history, a Pacific Southwest Airlines Boeing 727 slammed into a residential neighbourhood outside San Diego after colliding with a Cessna 172, killing 144 people - including seven on the ground. While the primary cause of the crash was discovered to be a miscommunication between the PSA crew and the San Diego air traffic control, analysis of the 727's flight recorder found that the crew had been chatting informally with one another on their descent and had not been paying adequate attention to their surroundings.

One of the changes brought about by the industry in the aftermath of PSA Flight 182 was the 'sterile cockpit' rule, which required that cockpit conversations be restricted to matters related to the operation of the aircraft during critical phases of the flight - normally below 10,000 feet. While this rule is in force across the industry, it has been notoriously difficult to enforce. Its importance was highlighted once again following the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in 2009 where, in a situation eerily similar to PSA 182, a Bombardier Q400 commuter plane spun out of control and crashed into a residential neighbourhood in Buffalo, NY when its overtired crew were distracted by their own conversations upon descent into Buffalo. These incidents - and other like them - clearly illustrate that while excessive rigidity in an airplane cockpit is a liability, excessive formality is equally dangerous.

While excessive informality in the cockpit has been widely acknowledged as a safety hazard, none of the writings on the subject - to my knowledge - have seen fit to link this phenomenon to western or American culture in spite of the fact that virtually all the high-profile cases of cockpit chatter leading to accidents have taken place on US airlines. Perhaps Park does indeed have a point when it comes to western double-standards when it comes to behaviour and best practices. It's also worth noting that at the same time that Korean Air was subjected to FAA downgrading and restrictions on its expansion, the same restrictions were also applied to KAL's smaller competitor Asiana Airlines, which to date had had only one serious incident. Perhaps there was a modicum of ethnocentrism at work.

Whatever the case, Korean Air's near-impeccable safety record since its post-1999 reforms clearly illustrates that Korean-ness is not a liability while behind the controls of an aircraft - and that passengers flying KAL out of Calgary, or anywhere else in the airline's ever-expanding network, have nothing to fear from boarding one of its planes.

Apology Accepted, Captain Needa

When public opinion strikes back

In one of the most darkly humourous scenes in the film The Empire Strikes Back, the ill-fated Captain Needa, the commander of the imperial warship in hot pursuit of Han Solo and his Millennium Falcon, loses track of his quarry (which is in fact clinging to the side of Needa's own ship) and is forced to apologize to Darth Vader for his screw-up. Moments later, the captain is lying dead from telekinetic asphyxiation, whereupon the Sith Lord dryly quips, "Apology accepted, Captain Needa."

While this scene tells us a lot about the HR dynamics of the Galactic Empire, what you don't see in this scene is what Captain Needa's apology actually entailed. While Vader's response clearly indicates that he wasn't impressed by his subordinate's attempt at contrition, it would be interesting to know what the captain actually said. Did he explain the situation in adequate detail? Did he try to deflect blame on his own subordinates or his equipment, or say something like "Boba Fett made me do it"? Furthermore, we know nothing about Captain Needa's prior reputation, whether this was his first such screw-up or if this was a pattern for this guy. Given Vader's reaction, it's likely that the latter was the case, but with the empire dead and buried and Darth Vader long gone, we'll never know for sure.

The art of the well-crafted apology is an essential component of public relations, and of crisis communications in particular. It is often said that that in the corporate world, PR professional and lawyers exist on opposite ends of the communications spectrum. At the heart of bipolarity is the contrast between the court of law, wherein the accused person is considered innocent until proven guilty, and the court of public opinion, wherein an accused person (or organization) is generally guilty until proven innocent - and even then not necessarily safe from reputational damage.

At the onset of a crisis, the first order of business for a crisis communicator is to tell the truth and tell it fast, even when it hurts - in fact especially when it hurts. The crisis communicator is accutely aware that not being forthcoming with information is not only delaying the inevitable, but also results in a loss of control. This is especially true when the crisis at hand really is your fault. If you don't tell your own bad news, you can be sure somebody else will - and it's pretty much guaranteed it'll sound a hell of a lot worse coming out of their mouths than your own.

