The Human Blind Spot in Crisis Communications

There is a prayer that crisis communicators have been quoting for decades. 

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

It sounds right. It feels grounding. 

But maybe it’s been pointing us in the wrong direction the whole time. 

The problem is the concept of CONTROL. Because control, in a crisis, is a myth. And every strategy built on the assumption that you can control the outcome of a crisis is a strategy built on sand. 

Let’s replace that idea with INFLUENCE. Doing that replaces an entire philosophy.

Alongside that shift comes something more uncomfortable… the suggestion that when a crisis hits, the quality of your advice has almost nothing to do with your frameworks, your playbook, or your years of experience. It has to do with who you are as a human being. As a parent. As a citizen. As a person who is also living through the same world your client is trying to navigate. 

The professional and the person are not separate. And pretending they are, may be the most dangerous crisis communication strategy of all.

Listen For

3:41 Why Are Global Risks Becoming More Connected and Harder to Manage?

6:09 Is Employee Mental Health a Bigger Business Risk Than AI?

9:32 Why Do Companies Know the Risks but Still Fail to Prepare?

11:20 What Is “Agency” in Crisis Communications and Why Does It Matter?

14:29 How Can Leaders Use Empathy and Understanding to Respond to a Crisis?

Guest: Rod Cartwright, Principal, Rod Cartwright Consulting

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Transcript

Lady Emily (00:01):
You've heard of the Serenity Prayer. Even if you don't recognise the name, you'd know it when you hear it. A theologian wrote it in 1932. We have been misquoting it ever since.

Doug Downs (00:15):
In 1932, a theologian named Reinhold Niebuhr sat down to write a prayer. The world was not going well. The Great Depression had hollowed out the economy in Germany. A man named Hitler was rising. Niebuhr was a German American. He could see exactly what was coming and he could do almost nothing about it. What he wrote was not about control. Here's the exact phrase as he wrote it. God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Now, the word control doesn't appear anywhere in that prayer. It never did. What he wrote about was the courage to change what could be changed and the grace to accept what could not. He wrote it as part of a sermon and then he forgot about it.

(01:12):
 A colleague quietly copied it down.

(01:17):
 It passed from hand to hand without his name attached. A decade later, it found its way into an obituary notice in a New York newspaper. An early member of Alcoholics Anonymous saw it there, brought it to a meeting, and from there it spread to every corner of the world. Now, somewhere along the way, the word control entered the story, not in the prayer itself, but in the way people talked about it, in the way crisis communicators borrowed it, in the way organisations built entire strategies around the assumption that a crisis could be managed, contained, directed, controlled. Niebuhr never said that. Niebuhr was watching the Third Reich from across an ocean, broadcasting pleas into the dark on Voice of America radio, trying to influence what he could not stop. He knew exactly what control was worth. Today on Stories and Strategies, the illusion of control.

(02:39):
 My guest this week, Rod Cartwright, joining today from West Norwood, which is a beautiful spot in South London.

(02:45):
 Hey, Rod.

Rod Cartwright (02:46):
Hey there. Beautiful is in the eye of the beholder, but I kind of love it. Been here 20 years.

Doug Downs (02:51):
Well, then it has to be beautiful. Rod, you're one of the world's leading crisis comms advisers, a special adviser to the CIPR's Crisis Communications Network and a visiting fellow at Cardiff University with three decades of frontline experience helping organisations navigate the worst moments of their existence. Every year you read every major global report on reputation, risk, and resilience so the rest of us don't have to. And then you tell us what all this means. And your report has just dropped. You've read hundreds of pages of data from organisations like the WEF, AXA, Edelman, the Page Society, so we don't have to. You've told me the context surrounding this year's report is like nothing we've experienced. That's compelling. What's going on?

Rod Cartwright (03:41):
I think what is going on is a continuation of what I saw last year and have felt over recent years. Last year I talked about relatively stable risks becoming more embedded and more structural. And interestingly, yet again, I think we tend to think about risk as the world is moving fast, therefore what's the latest thing to be scared of? And I think that obviously, although we've seen the degree of actual or potential armed conflict escalate in the last 12 months, so that is genuinely new. We've seen geopolitics becoming very geoeconomic.

(04:27):
 But I think broadly what we are seeing is the same trend, a set of relatively stable dynamics becoming simply worse, more entrenched, more embedded, more structural, and therefore more alarming, but above all else ever more interconnected. Two years ago, I coined the phrase risk intersectionality. We talk about intersectionality in a DE&I context, but it feels that it's exactly what's happening with the risk and threat environment, that while each of the dynamics that we're seeing in and of itself is worrying and alarming, it's the mutually reinforcing interplay of the way that all of those dynamics play off each other and compound each other as well. So stable risks entrenched and deepened and ever more interconnected and more intersectional.

