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PR Agency Advice: Values vs. Groupthink

Pass it down we are different

I went to high school in Oshawa.

North Oshawa is extremely affluent.

I lived in the south.

The dads of my friends worked on the line or were security guards at one of the plants.

Some of my pals went into the motors too. Some are still there. But most found themselves out of jobs as an industry declined and jobs went overseas.

From me to we:
I bought my Lincoln from a friend and felt bad that it wasn’t a GM car.

I felt better, though, when a man who drove the same car chased me down in a parking lot to tell me that he’d made it.

He’d bought one himself, he said, because he knew how well made it was.

“A bunch of us did. We were just so proud of what we’d built.”

He literally drove his values.

All organizations are values based:
Every organization is a collection of people.

And all people live by group values whether or not they have defined them or actively recognize them.

Not all values are created equal:
Not all values held by a brand are worthy of their audiences.

Or of the society at large.

This part’s deep:
A crisis of circumstance becomes a communications crisis when the response of the brand reflects values that are unworthy of the audience.

For example:
Tone deaf responses from executives who simply fail to grasp the depth of their company’s role in tragic events are not soon forgotten.

The CEO of the railway company at the centre of the Lac Megantic tragedy and that of BP during the Horizon disaster spring to mind.

So do those who knew that their company’s product was defective but did nothing even when people started dying.

The problem is groupthink:
Groupthink occurs when like-minded people, often from similar backgrounds, value internal harmony over excellence and money over their values.

Often, they have drifted away from their founding or grounding values, replacing them with a mistaken belief that the importance of their mission or cause trumps any moral or ethical consequences of their actions.

And in the process, they dehumanize others not like them.

It makes it easier when people lose their life savings. Or people die.

Groupthink eats its own:
Groupthink’s victims aren’t always just external. Often, the groupthinkers are consumed by it too. So is the very brand everyone was trying to protect.

If you do not seek out and destroy groupthink in your own organization when you can, you may well find others willing to do it for you. Publicly. From the outside. And with little concern for the mess.

Or the wheels may simply come off the train.

There are things you can do:
Understanding what it is and taking steps toward diversity help.

And you need to appreciate disruptors. Where you can, you need to invite dissenters to have a seat at the table and seek out fresh opinions.

It’s not always comfortable. But it’s less traumatic than defending yourself and your values in the glare of the media with an angry public coming at you every which way you turn.

Or a perp walk.

Susan McLennan

Susan McLennan

Founder at ReImaginePR
Susan McLennan helps brands become better storytellers both through the media and through direct and digital communications. She is an award-winning communicator with a background in television production who has secured media coverage through some of the top media outlets in the world and created content that has won hearts and changed minds locally, nationally and internationally.
Susan McLennan

@SusanMcLennan