Getting An Edge On the Inevitable
By James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA
More often than not and despite good monitoring programs, when problems do pop onto our radar there’s little if any time to establish baseline information. While many organizations try to maintain some level of Issues Management (IM), many IM approaches used today are of low intensity and high complexity.
Today’s managers are focused on execution, strategy, and action. Operators quickly tire of complex processes and rely on their own instincts instead. This is a flawed strategy on two counts. Management is generally overly optimistic about their capacity to handle operating emergencies and adversity. Secondly, the most serious threats are usually non-operational and will be missed until it’s too late.
In the search for management relevance and engagement in early warning strategies, I’ve been recommending a different approach called Exposure Management & Surveillance (EM&S).
Exposure Management & Surveillance focuses on building management’s expectation to learn earlier about potentially urgent matters and current threats. I call it “getting an edge on the inevitable.” EM&S is aggressive monitoring of a limited number of key corporate threat sources and issues.
Exposure Management & Surveillance is designed to:
· Alert management earlier to likely urgent threats and opportunities.
· Strategically anticipate planned and unplanned visibility.
· Prepare management to act promptly, conclusively, and pragmatically.
· Initiate mitigation faster.
· Estimate earlier the potential organizational impact of exposure from threats, opportunities, and potentially adverse or explosively advantageous circumstances.
The information product rarely exceeds two typed pages. Distribution ranges from every week, to four or five times a year, or as often as necessary. The information is so valuable and vital that its distribution needs to be limited to very senior management. Copying is restricted, and I, or perhaps your general counsel, require that copies be returned to the source within 48 hours of disclosure and distribution.
Exposure Management & Surveillance is the link between circumstances where advance coincidental objective research is difficult or impossible when urgent action is necessary. EM&S can provide an empirical foundation to better understand related objective research when such research becomes possible.
Exposure Management & Surveillance information has self-evident current value, relevance, and urgency from management’s perspective. The technique is accepted because it fills a key void in management’s information needs. The approach is helpful, positive, insightful, early, and relevant. The array of issues and subjects monitored in the typical EM&S program and the process itself are illustrated in figure one:
The ultimate goal of such a program (see Phase IV above) is to constructively influence the overall readiness of the organization. Some exposures may be of such significance that they will immediately alter existing specific readiness preparation. Strategically used, Exposure Management & Surveillance can help control, contain, preempt, or even counteract potential threats. EM&S puts management in a preemptive position to actually detect, deter, and even prevent trouble.
Special Note: You can hear Mr. Lukaszewski live at IABC’s Corporate Reputation Conference on April 28th from 10:00 a.m. CT to 11:15 a.m. CT, in Chicago, sponsored by Delahaye. Please visit http://www.iabc.com/crs/ for more details.
JAMES E. LUKASZEWSKI, is frequently retained by senior management as a trusted outside advisor to directly intervene and manage resolution of serious corporate problems and threats. He coaches CEOs, is a prolific author and speaker, and is regularly quoted in major business publications. The recipient of many academic and professional awards, his name appears in Corporate Legal Times as one of "28 Experts to Call When All Hell Breaks Loose," and in PR Week as one of 22 "crunch-time counselors who should be on the speed dial in a crisis."
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