Innovation and Technology Set
Coordinated by
Chantal Ammi
Volume 4
First published 2018 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
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© ISTE Ltd 2018
The rights of Philippe Sachetti and Thibaud Zuppinger to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959466
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-197-0
The door had just slammed shut, the noise still resonating all across the floor. In the seven years that Véronique had been the general manager of VheTech, she had never felt such a violent burst of anger. Her serenity, her unassailable composure and her incredible ability to take a step back from things won her admiration, and her employees saw this as a major reason for the company’s success.
Véronique was furious. “From a success to a fraud”, read the title of the long article dedicated to VheTech in a widely circulated magazine. Two weeks earlier, she had agreed to speak with a journalist who was very interested in the sector, especially the recent, incredible innovations happening at VheTech.
But this article showed a perplexing bias. It was an outrageous scandal. The day after it came out, the content of the article was then picked up by many other media outlets. How did things get to this point? There is no way that woman could be a journalist. Journalists do not do things like this. Who, then, was behind the poisoned pen that wrote this piece? Who ordered this stream of lies? A competitor? It was a carefully set trap. It could not have been anything else.
That afternoon, an emergency meeting was called with her closest staff. They urgently needed to react. Her communications director suggested an immediate response on social networks. There, the controversy was blowing up at a rapid pace.
The tweets repeating the details of the report multiplied. They were becoming a real tidal wave. And every time, or almost every time, they set off a discussion. And ultimately, discussion was not a big enough word. Rather, it was a loaded process where words like “crook” and “impostor” were thrown around, along with other insults.
“We can’t let our reputation go up in smoke; we need to respond.”
“Of course, but how?”
“Our most aggressive detractors are mainly on Twitter; they even started a hashtag.”
“We’ll create a Twitter account and respond to everything.” “We know them.”
“We don’t care. That’s not really the problem.”
Two weeks later, the results were in. But they were nothing like what was expected.
The 30 or so tweets published by the firm were the subject of many retweets mocking them, and the page was bombarded with derogatory and even frankly insulting comments. The top ten puns also went around on a few news sites. Véronique was beset by a profound sense of failure. How could she get out of this situation?
“I’ll write to all our clients and I’ll do a press conference. It’s a standard response, but at least we will be stepping up to the plate with tools that we know by heart.”
The letter was sent. The writing was superb, crisply argued and with a heartfelt conclusion that called for renewed confidence, the same confidence that had always allowed for strong and lasting relations between VheTech and all of its clients and partners.
Now, she just needed to focus on the press conference.
A new and more elaborate argument, preparation for questions and answers, live training, etc. This press conference had to show impeccable professionalism, in order to put a definitive end to this conflict that was beginning to plague the company from within. People spoke very little, got upset for no reason and fled from the informal conversations that were once part of the envied atmosphere of the company.
The company’s results began to fall at the same rate as motivation. They made what had already been a bad situation almost unbearable. A real pain for her co-workers. Everyone was on edge. They all wondered where and when they would be hit by the next attack.
After a week of intense preparation, Véronique was ready for her press conference. The journalists had responded overwhelmingly to the invitation, all too happy to snap up a few more juicy details of what was beginning to become an “affair”.
Véronique’s presentation went perfectly. The preparation paid off: her speech went off without a hitch. The journalists paid scrupulous attention. Then came the time for her to take questions. Véronique could finally breathe easy; she had proved she was up to the task and had been able to make her arguments calmly but firmly.
Then came the questions. The questions were pointed and challenging. And that was fine. Feeling at ease, Véronique gave the floor to a number of different speakers. One last question before leaving? The young man asking did not seem at all deviant. But what he asked was not a question; it was a trap. No, not a trap, just a question that had not been answered yet. Or rather, an answer that was not great. What did it mean for him, this story of values and actions? Response was needed – and right away.