Doug Downs (05:26):
So this was 12 reports and you identified 10 key themes. So as you go through the report, and there's a link in the notes, there's 10 key themes to read up on. You mentioned geoeconomics overtaking geopolitics, AI finally hitting the risk register about time, and what you call, this is intriguing, what you call an embedded psychological epidemic in the workforce. So which of those feels most dangerously underestimated by organisations right now and why? And my intuition is AI because it's AI and I keep hearing about it and I know it's dangerous.

Rod Cartwright (06:09):
Yeah. And I'm not going to pretend. I mean, was I surprised that it took AI quite so long to find its way into this body of work that I reviewed? Kind of yes and no. Last year, I was genuinely surprised that it was there or thereabouts, but it was kind of sitting at the fringes of risk registers. This year it's come screaming into the picture. And yes, intuitively, I mean, as you and I were chatting about the other week, it is potentially nuclear in every sense. Its ability, let's leave aside AGI and the singularity and does it happen next year or 20 years from now? None of us know. Not even Anthropic and OpenAI know the answer to that question. So let's park the singularity. Intuitively, AI is the scariest. Actually, if you pinned me to the wall and said pick one, it would be what I call the embedded psychological pandemic because I think what we've seen is two dynamics playing off each other.

(07:13):
 One is an absolute real hit on the world's mental health. One of the reports from International SOS estimates that there are a billion people on the planet living with poor mental health. I mean, I kind of question that in a way because, as we all know, mental health isn't on or off. You don't have good mental health or bad mental health. You just have mental health that slides up and down a spectrum. But that detail aside, you have incredibly damaging figures around mental health on the one hand. And then on the other, there is an absolute plummet. I don't know if plummets are nouns, a huge fall yet again in people's engagement with the workplace. So Gallup, in their State of the Global Workforce report last year, reported the first drop in global employee engagement in three years. This year it dropped even further and the aggregate number globally is 21%, and they estimate that the net impact of employee disengagement globally is $10 trillion.

(08:26):
 You can take the figure for however you want it. But if you stand back and look at those two dynamics, poor mental health and falling employee engagement, that for me has enormous economic, political, and societal ramifications. Last year I described what I call the new pandemic of falling mental health, of worsening mental health and worsening employee engagement as a new pandemic, which is one of the sleeping giant risks. I think it remains a sleeping giant and that is why, to answer your original question, I think it is so alarming.

Doug Downs (09:12):
And this is where we're pulling back. We're less willing to speak up. We're less willing to fill out those 360 reports for how we intersect with our managers. We're less willing to comment on social media, which by the way, I understand because it feels like a cesspool there, but we're just not willing to step forward.

Rod Cartwright (09:32):
Yeah. And if I can just add, I mean, another couple of very related findings, one of the 10 was what I called the awareness versus preparedness gap, that report after report, whether it is about cybersecurity, whether it is about employee engagement and motivation, reports basically say we are aware of risks, we are not prepared for them, and we know we're not prepared for them. So if you put those two together, the human psychological pandemic and epidemic on the one hand and the awareness versus preparedness gap on the other, my concluding number 10 is what I call the human blind spot, that of all of the gaps between awareness of risk and preparedness for them, it is those involving humans, human wellbeing, and humanity that for me is the biggest issue net net. And I've been talking about human preparedness and what I call critical human infrastructure for years.

(10:43):
 And I continue to believe that because of those two dynamics together, the human blind spot is deeply, deeply worrying.

Doug Downs (10:52):
Well, and it must be okay because my neighbours aren't prepared either, right? Neither are my friends. So I'm just part of the... Well, it just gets worse. Okay. So you've built this year's practical recommendations in the report around a single overarching concept, assuming agency. What do you mean by that? And why does that idea feel urgent in this world where so many people feel that they've lost control? And is there such a thing as control?

Rod Cartwright (11:20):
Absolutely. So I mean, control is the obvious starting point. If you say the word agency, people have lost agency, they tend to think it means I've lost control. For me, control is and always has been a myth. I mean, in comms terms, people saying we want to control the message or control the narrative. Was that ever possible? I'm not even so sure. Even if it was true at some point historically, it fundamentally isn't now. So let's park control as a myth. If you don't have control, can you influence? And of course influence is fundamental to what we do, but I think that my basic argument is the way to unlock influence, the way to hope to have any influence, whether on unlocking opportunities positively or mitigating and managing threats and risks, mitigating the downside, it's agency. And what I've done in the report is basically really dived deep into what does the word agency mean?