Once you've done your homework and come to the conclusion that you or your organization are clearly to blame for a crisis, then what?  While the obvious answer is apologize, it is worth bearing in mind that not all apologies are created equal. A well thought out apology is far more likely to be well received than a poorly executed one. When formulating an official apology, it's worth considering that virtually all news media inquiries boil down to a set of nine basic questions that everybody wants to know about a crisis situation. As such, to make your apology count, it needs to answer the following:

• What happened?
• How/why did it happen?
• Were there any deaths or injuries?
• What is the extent of the damage?
• Who or what is responsible?
• Were there any warning signs?
• Has it happened before?
• When will the crisis be over?
• What is being done to fix the situation and ensure that it doesn't happen again?

A textbook apology is the one made by Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain following the listeriosis outbreak in 2008, an outbreak linked to Maple Leaf's meat products. It was a serious crisis, which resulted in 57 confirmed cases of listeriosis and 22 deaths in various Canadian provinces. In sum, it was a crisis that could easily have resulted in a total business disaster for one of Canada's largest food processing companies. However, the CEO's now-legendary apology, which in addition to being broadcast on TV also made the rounds on YouTube, did much to save the company. See for yourself.

Consider again that list of questions. McCain touches on every single one of them, either directly or indirectly. What happened? A listeriosis outbreak. How did it happen? A failure at a Maple Leaf plant. Were there deaths or injuries? Yes. Who is responsible? The company. Were there any warning signs? No, or at least that's the implication. Has it happened before? Again, it's implied that it hasn't given his remark that this is "the toughest situation we've faced in 100 years." When will it be over? The products have already been pulled off the shelves nationwide and the plant where it came from has been shut down.

Add to that the fact that the CEO personally apologized, immediately offered his condolences to the victims, kept the emphasis of the message on the affected party (the customers). It also helped matters that he was dressed appropriately for it - smartly but casually and without a tie - and that he frankly comes off as a sincere and thoughtful guy. Moreover, Maple Leaf followed this message with a similar TV spot a month or so later, in which the CEO appeared again, this time highlighting the changes that had been made by the company in their pledge to improve safety and regain consumer trust.

The result? Maple Leaf Foods recovered quite quickly from the disaster and remains one of Canada's leading food processing companies four years later. Unfortunately, not all companies spokespersons have shown such empathy and contriteness in their responses to crises for which blame clearly rested. Consider the statement drafted by J. Bruce Ismay, Managing Director of White Star Line, following the 1912 sinking of the company's flagship vessel, the HMS Titanic. Suffice it to say, the company's 'apology' left a lot to be desired.

A PR disaster of 'titanic' proportions

In the presence and under the shadow of a catastrophe so overwhelming, my feelings are too deep for expression in words. I can only say that the White Star Line, its offices and employees will do everything humanly possible to alleviate the suffering and sorrow of the survivors and of the relatives and friends of those who perished.

The Titanic was the last word in shipbuilding. Every regulation prescribed by the British Board of Trade had been strictly complied with, the masters, officers and crew were the most experienced and skillful in the British service.

I am informed that a committee of the United States had been appointed to investigate the circumstances of the accident. I heartily welcome the most complete and exhaustice inquiry and any aid that I or my associates or our builders or navigators can render is at the service of the public and the governments of both the United States and Great Britain. Under the circumstances, I must respectfully defer making any further statement at this time.

Reading this statement, it is worth bearing in mind that 1) it had already been established that the ship's striking of an iceberg in the North Atlantic was the result of errors made by crew employed by White Star; and 2) it was also clear that the ship had been woefully underequipped with lifeboats, resulting in the loss of life of roughly three quarters of the passengers and crew. Moreover, this non-apology answers virtually none of the above-listed questions. Even Ismay's attempt at empathy with the victims manages to come off as self-centred.

The result? Although Ismay was cleared of any wrongdoing by both British and US authorities, he was pilloried in the press and to this day is remembered as a villain (right up to his portrayal as a callous reptile by actor Jonathan Hyde in the 1997 James Cameron blockbuster). White Star Line became synonymous with bad management and never recovered. The company struggled on for two decades before it was swallowed up by its chief rival, Cunard Line. Apology accepted, Captain Needa.

The moral? If you're going to apologize - especially for something truly egregious, make it a good apology. Good apologies do actually save companies and organizations. Bad apologies send them to the ocean floor. Of course, even the best, most heartfelt apologies are no guarantee of foregiveness or that you won't be strangled to death by a telekinetic force choke. It's generally best not to screw up in the first place.

