Paul Wallbank | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

PR lessons from Uber

Uber has made a lot of mistakes in its latest PR mishap, other businesses can learn from them.

The debacle of Uber’s management proposing to threaten journalists drags on and is becoming a classic case of what not to do during a public relations crisis as the company and its supporters continue to make matter worse for themselves.

What’s notable about the hole Uber finds itself in is that it didn’t need to be there; a bit of maturity and commonsense, not to mention knowing when to shut up, would have helped avoid this self inflicted wound to the business.

Much of the damage done by the story could have been avoided by following a few simple steps.

Stop digging

One of life’s key rules is when you find yourself in a hole then the first step to getting out is to stop digging. When the critics are loud, shut up and take a breather. Instead of exacerbating problems, step back, have a think and, if necessary, get some professional help.

Have some perspective

The most fundamental attribute for managers and owners is not to take criticism too seriously; there are always critics and letting them consume your daily lives is counterproductive and ultimately destructive as Richard Nixon would attest.

Usually in business the critics aren’t diminishing you as a person, in most cases they are making observations about your company’s economic model or its actions in the marketplace. If you’re taking criticism too personally, it might be time for a holiday.

Just because someone is criticising you, it doesn’t mean they are in the pay of your competitors or part of the socialist-masonic-jewish-illumaniti conspiracy to get you, they may actually your best friends and even have a point.

Your business priorities

How do these criticisms affect your ambitions for your business? If Sarah Lacy thinks you’re a bunch of misogynist scumballs, does it matter? Often the critics don’t matter to your business as they are a different group to your customers, investors or staff.

Is there merit?

A key question when confronted with criticism should be ‘is there merit to this?’ Before threatening to smear or sue those pointing out your business’ shortcoming it’s good to have a look to see if the critics do have a point about what you’re doing wrong.

Fix the problem

Should it turn out the critics do have a problem, then fix it. Should it turn out your business has a toxic bro’ culture then fire a few of the toxic bros and hire some people with the backbone to fix the problem.

Be open about things

If the criticisms are legitimate, then acknowledge them and be open about how you’re going to fix them. Some critics won’t be satisfied but that’s part of life, you won’t keep everyone happy.

For those critics who will be happy, admitting you’ve made mistakes and are working on fixing the problems will win more fans and supporters. People love a bit of humility and it probably doesn’t hurt for managers to be a bit humble.

On the other hand, it might be that some of your critics do genuinely hate you, are in the pay of your competitors or part of the Illuminati conspiracy. In which case, use facts and stand your ground. In the battle for public opinion, having the facts on your side always gives you the advantage.

Personally attacking your critics though is always a mistake and, as Nixon found, smearing them turns out to be a mistake. Life is too short and time in running a growing business too scarce to be consumed by hate. Get over it and move on.

Get professional help

In Uber’s case it appears their managers have been frantically calling their buddies to help out — this hasn’t helped and has probably exacerbated an already heated environment. A good professional PR adviser or reputation management company will know how to at least ease the pressure if not completely defuse the situation.

Regardless of how good the PR adviser are though, ultimately a business’ good name comes from its management and how the company behaves. This where Uber has to take more care as it becomes a global giant.

The rise of the robots

A robot security guard shows the way for future employment

One of the key themes of this site is how industries and workplaces are changing, one good example of this is Knightscope’s K-5 robot, a refrigerator sized device that does many of the tasks currently done by human security guards.

The K-5 comes with an impressive list of security features; live video, facial recognition, behavioral analysis and a range of other tools to help organisations protect their premises.

With an advertised running cost of $6.25 an hour, half the US mean average wage for security guards, the robots appear an attractive proposition although one suspects the limitations of the devices, not to mention the networking infrastructure involved, won’t make them feasible for most places in the near future.

Despite its limitations, the K-5 shows the direction of robot technologies in replacing jobs that until recently were thought to be immune to automation. As the technologies inside the K-5 become smaller and lighter, future devices will become even more flexible and adaptable.

Adding to the strengths of these autonomous devices is their constant connectivity, as the promotional video shows the robot uses cloud services to run its recognition and alarm services. Coupled with various sensors and beacons within a building, and these robot security guards become formidable devices.

The applications for devices like the K-5 goes beyond patrolling shopping centres, car parks or industrial complexes; it’s not hard to see how similar devices can be deployed in applications like agriculture, mining or manufacturing for tasks where it would be expensive or dangerous to employ humans.

