Adrift
I’m Busy, What’s In It For Me? Communicating under pressure is more an art than a science, and it’s easy to do it in a way which undermines confidence in the message and the messenger. This post focuses on lessons from Carnival Cruise Lines’ harsh collision with Businessweek.
Length: 2135 words (10-12 minute read)
It gets worse.
Cruising For Trouble
When a major global news source puts your company on the cover of its flagship magazine with the thought that you are “a testament to the viciousness of the new corona virus and raise questions about corporate negligence and fleet safety” you are in trouble. Unfortunately, senior leaders at Carnival Cruise Line handled Businessweek’s reporting on them very poorly.
Background
Cruise ships rocketed to media attention as floating petri dishes early in the Covid-19 crisis. Carnival, as a major operator, was heavily exposed: by late April 2020, its ships had racked up more than 1,500 positive infections and at least 39 deaths. The company’s actions came under heavy scrutiny.
Carnival’s public difficulties started in February with the Diamond Princess’ lengthy quarantine in Yokohama, Japan. More than 700 of its passengers tested positive for Covid-19. Eight died. A different Bloomberg article notes with aspersion that “The numbers climbed so high that the ship gets its own line in the World Health Organization data on infections by country.”
On March 8th, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised the public to “defer all cruise ship travel worldwide”. The process of winding down cruises was complex and long. Princess Cruises suspended operations on March 12th , but by April 4th Carnival and its competitors still had ships at sea carrying passengers: five, in Carnival’s case, although none had reported Covid-19 cases.
The logistics of getting ships into port and passengers and crew off were extremely complicated. At least one 86 year-old UK subject from a Carnival-owned cruise was still stuck in medical and regulatory limbo on April 19th, some two weeks or more after his ship docked. In many cases, there were questions about whether or where some ships would be allowed to dock at all, irrespective of ownership.
All of this further concentrated public attention on cruise companies in general, and Carnival in particular. Their responses to that scrutiny will have a strong impact on their prospects.
Measure Twice, Cut Once
A striking aspect of the article is how badly Carnival executives across and specifically how unprepared they appear.
For example, inconsistent and shifting messages appeared to be a big problem. Carnival initially insisted they were following public health organizations’ orders:
Swartz says the company was following the direction of health authorities. “It’s very easy and Monday morning, you know, 20/20 hindsight, to say what’s the view of what should have been occurring,” she says. “We did our best to take care of people.”
This view was undercut, unfortunately, by Carnival’s chief spokesman:
“[Roger] Frizzell says Carnival wasn’t under any legal obligation to follow the CDC’s advice. “The advisory is not an edict,” he says.
So which is it?
Maybe Don’t Trust The Professionals With Your Message
Frizzell was hard to pin down on other details. The article dryly observes that Carnival’s timeline of when and what the Diamond Princess’ crew and company executives knew about the ship’s Covid-19 issue was “revised repeatedly during various interviews over the past several weeks.”
Referring to a key Feb 1 email warning that a Diamond Princess passenger was ashore in Hong Kong and being treated for Covid-19, “[Frizzell said] nobody was monitoring those inboxes. He first says the messages hadn’t been read for “at least days,” then later emails that, actually, an employee had read them much sooner.”
Frizzell is also “credited” with countering suggestions cruise ships were particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases by emailing reporters a Buzz Feed article about a Covid-19 outbreak at a funeral--an incredibly tone-deaf response for someone with “spokesman” in their title.
The Top Sets The Tone
Like everything else, there is a very strong leadership context to this story.
Carnival CEO Arnold Donald is presented--until early 2020--as a good CEO. Donald took over Carnival in 2013, following a leadership scandal, and grew the company to a $51 billion market capitalization and position as a global cruise powerhouse with nine brands, 100 ships and a stunning 150,000 person corporate head-count.
Still, Carnival’s history should have prepared the CEO to be grilled. Businessweek notes a series of problems ranging from the 2012 death of 32 people in the Costa Concordia disaster in Italy; the “poop cruise”, the 2013 stranding at sea of a Carnival ship whose engines and toilets failed; a $40 million fine in 2017 for environmental damage; and in June 2019:
“Donald himself entered a guilty plea...for violating the terms of [the 2017] settlement... ’We acknowledge the shortcomings,’ Donald told a Miami judge. ‘I am here today to formulate a plan to fix them.’ He would head into 2020 committed, he said, to changing the company’s tendency to cut corners on safety.”
Striking language: an executive in front of a Federal judge admits serious, repeated corporate wrong doing but speaks about the company’s determination to make things better in the future tense. When, exactly, was the moment this was going to galvanize the firm into action?
Donald stops well short of taking ownership of his company’s Covid-19 response:
“This is a generational global event--it’s unprecedented,” he says. “Nothing’s perfect, OK? They will say, ‘Wow these things Carnival did great. These things, 20/20 hindsight, they couldn’t done better.”
“Each ship is a mini-city,” he says, and Carnival’s response shouldn’t be condemned before “analyzing what New York did to deal with the crisis, what the Italians, Chinese, South Koreans, and Japanese did. We’re a small part of the real story. We’re being pulled along by it.”
The head of the Center for Disease Control’s cruise ship task force is quoted disagreeing and pushing back on the company painting itself as a “victim of happenstance.” She alleges that Carnival continued to send ships to sea well after it knew it was dangerous.
Who Is It About?