After the Wave: The Communications Lessons of 3.11

The town of Minamisanriku, Miyagi Prefecture, after the tsunami

Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the worst calamity to befall Japan since World War II and the most powerful earthquake in the country's recorded history. A year after the devastating twin disaster of the March 11 Tohoku Earthquake and subsequent tsunami, the full scale of the disaster is still being determined. A March 10, 2012 national police report confirmed 15,854 deaths, 9,677 injuries and 3,155 missing persons across eighteen prefectures in an earquake so powerful that it is estimated to have moved Japan's main island of Honshu a full 2.4 meters east and shifted the Earth on its axis by an estimated 10 and 25 centimeters.

While the earthquake and tsunami wreaked destruction of epic proportions, the most talked about story of the calamity was not the natural disaster itself but the nuclear accidents it caused, most notably the ongoing level 7 meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. While the year following the disaster has seen remarkable progress in rebuilding some of the municipalities ravaged by the quake and tsunami, the Fukushima crisis, the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster - remains very much an open wound, the magnitude of which will probably not be fully ascertained for years - if not decades - to come.

As with any major disaster, there were many sub-plots in this one. As a professional communicator (and one with a longstanding connection to Japan), the most compelling aspect of this unfolding drama was the communications story. As with any major disaster, how effectively a a country or region deals with the forces of nature gone wild is primarily a measure of pre-disaster planning and post-disaster communication. And on both of these fronts, the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami story represented both resounding success and abject failure. It was a story of one cause and two disasters - one that was handled remarkably well and another astoundingly badly.

Lessons Learned

The Tohoku tsunami and the Fukushima meltdown may have stemmed from a common cause, but once the wave hit the northeastern coast of Japan, the two became very much separate disasters. Moreover, the way in which these two disasters were handled by the respective authorities speaks volumes to the strengths and weaknesses of crisis communications - and of communication as a whole - in this highly disaster-prone country.

Japan's historical track record for crisis communication is shaky at best. Numerous political and social factors have contributed in the past to slow and ineffective post-disaster communications, including a bureaucratic and cloistered political culture prone to factionalism and infighting, a group-oriented culture wherein tremendous emphasis is placed on consensus-building (resulting in slow decision making) and a high premium placed on 'face-saving' and maintaining surface calm best encapsulated by the Japanese terms tatemae (建前) meaning 'outwardly agreed-upon 'truths'' and honne (本音), that which we know to be true but keep to ourselves. Even the Japanese language itself is fraught with ambiguity, a factor that may even have triggered the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima, as I address in my December 11 post.

The remains of JAL 123
(Source: Sécurité Aérienne et Accidentologie)

This plus a longstanding reluctance to involve outsiders in Japan's domestic disasters has led to some notably egregious crisis management failures. One of the worst in recent history was the 1985 crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123. For those who don't remember this disaster, a Boeing 747 on a holiday weekend short-haul flight from Tokyo to Osaka broke apart shortly after takeoff and crashed in the mountains west of Tokyo. While the cause of the accident was ultimately determined to be an improper repair by a Boeing technician, the situation was exacerbated by a botched rescue effort caused by confusion and bickering between police agencies and a thwarted rescue attempt by nearby US military personnel that was halted by Japanese officials. In the end, four out of the 524 people on board survived, but many others died while waiting to be rescued.

Aum Shinrikyo leader Shoko Asahara (Source: AP)

Ten years later, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck the southern part of the western prefecture of Hyōgo, devastating the port city of Kobe. Here again, poor crisis planning and communications appear to have cost lives. The then socialist-led government of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama was excoriated  by the Japanese public for its confused and disorganized response, for poorly managing local volunteer efforts and for initially refusing help from foreign countries. In the same year, a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system by the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult was also marred by poor communication between city authorities, police and emergency services. Many local hospitals only received information on diagnosis and treatment after one professor of medicine saw the reports on TV and phoned in.