What the K-5 illustrates Andrew McAfee’s warning of exponential technological change being about to engulf businesses, the employment implications of that should have community leaders thinking as well.

For entrepreneurs, on the other hand, advances in robotics are another great opportunity.

Staring down the coal train – the end of the Australian arbitrage model

The Aussie model of startup investment is running out of steam

One of the irritations of being in Australia is the often insular and myopic view many of the nation’s business and community leaders have.

A consequence of that insularity is that business operates at a slower pace than in more competitive markets; there could be up to a five year lag between technologies being introduced in North America, Europe or East Asia and them being rolled out Down Under.

That lag creates an arbitrage opportunity for canny local investors, this post on the Investment Biker Analyst blog illustrates the thinking .

I’m not sure about the barriers to entry for potential competitors to Digivizer because part of my view as an investor since I got back to Australia is the way the markets geography has always insulated it from quick counter-punches. Think about the way the UK always seems to be the second place North American business rolls out it’s plans for sector domination. We’ve seen it over and over again. Australia on the other hand is well down the list as the market, while affluent is at 25million quite small. Also it’s a long way to come if you have to get on a plane . . . Oh, and besides that the “Aussies” can find us themselves without investing extra start-up capital.

Mike’s model is the standard for the Aussie start community; local entrepreneur looks at the hottest businesses in Silicon Valley, sets up a minimum viable copycat, pitches to investors who put money in on the hope of making a profitable exit to a dumb local player or to selling out to the market leader when they finally decide to set up an Australian operation.

Increasingly the second option isn’t working as the big player are either moving into the market quicker, which also screws the first exit option, or the locals are asking too much for their cheap knock offs.

As a consequence the local copycats are increasingly finding themselves stranded in the marketplace.

Quickflix is a good example of the local knock offs being stranded, having copied Netflix’s business model, the company has toddled along for a decade with its movie and entertainment delivery business and now faces Netflix starting an Aussie operation.

With a formidable competitor entering the marketplace, Quickflix is frantically trying to shore up its defenses, having made a $5.7 million capital raising and committing to cut costs.

One suspects though this will be nowhere near enough to build up defenses against Netflix, incumbent cable operator Foxtel, fellow steaming service Fetch TV or the bizarrely named and probably doomed Stan service setup by an uneasy coalition of fading old media companies.

In an increasingly connected world relying on the tyranny of distance to protect your business is a losing game, something that many Australian companies and investors are yet to learn.

Then again, as long as the coal trains keep running, maybe Australians don’t have to worry.

A question of ethics

Uber’s missteps remind us that ethics matter in business

At this week’s Australian Gartner Symposium ethics was one of the key issues flagged for CIOs and IT workers; as technology becomes more pervasive and instrusive, managers are going to have to deal with a myriad of questions about what is the moral course of action.

So far the news isn’t good for the tech industry with many businesses failing to deal with the masses of data they are accumulating on users, suppliers and competitors.

A failure of transparency

One case in point is that of online ride service, Uber. One of Uber’s supposed strengths is its accountability and transparancy; the service can track passengers and drivers through their journey which should, in theory, make the trip safer for everybody.

In reality the tracking doesn’t do a great job of protecting riders and drivers, mainly because Uber has Silicon Valley’s Soviet attitude to customer service. That tracking also creates an ethical issue for the company’s management and one that isn’t being dealt with well.

Compounding Uber’s ethical problem is the attitude of its managers, when a Senior Vice President suggests smearing a journalist who writes critical stories then its clear the company has a problem and the question for users has to be ‘can we trust these people with our personal data?’

With Uber we may be seeing the first company where data management and misuse results in senior management, and possibly the founder, falling on their sword.

Journalists’ ethics

Another aspect of the latest Uber story is the question of journalistic ethics; indeed the apologists for Uber counter that because some journalists are corrupt that justifies underhand tactics from companies subject to critical articles.

That argument is deeply flawed with little merit and tells us more about the people making it than any journalist’s ethical compass, however there is a discussion to be had about the behaviour of many reporters.

As someone who regularly receives corporate largess — I attended the Gartner Symposium as a guest of BlackBerry and will be going to an Acer event tomorrow night — this is something I regularly grapple with; my answer (or rationalisation) is that I disclose that largess and let the reader make up their own mind.