Then comes a stunningly tone-deaf moment. Speaking during a crisis which has killed dozens of his employees and customers, he seems to invite empathy for how busy the crisis has made him:
“The days go by so quickly,” he says. “Sometimes it’s hard to leave the bedroom, because the calls start so early you haven’t gotten dressed or showered yet, and then you’re waiting for a break in the calls so you can do that. It’s so crazy.”
Indeed.
Arnold mentions working the phones to raise capital, noting that “If we don’t bring capital in, we wouldn’t have a company.” He discusses his Panama-registered company’s U.S. tax status: “It’s true that as a corporation, we don’t pay income tax,” he says. But he says Americans benefit from the port and harbor fees that Carnival pays in accordance with the demands of the maritime industry.
You may have noticed what’s not mentioned: the grief, fear and pain of the living and dead customers and crew on Carnival ships. The future of an enterprise with 150,000 employees is important and must be crushing. But also crushing is the pain and suffering surrounding that company.
You doesn’t have to plead guilty to express empathy.
Tone-Deafness Rolls Downhill
That may be the ultimate lesson for leaders dealing with crisis communication. One of the toughest parts of leadership is that, intended or not, you set the tone for the rest of the organization.
So when Swartz says “There are many loyal Princess guests who have told us that this has actually cemented Princess as their No. 1 vacation choice,” it’s hard not to cringe. The article backgrounds that comment by noting that one of their interviews with Swartz coincided with “reports…that four more people had died and at least 138 passengers were sick aboard another Carnival ship,” the Zaandam.
Again, these are tough times. But these are also the voices of highly-paid executives who surely knew they were speaking on and for the record about emotionally-volatile issues.
Were they unaware of what was at stake, indifferent, or simply over their heads?
God Helps Those...
I have no doubt the article passed legal muster and is, at least in a literal sense, accurate. Still, there’s a sense of piling on in the article that’s hard to shake.
For example, at one point the article claims since 2016, Carnival failed CDC cruise ship inspections at a rate “three times worse than rival Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.” CEO Donald, confronted with that fact, appeared surprised. For a cruise line with a passenger death problem, that sounds damning.
Carefully reading the story, though, it becomes apparent that mustering the peasants and handing out pitchforks and torches in front of Castle Carnival’s gates might be premature. In context, Carnival passed 97% of the inspections while Royal Caribbean passed 99%. The real world impact of a 1% vs. 3% failure rate can’t be judged from the information Businessweek provided, but it’s surely less impressive than “three times worse” implies.
Worse, it’s gratuitous. The innuendo is overkill after what amounts to giant unforced error by the Carnival leadership team.
And yes, there probably was some level of bias against Carnival. But here’s the thing: the executives needed to play the hand they were dealt, not the one they wanted. Big difference.
Lessons for Non-Cruise Executives
1. Assume Nothing
Whether it’s the press or your own team, or boss, don’t assume anyone else is going to take your side of the story about your crisis or emergency at face value.
Everyone comes into situations with prior assumptions and agendas. Those sort of filters don’t have to be malicious to significantly alter someone’s view of our story. Take time to understand them and respond.
You may be used to friendly routine interactions with your questioners—in which case, there may be a rude surprise waiting for you when passions are inflamed and the stakes are high.
What can you do to ensure that your story is received in a balanced, objective way?
What signals are my audience sending to me about what they think? How should I respond to them?
2. Slow. Down.
Understand the length of the news or information cycle in your environment and stay in sync with it. Use whatever time you have to be thoughtful and strategic in your statements. If you’re not ahead of the curve, you’re likely going to wind up under it.
The best way to avoid this, ironically, is to slow down—even if that slowing is only the span of a single deep breath. If you rush into a terrible public statement, you’ll probably have lots of time to regret it later.
How rushed am I feeling about answering questions about the crisis I’m in?
How accurate is the information I’m about to provide? What would I need to do to provide better information?
3. Prepare Before The Storm
Have a plan and use it. Prepare to address areas where your actions will be subject to criticism, deserved or not. Ensure your team presents a consistent story. Practice responding before a crisis.
It’s hard not to think that these events have swamped the capacity of the executives to respond in a constructive way. But this is not the first time the company has dealt with fatalities on its vessels, or with crisis management—although an observer might be forgiven for thinking it was.
If what I’m working on now went sideways in a way my team, bosses or the public is going to notice, how would I frame what happened?
Would the rest of my team understand and follow the same themes I am?
4. Your Pain Doesn’t Count
Unless you’re explaining why or how you did something truly heroic, consider how to focus on helpful themes, events and narratives and not your own concerns or story. They may not play as well as you think.
If something went wrong, how well could I explain my motivations and actions without putting myself on deeper on the spot?
5. Don’t Complain
In the face of a genuine emergency or crisis, particularly one that has affected other people deeply, don’t complain about the unfairness or inconvenience you’re facing--particularly if it appears you played a part in other peoples’ suffering.
How would I keep my own private concerns in the background when communicating to others?
6. You Get One Chance
First impressions, the saying goes, are forever. This is particularly true if you’re speaking on the record in a situation that’s stressful or unclear. It’s challenging to balance being careful without seeming evasive, but avoiding leaving a bad impression is always preferable to having to clean up a mess after the fact.
How would I explain a crisis or emergency to someone who isn’t involved with it, but whose opinion is going to be critical going forward?
Do my statements make me look dishonest or evasive? How can I better frame them?
Would an objective observer think my strategy helps or harms my cause?
Past can be prologue. Learn from it.
Bloomberg Image.