A Tale of Two Crises

Fast forward to March 2011 and the picture looks quite different – at least in part. As far as the actual natural disaster was concerned, communications was handled beautifully. Firstly, Japan’s new earthquake and tsunami warning system, which prior to March 11, 2011 had never been truly put to the test, worked perfectly, automatically issuing alerts via television and cell phones shortly after the first, less harmful, shock wave was detected, providing time for many people to make preparations for the more powerful shock wave that followed – and probably saving a great many lives.

(Source: Japan Meteorological Agency)


In the case of the 3.11 disaster, the Japanese government under Prime Minister Naoto Kan responded with unprecedented swiftness. He also urged the Japanese public to act calmly and tune into various media for updated information. The Prime Minister also wasted no time setting up a crisis communications control centre in his office to coordinate the government's response and, in stark contrast to the Kobe disaster, sent out immediate requests for assistance to emergency response teams in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Tireless Edano (Source: Nippon News Network)

The Japanese government also made the inspired decision of appointing then-Chief Cabinet Secretary (now Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry) Yukio Edano as the government’s chief spokesperson. A blunt, plainspoken northerner (a Tochigi native and a Tohoku University graduate) with a knack for social media communication, Edano put forth a phenomenal performance as crisis communicator that made the stocky politician in the blue one-piece emergency suit one of the disaster’s most enduring symbols. For at least a week, Edano was either fielding television interviews or tweeting up-to-the-minute information from tsunami-ravaged areas. A week into the aftermath, the man’s increasingly haggard appearance and faltering on-air commentary led to the popularization of the Twitter hashtag #edano_nero (literally “Edano, get some sleep!”).

While the Japanese government still faced questions over the speed of its response to the mounting humanitarian crisis (including from Minister Edano himself), the government’s communications performance, both internally and externally, was an unprecedented success. The government’s embrace of overseas help was a major coup for the government. Its close collaboration with the US military through Operation Tomodachi (‘Friend’) was commended by the Yomiuri Shimbun as solidifying the Japan-US military alliance, while the Japanese government’s request for help from South Korea resulted in an outpouring of donations and goodwill from a country with a long history of animosity towards Japan.

The Japanese government’s response to Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, both during and after the disaster, clearly demonstrated that substantial progress had been made in Japan in terms of crisis communications planning in the decade leading up to the disaster. However, as the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdown, clearly shows, this progress was not evenly spread and that among certain institutions at least, the old modus operandi is still very much alive and kicking.

Data Without Information: Making Sense of the Fukushima Debacle

In the year following 3.11, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the utility responsible for the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has become one of the country’s most despised institutions. While cold shutdown of the plant was achieved in mid-December 2011 and work is now underway at decommissioning the plant, the reputation management fallout for Japan’s largest power company is anything but contained. The first anniversary of the 3.11 disaster saw large-scale protests outside TEPCO’s Tokyo headquarters, while TEPCO shareholders have filed a $67 billion lawsuit against the company's executives in the biggest claim in Japanese history.

Tokaimura - the prequel to Fukushima? (Source: Wikispaces)

The Japanese public’s mistrust of TEPCO and of the country’s nuclear energy industry as a whole long predated the Fukushima disaster. In 2002, the government found the utility guilty of false reporting in routine governmental inspection of its nuclear plants and systematic concealment of plant safety incidents. Five years later, the company announced to the public that an internal investigation had revealed a large number of unreported incidents at its plants. All this had followed a 1999 incident involving a major uranium leak at JCO’s Tokaimura nuclear fuel-processing in northern Ibaraki Prefecture, which resulted in the deaths of two workers and the evacuation of 161 nearby residents. In this case, poor internal communication and inadequate training were identified as the cause, while slow external communication shook public confidence in the industry.

At 2:46 pm on March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude offshore earthquake generated a 40-meter tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi complex, leading to a massive release of radiation and the meltdown of three reactor cores. From the very beginning, it was evident that the plant’s owners were in complete disarray, with little idea of exactly what was going on or how to communicate it. With no communications plan in place, TEPCO responded reactively with numbers devoid of context and opaque engineering terminology, which merely exacerbated public confusion and anxiety. Moreover, whereas social media was beneficial in communicating tsunami-related information, in the case of the nuclear accident the flurry of tweets and retweets that followed the utility’s latest announcements amounted to a nationwide game of ‘telephone’, further fanning the flames of confusion.

