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Blow Up the Box Chronicles
Paper Copies and Rotary Phones
I take my daughters to school each morning, one at 7:00 and the other at 8:45.
On our way to school at 7:00, the oldest asked “Why is my phone in SOS? Did you not pay the bill?”
My reply: “I don’t know, yes, and you don’t need it at school anyway.”
By the time I got home, nothing that we use to access the interwebs or phones worked. We were part of the AT&T snafu - and frankly, I was fine with it. I used the quiet to catch up on some deep work that needed my attention. I also remember a time when that was the glorious norm.
AT&T Screwed Up Twice That Day (at least!)
I do crisis planning and management for a living - and here is the first rule for any crisis:
Your client should hear about the mistake or gap in service from you first.
I wasn’t bothered by the outage, I was bothered that the company I pay plenty of money did not let me know about the outage. They didn’t text me (I still had wifi), they didn’t email, they didn’t post anything on social media, nor did they put a notice on the website. NOTHING - not even a carrier pigeon or press statement.
I finally found the update buried on The Drudge Report quoting a Dailymail (UK) article. YEP - I had to rely on the British for an update on my cell service.
You will one day have a crisis. You will one day make a mistake. You will one day miss a client deadline. Rule #1: let the client know immediately that you are aware of it and have either resolved the issue or have delayed everything else to resolve it. Let them know in as many modes as possible (text, call, email, social media post, press release, etc.)
Everyone messes up, that is a given. Trust is strengthened when we own it. Trust is destroyed when we remain silent in the face of it.
This is all part of my Crisis Proofing Your Business Plan. Know what you will communicate and to whom it will go BEFORE you need it.