(12:29):
 And I won't bore you with all the detail, but effectively, if you look at agency through the lens of linguistics and philosophy and psychology, it all comes down to the idea of agency meaning that you are taking conscious action, conscious, wilful, purposeful action in order to try and change things. So my basic argument is that whether individuals or organisations have any hope of influencing, far less controlling, they need to basically step up and take agency. And from an issues and crisis perspective, it doesn't mean waiting for the balloon to go up and then using agency. It's about early on, very proactively identifying what are all the vulnerabilities for our organisation reputationally and relationship wise, and what can we do to de risk our organisation? That is what agency means very practically.

Doug Downs (13:38):
Okay. If we're influencers, inevitably the ones I want to influence are those not necessarily opposed to what I think or what I think they should do, but those who aren't at a point. Maybe I need them to do more of something or maybe I need them to change from oranges to apples. My inclination is the way to influence is to first understand. Rod, I cannot influence you or persuade you by giving you new information. I can only do that by understanding what already exists for you as a thought process and as a feeling process. So my question is, do we seem to be doing enough to first seek to understand? Are we so busy trying to educate people on how to do things and think things?

Rod Cartwright (14:29):
So funnily enough, I laugh only because that is what I've done because people like words but they love a picture, is that I've basically tried to embody the whole agency thing in a single picture and a single diagram. What I've done is I've taken the 10 elements of agency and I've broken them into two blocks. So the first block is around what I call sense making, which is first of all understanding context. What is going on or could go on that presents risk and danger for the organisation? So it could be in the preparedness phase or it could be after something has happened. Either way, you need to understand context. Then you need to understand potential consequence, which could be and often is negative, but can also be positive, remembering that a crisis properly defined is only ever a turning point containing both risk and opportunity.

(15:40):
 So a lot of that is around listening and understanding. So there's context, there's consequence, there's accountability and responsibility and so it goes on. So there are five elements of agency which are around sense making and then there are five which are around sense giving, which is having listened and analysed and understood. How do you demonstrate empathy? How do you operationalise that empathy with action? How do you back up the action with interaction? So again, I'm not going through every one of the 10, but as I say, it's 10 ideas broken into two, one around sense making and the second around sense giving, all based on the idea I unpacked last year that you need to start with the self and the understanding of what you might have done, but above all else, focus on the other, those you may have impacted. Because I think in a crisis, organisations do what human beings do when faced with trauma, which is fight, flight, or freeze, but you have to get beyond the immediate Pavlovian reaction of trauma and go, "Ultimately, my reputation and relationships will be impacted by how I treat the other, not how I defend the self."

Doug Downs (17:07):
You wrote a letter to the reader in this year's report that says something I kind of find moving. I like this approach that you want communicators to read the report as a human being first, not just as a professional.

Rod Cartwright (17:25):
Ultimately, if you strip it all back, crisis management, crisis communications basically involve frankly, normally decent human beings trying to do the right thing by other human beings. And some of the best advice I've given at three o'clock in the morning after 18 hours when I'm Doug tired aren't about the craft and technique of crisis communications, they're about how do you support those decent human beings to make decent decisions? So I had this light bulb moment that went, why not say to people, read this as a human being first, because ultimately the best advice you will ever give will come from the well of your humanness and humanity, not from your ability to write a scenario plan or a Q&A document. So I say in the document, the fact that you love live football but loathe crowds, the fact that you abhor cabbage but adore kimchi, that is relevant and material because it's what makes you you.

(18:37):
 So many people may only ever read this as professionals. Long may it continue. This is obviously predominantly a professional piece of work. From my experience, they will get an extra layer of richness from it if they read it through the lens of their role as a partner or a parent or a citizen or a neighbour.

Doug Downs (19:02):
I love it because we are professionals who work with and for people and you're taking the user experience approach.

Rod Cartwright (19:09):
Yes.

Doug Downs (19:11):
Rod, thanks for doing the report again and thanks for your time today.

Rod Cartwright (19:15):
It's always a pleasure, Doug. Thank you for having me on, sincerely.

Doug Downs (19:19):
Here are the top three things I got today from Rod Cartwright. Number one, the real pandemic that nobody's talking about. Employee disengagement and mental health are the most dangerously underestimated risks, not AI. Number two, control has always been a myth. Agency isn't about regaining control, it's about taking conscious, purposeful action early enough to influence outcomes. And number three, your humanity is your sharpest professional tool. The best crisis advice comes from who you are as a human being, not from crafting your skills. If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Rod Cartwright, I've got his contact information in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a production of Stories and Strategies Podcasts. If you like this episode, it'd be great if you left a rating, possibly a review, please, please, please. Thank you to producers Emily Page and Jocelyn Floraldi. And lastly, do us a favour, forward this episode to one friend.

(20:17):
 Thanks for listening.