TEPCO CEO Masataka Shimizu (Source: Kyodo News)

As Tokyo-based media consultant Gil Chavez explains in his article in the Nov-Dec issue of Communication World, explaining radiation levels in terminology understandable to the general public is a tricky undertaking at the best of times. The standard measurement of radiation, the Sievert (Sv), was unfamiliar to most people both within and outside Japan prior to the accident. This and similar terms such as millisievert and microsievert suddenly began flooding the country’s news media. Add to this the extent of the public panic generated by the twin disasters and it’s hardly surprising that TEPCO’s attempts at reactive crisis communications were a near-total disaster. Even the utility’s attempt at using Twitter to alleviate the situation resulted in backlash, as it was perceived firstly as too little, too late and secondly as a cheap effort by TEPCO to improve its image in the midst of the disaster.



The PR fallout from the Fukushima meltdown ultimately spread to the government of Japan after its reserve of public goodwill stemming from its effective handling of the tsunami aftermath had been upended by its apparent inability to bring the nuclear disaster under control and to take TEPCO to task for its mishandling of the situation. Prime Minister Kan’s personal popularity took a pounding until, facing the prospect of a cabinet rebellion, he announced his resignation in August 2011. Recent revelations show that Kan’s brinkmanship may have prevented an even larger calamity. A government report quotes Edano as having warned the prime minister of a “demonic chain reaction” of plant meltdowns could require the complete evacuation of Tokyo at a time when TEPCO officials wanted to pull its emergency workers from the plant. His unrelenting pressure on TEPCO may have saved Japan.

The Fukushima debacle clearly illustrates the need for a well-developed crisis communications plan, particularly for an industry that is both fiendishly complex and fraught with fear and anxiety – especially in sole country on earth to have been subjected to a nuclear attack. The Fukushima Daiichi accident had all the hallmarks of a smoldering crisis, namely the age of the plant (It was built in 1971 and had just had its operational lifespan extended by ten years), the regularity with which large tsunamis have struck the area (in 1793, 1856, 1896, 1933 and 2011) and TEPCO’s own patchy safety record. While the magnitude of the earthquake in question was unprecedented in Japanese historical records, similarly powerful megathrust earthquakes have occurred elsewhere on earth, most recently off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, in December 2004, triggering the deadly Indian Ocean Tsunami that devastated coastlines as far away as Somalia.

Conclusions?

The triple disaster that befell Japan on March 11, 2011 put every aspect of the country's infrastructure, institutions and human capital to the test, and results are a lesson to the world. In communications terms, while the Fukushima disaster stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when you fly without a communications plan, the other story was that of a major breakthrough in crisis communications in a country with a long history of poor disaster communication. If nothing else, this disaster shows that governments, regardless of culture and historical precedent, can indeed learn from past mistakes and that, in Japan’s case, the government clearly had learned its lessons from previous crises. As catastrophic as the the events of 3.11 were, they could easily have been far worse, and indeed much smaller earthquakes have resulted in far greater loss of life.

One of the most enduring lessons of this disaster is that in a time of crisis, people, regardless of their cultural mores and social grammar, want a swift response and clear, concise, up-to-the-minute information. And in the case of the natural disaster itself, that is – for the most part – what people got. It could have been better, but given the enormous obscacles that officials and rescuers faced, their performance was on the whole commendable. As for the nuclear disaster, even this could have been far worse than it was (and was feared at the time) and was one at least hopes that it will result in systematic overhauls to how communications is handled within this industry.

In the meantime, our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan, especially those mourning the loss of loves ones and those still awaiting return to destroyed coastal hometowns in the northeastern prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, on the anniversary of the worst calamity in the country’s postwar history.

日本のこと、日本人のことを、心から案じています。

If Fictional Characters Conducted SWOT Analyses

One of the first things they teach you in any public relations program is how to conduct a SWOT analysis. For those of you unfamiliar with this cornerstone of strategic planning, SWOT is a handy acronym that stands for Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats. In a nutshell, it's a very helpful way of identifying the internal and external factors that stand to either help or hinder you in pursuit of specific organizational goals.

For marketers and crisis communicators, the SWOT analysis is the equivalent of the periodic table - an essential tool without on which the rest of the communications planning process depends. It is used in creating recommendations during viability testing and is also an invaluable tool in crisis management planning. It's a disarmingly simple rubric, one that strikes me as being just as applicable to personal predicaments as to organizational issues.