Véronique felt a wave of dizziness come over her. A few seconds passed. Véronique was looking for an answer that was both a dignified way out, and also worded simply, with appropriate arguments. These few seconds lasted an eternity. Véronique was flummoxed, flabbergasted. When she finally answered, it was with awkwardness. It was not her, that was not what she meant. That was not what she should have said. In one second, she realized that all the work that had been done during the press conference had just been wiped out. The reporters went out quietly. Véronique remained motionless at the desk, rattled.
She did not have to be a fortune teller to know that her little swerve was going to make headlines in all the newspapers. As it turned out, the go-getting general manager of VheTech did not really know anything about VheTech. Or rather, she preferred not to speak about this one particular aspect of VheTech, which she preferred to keep hidden away. She had effectively gone from a success to a fraud.
The months that followed were particularly painful for the company. Its image had been deeply scarred, and everything the company said or did was scrutinized by journalists with unrelenting suspicion. The pressure on employees was very strong, and there was a widespread sense of shame that had crept into the teams, as if it were difficult to work for such frauds.
A wave of resignations continued to further slow down the activity. All the sectors of the company were affected, and there was no indication that the conflict could have any outcome other than the complete destruction of everything Véronique had tried to build over the last few years.
None of the clients bothered to respond to Véronique’s beautiful letter.
Are you tasked with the heavy burden of keeping the beautiful and delicate machinery of a brand in motion? This book could be very useful to you, because today no brand is immune from an attack of “anti”: anti-successful brand, anti-your profession, anti-the way you do things, anti-your beliefs or anti-your way of changing the rules of the game. All of these detractors existed in the past, but their voices were only heard if they had the means to gain access to the media (journalists or advertising space sellers). Today, destroying a brand is almost free; the Internet has become a finely tuned machine for people to speak ill of their neighbors to the world at large, and without any cost.
Allow us to provide you with three tips before you begin to dig into this book:
Our experience working alongside brands suffering from conflict has taught us to detect and be wary of representations, even those we have just used. Indeed, the disease these brands suffer from is representation. However, it is difficult to do without representations. Conflict is highly complex. A metaphor is a very convenient shortcut. But like all shortcuts and approximations, it only portrays part of the reality. However, resolving only part of the conflict is not really resolving it at all, and instead allows it to be amplified in the places where nobody is looking.
Though metaphors and mental representations of conflict can be misleading, they are necessary. So what can we do? Simply learn how to spot them so as not to be a victim, and correctly associate them at a later time.
The essential skill for being able to deal with conflict is the ability to multiply the points of view on and interpretations of the conflict. This skill is crucial in order to avoid falling under the spell of experts (whether genuine or self-proclaimed).
Experts swarm, but all of them (and this goes for all specialists) give only one aspect of reality, the one that has to do with their expertise. An expert on digital monitoring will tell you that online reputation is the key indicator. An expert in bad buzz will emphasize the need to set up real-time alerts. A crisis expert will suggest you prepare more and more for managing the crisis. A theatrical improvisation expert will explain how to take the stage and improvise a solution with your employees.
All of them are right, but only within their own fields.
These specialists complement one another, and optimal management of the conflict comes through an ability to detect all dimensions and interconnect them.
Conflict is complex, branching out through time and space. In order to control conflict, we must know ourselves, know all the stakeholders and know the nature of the conflicts and the way in which they behave. The first moment of conflict control primarily involves knowledge. But this is only the first moment. It must be connected with reflexes.
This book has been designed and written with the objective of providing you with the necessary key factors to know and analyze situations of conflict that may involve your brand, and act accordingly.
Throughout the book, we strive to show you the effectiveness of a broader vision of conflict, because the most formidable weapon for combating conflict is remaining focused on the crisis and its climax, and it is essential to act upstream as well as downstream.
These keys can be summed up in a few major skills that structure our book:
From improvisational theater to foundational myths, from the Vietnam War to the trade war, we offer an original – and hopefully useful – analysis that will definitively change your perception of conflict.