The Ultimate Oximoron — Crisis Management
Conventional logic dictates that in the midst of a social media crisis one refutes claims she knows to be false and apologises if at fault. But what if the line between right and wrong is blurred by public perception and technical inconsistency? Toyota was faced with this question under the most difficult of circumstances.
Following the report of “sticky accelerators” allegedly causing crashes and fatalities, Toyota recalled nearly six million vehicles and eventually agreed to a $1.1B settlement, this despite the fact that a study by the National Highway Safety Administration and NASA found no electronic flaws in Toyota vehicles that would cause dangerous self-acceleration issues. To this day there remains dispute over Toyota’s knowledge and complicity in the affair, with authorities on the subject such as Jeffrey Liker, author of “The Toyota Way (yes, perhaps a biased opinion)”, identifying dealer issued floor-mats as one of the causes.
What isn’t in dispute nor surprising is the visceral response from U.S. traditional and social media outlets. What is interesting, however, is that although U.S. motor giants Ford and General Motors (GM) have been charged with far more grievous offences such GM’s deliberate concealment of a faulty ignition switches that reportedly took 129 lives, they have not been subject to the same public scrutiny as Toyota. Perhaps the Toyota case is more “remarkable” in the context of the company’s proud history of quality and safety, or perhaps there is something deeper at play linked to the success of Japanese automakers in the U.S. market.
Whatever the cause of the imbalance, in the aftermath of the scandal there has been no shortage of “social media experts” providing brilliant 20/20 hindsight advice on what Toyota should have done and what “best practice crisis management” looks like. I posit that critiquing a crisis is an easy task from the sidelines, living it is a whole different matter. Moreover, as in Toyota’s case, there are some crisis to which there simply isn’t a neat solution — you are simply screwed.