Just how applicable is the SWOT to personal situations? Consider the dilemmas faced by the following fictional characters - and imagine if they had incorporated this analytical approach into their strategic planning processes.

"Okay, boys, here's our strategic plan."

Case #1 - Snow White

Once Snow White had retreated to the forest and been taken in by the seven dwarves, she had successfully bought herself enough time to draw up an impromptu strategic plan for dealing with her evil stepmother who was in hot pursuit. Her end goals were straightforward enough: evade capture and death at the hands of the wicked queen and marry her Prince Charming. Having established this, her SWOT chart would have looked something like this:

Strengths

• I'm the frickin' fairest of them all! Even the queen's lousy mirror says so!
• Prince Charming is definitely into me.
• I've managed to evade capture - so far.
• So far the queen's assassins have proven to have the brains of celery.
• I got myself some protection.

Weaknesses

• I may be the fairest of them all but I'm certainly not the brightest of them all.
• I'm not particularly good at taking care of things myself.
• My 'protection' consists of men who are only three feet tall and subject to union-mandated working hours.

Opportunities

• If I can hold out long enough the prince will find me and all will be well.
• If I can off my stepmother - or get the prince or the dwarves to do it, I'll be queen.

Threats

• My stepmother is evil, tenacious as hell and won't go down without a tremendous fight.
• She's also a master of disguise, which with me not being particularly bright is a bad combination.

Had Snow White sat down and gone through this process rather than frolicking around the forest picking buttercups, she might have saved herself a lot of unpleasantness. As it happened, however, she would not have known that her trump card was the ability to survive a fatal fruit-induced poisoning by way of a kiss from her true love. Snow White proved to be the fairlytale equivalent of the Exxon Corporation - capable of surviving even the most botched crisis management 'cause, well, we need that happy ending.

"Damn it, that was my texting hand!"

Case #2 - Luke Skywalker

While Snow White is clearly a case of failed strategic planning that could only be salvaged by Deus ex Machina intervention by Disney's happy ending industry, Luke Skywalker presents a more fascinating case. Consider his quandary upon escaping his near fatal battle with Darth Vader on Cloud City, a duel that cost him both his good hand and his blissful ignorance about his family lineage. While beaten up and demoralized, Luke was still alive - and like Snow White had bought himself enough time for some planning.

Luke's SWOT analysis probably would have looked something like this:

Strengths

• I've got Jedi powers out the wazoo!
• I've had training from the two greatest Jedi masters of all time.
• I'm a kick-ass X-Wing pilot.
• I'm friends with the toughest SOB's in the galaxy.
• If all else fails, I can always take my dad up on his job offer to co-rule the galaxy.

Weaknesses

• I just lost my fighting hand - and my lightsaber.
• I quit school before graduating - and may have lost Yoda as a reference.
• My best friend and trusted ally has just been frozen in carbonite and has been shipped off to Jabba the Hutt as a wall decoration.
• My daddy issues are just getting worse - and he's still kind of, well, evil and probably doesn't have my best interests in mind.

Opportunities

• Prosthetics have come a long way. Hell, my dad is half artificial and he still managed to kick my ass.
• That lightsaber-making tutorial I took a while back is certainly going to come in handy.
• I can save Han Solo from Jabba - and after what I've just been through, dealing with an invertebrate crime lord with no legs shouldn't be too challenging.
• I can always go back to Dagobah for more training.
• As least now I know the truth about my father. I can better prepare myself psychologically for our next confrontation.

Threats

• I've heard rumours about a new Death Star. That's not going to make things any easier.
• Yoda's not exactly getting any younger.
• I'm pretty sure Princess Leia is my sister - and we totally smooched on that ice planet. I really hope that nosey medical droid didn't tell anyone!

Looking at this breakdown, it seems clear that the SWOT analysis was part of Luke's Jedi training, shoehorned somewhere in between swinging from trees and telekinesis. When he shows up on his home planet of Tattooine ready to take on the Hutt, he's clearly a man with a plan - and he executes it perfectly.

But it's not just the heroes who can benefit from a good strategic plan. Had more fictional villains taken this approach, their villainy might just have triumphed.