However one thing is clear at these events; everything is on the record unless explicitly stated by the other party. This makes Michael Wolff’s criticism of Ben Smith’s original Uber story in Buzz Feed pretty hollow and gives us many pointers on Wolff’s own moral compass as he invites other writers to ‘privileged’ dinners where the default attitude is that everything is off the record.

Playing an insider game

Ultimately we’re seeing an insider game being played, where journalists like Wolff put their own egos above their job of telling their audience what is happening; Jay Rosen highlighted this problem with political coverage but in many respects it’s worse in tech, business and startup journalism.

It’s not surprising when a game is being played by insiders that they take offense at outsiders criticizing them.

Once the customers become outsiders though, the game is drawing to an end. That’s the fate Uber, and much of the tech industry, desperately want to avoid.

Uber in particular has many powerful enemies around the world and clumsy management mis-steps only play into the hands of those who see the company as a threat to their cosy cartels. It would be a shame if Uber’s disruption of the many dysfunctional taxi markets was derailed due to the company’s paranoia and arrogance.

Eventually ethics matter. It’s something that both the insular tech industry and those who write on it should remind themselves.

Developing digital leadership

Managers have two years to prepare for massive changes in their industries believes Gartner’s Peter Sondergaard

Technology and talent are the biggest worries for CEOs today says Peter Sondergaard, Gartner’s Senior Vice President for Global Research, however those challenges are part of a much greater shift in business.

In an interview at the Australian Gartner Symposium on Queensland’s Gold Coast, Sondergaard discussed how businesses and their senior management have limited time to adjust to a rapidly evolving marketplace.

Sondergaard believes that companies have 24 months to face the changes which academic and futurist Andrew McAfee forecasts is going to overwhelm businesses and society in the near future.

In this environment IT workers have a unique position in being responsible for implementing technologies within organisations, however according to Gartner’s research only 15% of CEOs see their tech teams as leading change within the organisation.

“The transformation that a lot of people are grappling with is ‘how do I translate this into action in leaders?'” Sondergaard suggests. “Organisations have leaders in financial backgrounds and people who understand people management, leadership and customer facing activities.”

“Businesses expect this in every senior leader hired in the organisation but somehow it’s okay to accept those people have their son or daughter do everything technology wise. In the future you can’t have that.”

“Digital leadership is at par with all other assumed skills in what is a fully rounded business leader.”

A generation change

Sondergaard sees a generational change happening in senior management as the new guard are more comfortable with technology, having had to deal with the 1990s PC boom as well as the internet during their working lives.

“The change generally happens when you switch CEO, it’s very funny to watch right now how new CEOs that come in, change the strategy completely and focus on digitalisation.”

For many companies, this is a dramatic change in business practices and one that doesn’t come without resistance within the organisation, although the marketplace may force these reforms as margins fall.

Changing focus as margins fall

A problem facing managers that Sondergaard sees is the falling margins faced by businesses as new competitors unencumbered by legacy systems enter the marketplace.

Most of these competitors bring the ‘startup ethos’ into their industries — with no fixed overheads the new entrants are far more flexible than the incumbent businesses.

Stock markets are also making the problem worse with older businesses being held to different benchmarks than the new players.

To illustrate this Sondergaard cites Amazon and IBM where are both staking their futures on cloud services that are barely profitable; for this IBM is punished by investors while Amazon continues to get stock market support.

Owning the ethical risks

Another challenge facing businesses in going digital are the ethical considerations, this is a complex and multifaceted area that is going to test managers throughout organisations as new technologies give rise to unforseen risks.

“What does your brand want to stand for in a digital world?” Sondergaard asks, “I think we will need people who articulate the brand, and what we do from a technology perspective.”

“Ethics in this is a very part of the user experience which becomes very complex very fast. If you don’t have someone who owns this from a co-ordination perspective I would say you get an element of risk that you don’t want.”

For managers across all industries the challenge is to deal with the disruption that is happening now and the greater changes that are looming, Sondergaard believes this requires a ‘bimodal’ way of doing business that balances the needs of existing markets with the demands of a much more complex fast moving developing digital marketplace.

This is a big task for managers and one that many will struggle with. Those who don’t succeed are going to struggle in a very turbulent business world.

