If you’re running a company, no matter how big or small, you’re in the limelight 24 hours a day, and never more so than during a crisis.
You’re the boss. Your fellow directors look to you for leadership. It’s what you get the fat salary for. Every eye in the company watches you all the time, to say nothing of eyes outside like stock market analysts, other stakeholders and the media. Especially the media, if you’re in any kind of crisis.
Just ask Tony Hayward, who was in charge at BP during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Eleven people died during the accident, which caused hundreds of millions of dollars worth of environmental damage, but Hayward will be remembered for his “I would like my life back” remark, and then going yachting a couple of weeks later at the Isle of Wight.
Leave aside the fact that Hayward personally could probably not have done much more to alleviate the crisis, save actually going to the Louisiana coast with a mop and bucket. Leave aside that he might well have been exhausted and in need of a day off. It’s all about how you words or actions are reflected by the media and received by the public that matters.
Which brings me to Anglo Platinum and its CEO, Chris Griffith.
Griffith has already apologised for his comments about his R17.6 million pay packet. Speaking to Business Day, he had asked “Am I getting paid on a fair basis for what I’m having to deal with in this company? Must I run this company and deal with all this nonsense for nothing? I’m at work. I’m not on strike. I’m not demanding to be paid what I’m not worth.”
He quickly backtracked and said that his words were “inappropriate”, “insensitive” and “the result of intense frustration”. All of which are true, but isn’t part of the reason for the big pay cheque the ability not to say stupid things?
There’s a more fundamental problem. We understand that bosses earn more than workers. We also understand that the wage gaps between highest and lowest paid are large. But one of the hallmarks of good leadership is to take a little bit less off the table than the rest of the team. As Simon Sinek puts it in the title of his new book on the subject: “Leaders Eat Last”. It’s not an original idea – Sinek gives due credit to the U.S. Marine Corps, where it’s an absolute rule, a way of life.
If you’re a boss, this means that when the most you can give your staff is an 8% pay increase, you take 7%. Not 10% or 15% plus a bundle of share options. When you lay workers off, you don’t arrive at the office in your new Lamborghini or Maserati. When you cut all overtime, you don’t fly First Class. And when you’re in the middle of the most costly strike in South Africa’s history, a strike which has crippled your company and torn chunks out of the community, you don’t announce details of your quite sizeable pay-and-bonus deal – even if the JSE rules require it, as Chris Griffith has argued.
From a media point of view, it’s un-winnable. The media, you see, really don’t care about the rights or wrongs of the case; all we’re waiting for is for someone on one side or the other to make a fool of him- or herself. AMCU’s Joseph Matunjwa is getting much the same treatment after we discovered that he owns a string of houses and BMWs.
So, from a media perspective, what should have happened at Amplats?
Its board should have passed a resolution deferring all executive pay hikes and bonuses until after the resolution of the strike. That should then have been communicated by its media specialists, via a short statement to the media and the JSE. The subtext of that news release would have said, “Look, we care about our company and our workers, and we put self-interest to one side until the strike is over.” That would have been a PR win for Amplats.
But no, they failed to understand that someone like Griffith is on stage all the time, and under intense scrutiny. As a result, they handed the PR win to AMCU.
Chris Gibbons has been training senior executives on how to deal with media for more than 30 years. Find out more at chrisgibbons.netmechanic.dynalias.org/media-training/