"I'll SWOT you my pretty!"

Case #3: The Wicked Witch of the West

The Wicked Witch of the West is an unfairly maligned figure. A foul-tempered, misanthropic witch to be sure, she still had far more reasonable aspirations than most fictitious villains, namely to avenge the death of her sister - and reclaim those snazzy red shoes. Once Dorothy sets off on the Yellow Brick Road in the company of her three ridiculous companions, the witch knew it was only a matter of time before the girl and the stolen shoes reached the all-powerful weight-loss guru wizard. But she still had time to do a quick SWOT analysis, which would have looked something like this:

Strengths

• I'm a witch, dammit! I can fly on broomsticks, turn people into toads and all that crap.
• I can summon flying monkeys, which, believe you me, comes in handy in situations like this.
• I'm not encumbered by the same pesky ethical standards as that annoying, goody-two-shoes Glinda.
• Dorothy's esteemed entourage are lacking in the brain, heart and courage departments.

Weaknesses

• Youthful good looks are definitely not on my side, and for a female fairlytale character this isn't good news.
• Having 'Wicked' in my name is definitely a disadvantage.
• My shoe obsession and anger management issues need to be addressed sooner rather than later.
• My flying monkeys aren't always the most effective goons. What I wouldn't do for a gang of football hooligans or something!
• I'm deathly allergic to water. Don't ask.

Opportunities

• Dorothy and company are still a long ways from Emerald City - and I have flight on my side. I am a witch, after all.
• I can always threaten to drown her dog or something. She's a sensitive thing.
• If it comes down to a court case, I'm confident that evidence will point to Dorothy having killed my sister with her house and then callously stolen her shoes.
• Whatever happened here, I could always reinvent myself in a revisionist novel and Broadway musical.

Threats

• That douchebag Oz really doesn't like me, and Dorothy's cutesy routine and her little dog will win him over for sure.
• Did I mention the whole being deathly allergic to water thing? I still haven't come up with an antidote to that.

In a SWOT analysis, the idea is to leverage your strengths so that they counter your weaknesses, and do the same with your threats and opportunities. Unfortunately, in spite of her best laid plans, the Wicked Witch of the West's last and most crippling weakness proved to be insurmountable. Barring some sort of advanced water-shield, no SWOT analysis in the world could have pointed to a solution to this problem. Sometimes the best solution really is to be nice to everyone and not make a fuss when people steal your stuff. Especially if you can be killed with a bucket of water.

When Bad Communication Kills: Remembering Valerie Wolski and the Nord-Ost Tragedy

Valerie Wolski (Source: Edmonton Journal)

Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the death of Valerie Wolski, the Alberta mental health worker who was strangled to death by her patient, Terrance Saddleback. She was working alone, providing care to Saddleback, an enormous, severely developmentally challenged man who was prone to psychotic rages. Saddleback was initially charged with manslaughter, but the charge was dropped as he was unfit to stand trial.

In a recent op-ed article in the Edmonton Journal, columnist Paula Simons chastized the Alberta government's Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) central region board for failing to inform the Canadian Mental Health Association (the organization responsible for which Wolski worked) of Saddleback’s violent history. The board had previously determined that the man presented an 'extreme' and 'catastrophic' risk and that he should never be left alone with a care worker, especially a woman. Unfortunately, nobody told the Canadian Mental Health Association - and Valerie Wolski paid the ultimate price for bureaucratic secrecy.

You would think that after such an egregious communications failure that the government would have implemented an immediate audit of its communications processes. Shockingly, nothing of the kind happened. In June of this year, Occupational Health and Safety also issued an immediate safety order, compelling the central region of Persons with Developmental Disabilities to change its practices. This week the board announced that it was appealing the findings, with a three-day appeal hearing scheduled to begin on February 28.

The case of Valerie Wolski is a textbook example of how bureaucratic secrecy and poor crisis communications are a ticking time-bomb. While PDD argued that the agency had an obligation to uphold privacy laws, the Wolski tragedy clearly demonstrated gross negliegence on the part of a government agency specifically set up to prevent this sort of tragedy. Moreover, PDD further compounded the situation by obfuscating, deflecting blame and completely disregarding the Canadian Mental Health Association's concerns. These organizations are invariably well staffed with well-trained communications officers. Are these people even being allowed to do their jobs?