Creating a healthy society and economy in a time of disruption

Our job is to make smart choices to create a healthy society and economy says Andrew McAfee

At the Australian Gartner Symposium conference today MIT researcher and futurist Andrew McAfee gave the day’s closing keynote on his book The Second Machine Age, a book written with co-author Erik Brynjolfsson “because we got confused” about technological change.

McAfee’s message is that the rate of technological change is about to accelerate dramatically, that change is not going to be gradual but abrupt and businesses have to prepared for a very different world.

Another of McAfee’s points is a decoupling between incomes and growth has happened around the world, particularly in the US, which has changed the assumptions underlying economic growth.

Interestingly, McAfee’s chart shows US household incomes diverged from growth in the mid 1970s during the post oil shock stagflation predating the personal computer and internet booms.

The breaking of the linkage between economic growth and incomes underpins the rise of the precariat — those with uncertain jobs and career prospects — which gave rise to Douglas Coupland’s Generation X.

While the bulk of the pain in the last forty year’s disruption was felt by lower income and younger workers, the pain is now extending to the middle classes as described by Stephen Rattner in the New York Times.

Those changes are certainly not wholly attributable to technological change but as more jobs are lost to robots and algorithms, that process will accelerate.

For McAfee, the challenge for business leaders and policy makers is to ensure growth and opportunities are evenly spread; “our job is to make smart choices to create a healthy society and economy.”

How well we as a society manage this will define our times.

The mobile payments industry has a USB moment

Could the Apple Pay experience be similar to the development of the computer USB port?

Has Apple Pay legitimised mobile payments? It appears so, reports the New York Times. Since the launch of Apple’s payments service, Google and other mobile payment providers are claiming usage has doubled with customers exploring the systems.

If this is true, it’s similar to how Apple legitimised the USB port in 1998 with the release of the iMac.

Prior to the iMac the USB port was a bit of an oddity, on most PCs the sockets sat unused and the few devices available on Windows computers worked reliably, as Bill Gates himself found out during a live demonstration at the 1998 Comdex show.

Unlike Apple Pay, the move to USB on Macs wasn’t welcome and it was a high stakes decision by Steve Jobs given that Apple’s existence was still precarious and its user base was still made up of largely of true believers who had been through years in the wilderness with the company.

Those users also had many thousands of dollars invested in Apple Device Bus (ADB) devices, all of which became redundant with the move to USB. Many customers at the time swore this was the last straw and they would move to Windows PCs.

Apple’s users didn’t carry out their threats and stayed with the company whose move to USB turned out to be a winner for the entire computer industry.

For Apple USB’s success meant their customers were no longer locked into a proprietary technology, for manufacturers they were able to start moving off archaic serial and parallel ports while for Microsoft the shift meant a better range of more reliable devices — although their operating systems struggled with USB until the release of the far more stable Windows XP.

It appears in this respect Apple Pay is repeating history in giving a boost to a technology that has been struggling to find traction in the market place.

The difference this time is that the payments industry is a far bigger market with far more implications for the broader economy than the computer peripherals segment.

If Apple raise the boat on payment systems, there are some incumbent businesses who are going to find themselves in a very different marketplace in five years time.

Lessons from the G20 leaders meeting

The Brisbane G20 meeting shows the world’s leaders are locked into old models, it’s up to you to change your world.

This year’s G20 talkfest has come to an end with the usual communique of fine words.

Apart from the discussion of climate change there’s little in the communique that wouldn’t have furrowed the brows of Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Regan thirty years ago with most of the pronouncement a being around opening markets, reducing unemployment and freeing capital.

On the latter point, the call to reduce tax avoidance given this was an obvious consequence of the 1980s reforms would be met by with a rueful laugh from those responsible for the deregulation wave of the Reagan and Thatcher years given reducing taxes on corporations was one of the reasons for the ‘reforms’

An aspect that would trouble Maggie’s and Ronnie’s ghosts would be the commitment to ‘address deflationary pressures’, something undreamt of in the 1980s, although a clear warning to today’s commentators and investors that Quantitative Easing is not going away any time soon.

What today’s communique shows is the world’s leaders are still very wedded to the economic models of the Twentieth Century despite the massive demographic and technological developments changing our society.

The real message from the G20 is don’t wait for your country’s leaders if you want progress; at best they probably won’t comprehend what you’re saying.

Although if you can put your ideas in terms of creating growth or reducing youth unemployment then you might have a willing audience with your local minister, chancellor or President.