The tragedy of Valerie Wolski also reminded me of another upcoming anniversary - of a tragedy that should go down in history as an example of crisis communications gone horribly wrong.

When The Show Didn't 'Go On'

Nord-Ost Siege Memorial (Source: RT News)

The date was October 23, 2002 and the scene was the Dubrovka Theatre in central Moscow, located about four kilometers southeast of the Kremlin. The show playing that night was the popular historical musical theatre production Nord-Ost (German for 'North-East'), a play based on the popular novel The Two Captains by Veniamin Kaverin, which tells the story of the 1913 discovery of the arctic archipelago of Severnaya Zemlya in 1913.

Shortly after 9:00 pm as the show was well into Act II, between 40 to 50 heavily armed guerillas identifying their allegiance to the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria stormed the theatre and took 850 spectators and performers hostage. The siege lasted for four days before a squadron of Spetsnaz (Special Forces) under the command of Russia's Federal Security Bureau (FSB) raided the theatre and pumped a mysterious chemical agent into the building's air conditioning system. All of the combatants were killed in the operation, which a spokesperson for the Special Forces lauded as "our first successful operation for years."

The tactic used to bring the siege to an end was unquestionably brilliant - and one that could well have ensured that every single bystander other than the few executed by the Chechen militants survived. Unfortunately, the special forces, whose organizational structure and approach to communications still hearkened back to the Soviet era, refused to disclose the chemical properties of gas in question to the Moscow physicians tasked with reviving the unconscious theatre-goers. In fact, the exact nature of the 'knock-out' gas they used is still unknown, although it is believed to be either fentanyl or 3-methylfentanyl. At least 129 hostages never woke up.

The Nord-Ost hostage crisis is largely remembered as a turning point in Russia's dealing with the ongoing insurgency in Chechnya. The crisis led Putin's government to tighten its grip on the renegade region, a move largely applauded by the Russian people. It also saw increasing repression of Russia's independent media, which had been critical by the government's heavy-handed approach to the situation. Some independent journalists, including the late Anna Politkovskaya, alleged that the FSB itself had been involved in the siege, seeing it as an opportunity for a more hardline approach in Chechnya. Four years later, Politkovskaya was assassinated in her apartment block.

The story that was largely lost, however, was the communication breakdown between the FSB and the Moscow-area medics who were left scratching their heads as to how to revive the unconscious patients being brought to them from the theatre. Had a crisis communications plan been in place (and employed), the special forces would have been able to feed the gas into the theatre, wait for everyone to lose consciousness and then separate the terrorists from the hostages and whisk the latter group off to hospital - giving the doctors ample warning of the situation. As it happened, physicians managed to revive some patients with the drug naloxone, but it was too little, too late.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate!

The cases of Valerie Wolski and the Nord-Ost hostage crisis are similar in that they both resulted from a failure to communicate vital life-and-death information from one organization to another. And while the breakdown in Moscow in 2002 was unquestionably more egregious, it is at the same time somewhat more understandable given that the organization at the centre of the controversy was a direct descendent of the KGB and was still steeped in Soviet-era paranoia and secrecy. When it comes to the Alberta government of 2012, there's really no excuse.

The anniversary of Valerie Wolski's murder is yet another reminder of the importance of the work I do as a professional communicator. When communications break down, people and organizations get hurt - and sometimes people get killed. In the case of a country like Russia whose bureaucrats and government institutions remain in large part products of an authoritarian political culture, it's understandable that fostering new cultures of communication is a tall order. But in this part of the world we could and should be doing a whole lot better at communications.

In the meantime, the appeal hearing regarding the Canadian Mental Health Association's allegations begins on February 28. If you live in Alberta, I encourage everyone to write to George VanderBurg, the minster in charge of the Persons with Developmental Disabilities program, as well as the Minister of Human Services Dave Hancock, to push the agency to change its communications policies to ensure that nothing like this happens again. Read this blog dedicated to Valerie Wolski for more information - as well as for downloadable letter templates.

Good communicators can do a lot - but bad policy will leave even the most capable and energetic communications officers straightjacketed. For that kind of change it takes action and public engagement. And in a civil society like ours, that's everybody's job.