Reframing the economic debate

It’s time to change the political and economic discourse says Irish economist David McWilliams

“We need to stop the drift in politics and economics,” says Irish economist David McWilliams.

McWilliams is talking about Ireland and asking where the nation goes for the next two decades as European agricultural support programs wind up and Irish tax advantages erode.

That conversation though is one that every economy, every nation and every community needs to be having in the face of a rapidly changing world.

Assuming that what’s working, or muddling along, today will be successful tomorrow is a brave belief.

When the virtual mob comes calling

Businesses have to be prepared for the online lynch mob in a time of intolerence.

In China, the human flesh search engines track down people who have offended the herd sensibility.

As Australia becomes more conservative and reactionary, the same phenomena is developing Down Under. Aussie businesses now have to be prepared for when they come to the attention of an online lynch mob.

Last weekend a South Australian dairy company, the Fleurieu Milk and Yoghurt Company, announced it would not be seeking Halal certification for its yoghurts following concerted harassment from bigots, a decision that will cost it a $50,000 contract with Emirates Airlines.

Fleurieu was not the first company to be targeted by groups of online bigots, a few weeks earlier Maleny Dairies from the Queensland Sunshine Coast announced it would not seek Halal certification for after being deluged with queries from similar groups.

For a company of any size, a wave of abuse from online hate groups is difficult to handle but for smaller businesses like rural dairy companies it’s particularly hard as there’s little training for dealing with obnoxious and ill informed virtual lynch mobs and the resulting drop in morale can affect the entire workforce.

Many managers would draw the conclusion that social media is a dangerous place that only exposes staff and the business to these vile individuals, however withdrawing totally from online channels might actually magnify the effects of being targeted as companies don’t see the internet campaigns developing.

Reacting to a hate campaign is difficult however and much of how a company deals with being the target of one comes down to the owners’ and managers’ appetite for dealing with such a crisis.

Submit to the mob

The quickest way of defusing the situation is to agree to the mob’s demands, as Maleny and Fleurieu did, which has the advantage of relieving the stress on staff and management distractions.

Submission though is not without its risks; the mob may not be happy or agreeing to their demands may upset other customers who actually spend money with the business.

This latter point is something Australia’s agricultural industry and governments should be paying attention to as Middle East nations takes over ten percent of the nation’s food exports.

Agreeing to one group’s demands may also irritate other equally other vocal groups which could actually make the problem worse. Ultimately though it comes down to what a company’s management is most comfortable doing.

Should you decide to go along with the mob, don’t equivocate. Be absolutely clear about what you are doing and why you are doing it. This is something both Fleurieu and Maleny diaries have done.

Don’t engage

If the choice is not to submit, either on principle or for commercial reasons, then it’s necessary to be prepared for continued criticism with staff and management coming under further stress. It’s important everyone is supported by the team in the face of often vile and crude behaviour.

One of the key tenants of online marketing and community management is to engage with your critics, however there is a point where trying to engage with irrational people is pointless and possibly even counterproductive.

When that point has been reached, then there is no need to reply to them and any inflammatory or provocative posts should be deleted. The saying of “don’t feed the trolls” applies.

Should commenters become too strident or silly then they should be blocked and, if they are misbehaving on a social media site, their actions reported to the service’s management. Any threats of violence should be immediately documented and a complaint made to the police.

Don’t provoke

Provoking these groups is also a mistake, descending to their level of behaviour will only encourage them and their friends along with risking alienating your own supporters. Keep things professional and straight forward.

Not being a dill yourself is something that could have heeded by one of the other businesses that found itself on the receiving end of an online lynch mob this week. Mark Clews, the proprietor of Tuk Tuk Hunter Valley, was on the receiving end of an online campaign after a snarky post about a vegetarian who visited his hamburger bar in the wine country north of Sydney.

Reading the Tuk Tuk Facebook page quickly gives one the impression Clews enjoys an online fight and he certainly got one which led to his business receiving dozens of poor reviews and at least one critic set up a Facebook page, later taken down after legal threats, highlighting the business’ poor reviews.

In a heated environment — be it vegetarianism, Halal certification or any sort of politics — it’s worthwhile business owners keeping their own personal views separate from their company’s online presence.

The moral of all three of these stories is the internet is a tough place and in today’s increasingly intolerant society one not without its risks. While every business needs to have an online presence, it’s necessary to be prepared for when the online mob appears with virtual torches at your door.