Effective Leadership scores even during Crisis.

Every business school worth its name should review this crisis as a case study. It was the crisis that started the phenomenon of product recalls as we have come to know them.

This is opportune considering how publicized corporate failures have become in recent years. From BP's deep horizon oil-spill in 2010 to Toyota's catastrophic incident and subsequent mega recall in 2010. Currently we are witnessing Samsung inspire memes from the Galaxy note 7 fall out.

The year was 1982, the end of September and a few strange deaths rock Chicago. The media sensationally connect the deaths to Johnson and Johnson's highly popular OTC painkiller, Tylenol. As of 1982, Tylenol had a market share of 35%, making it a market leader. In a few weeks that market-share would  tumble dramatically to below 10%. There had been 7 strange deaths and all were linked to Tylenol. Johnson and Johnson's was in trouble.

At the time Jim Burke was at the helm of the company and his decisions at the time would be hailed as heroic. As soon as the story hit the press, Jim Burke formed a 7 member strategy panel to oversee the company's reaction. The critical insight here was that Burke recognized that the danger to the public and their reputation was a strategic issue rather than a PR issue. This was not all, the company went public to warn the public not to use their products and in a few weeks made the unprecedented decision to recall all the Tylenol in the market. This was a bold move. To allay public concerns within days of the crisis going public, the company started toll free lines for the public and the media. The crisis ended when the FDA discovered that the deaths were caused by cyanide poisoning as a result of product tampering.

 The critical insight here, was that Burke recognized the danger to the public and their reputation was a strategic issue rather than a PR issue

Johnson and Johnson's would absorb about $100 million in losses but over a few months Tylenol would regain 70% of its market share and in a bit longer it would become a market leader again. The company was seen as heroic in the way they dealt with the crisis. The Washington post would go on to write, "Johnson and Johnson's has effectively demonstrated how a major business ought to handle a disaster".

The impact of the Tylenol disaster of 82 was huge. Tylenol introduced tamper proof packaging when it was relaunched and this went on to become an industry standard in the Pharmaceutical and food industries. In 1983 the US Congress passed the 'Tylenol Act' which effectively made product tampering a felony crime.

The hallmark of effective leadership by Burke during this crisis is the openness and speed with which Johnson's responded. The root of this had to be a culture that placed a high value on public safety. The company and its leadership took every opportunity to communicate to the public. John Burke even took interviews with media at a very heated time. Contrast this with the downplaying we have seen in recent Crisis. In the first stages of the deep Horizon crisis, BP went to the press saying the spill was around 1,000 barrels a day. It turned out the reality was five times the amount, but even then the company downplayed the figure.In fact Samsung also made this classic mistake they alleged that Note 7 incidents reported in china, were faked. This later came to bite them somewhere else.

Though companies usually make mistakes during crisis, the leaders usually exacerbate the situations. Case in point was Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP who remarked to the media how he wanted his life back despite the loss of life and the impact on people's livelihood. The essence of a leader in crisis is to set the tone and inspire people to be selfless in handling a situation that is usually outside their scope of work.

At the time of writing this, Samsung is in the middle of a very embarrassing crisis. A lot may be said about the handling of the crisis but one thing has stood out, Samsung despite early gaffes like claiming faking in china, has taken charge. Ending the Galaxy Note 7 has been a very bold decision. After a bungled recall their credibility had taken a beating. In ending the Note 7 they were cutting their losses before they got too big, which is highly admirable. To me, the big Mistake Samsung made was trying to rush to a solution and get over with it. Initially Samsung concluded that the issue was batteries made by one of its subsidiaries Samsung SDI and they deemed units with batteries from a third Party manufacturer Amperex technologies to be safe.  Consequently Samsung recalled the Note7 and released 'safe' devices with the different batteries. This was despite the fact that Samsung Engineers up to the point of writing this article had not replicated the incidents affecting the device. This means Samsung had rushed to solve a problem despite no confirmation of the cause. This obviously backfired and they have had to write off a device that was hailed as the best Android device ever made.

The impact on the Samsung brand at this point, is hard to quantify. I think their bold decision to pull the plug is what has made an enduring impact of me. I wish Samsung had been more forthcoming with information but I still think that if they come clean on everything, it will be a great reinvestment on the public's perception of them. Crisis is something that eventually comes, what makes sure a business survive is the capital of preparation and values that they have accumulated. Crisis test a venture's core character, if that is wrong it will be sifted like grain. If you are successful enough to have reputation threat, its because you are already great. Question is, is your greatness only skin deep?

Article by Phil Kimani.
philkimani@live.com.

The First Grader- A review by Raymond Machira

It really is the time to be watching Kenyan film, and some friends and I got into the mood starting with First Grader (12 years a slave, the Holy Grail of Kenyan cinema is next). There was another reason to start with this film­ a friend had recommended it. It nearly put us into depression.

The first grader is a film about Kimani Maruge, an octogenarian who audaciously enrolls in primary school (elementary school) at that age. Kimani, at least in the film, is driven with a burning ambition to read, ostensibly to read a letter written to all Mau Mau fighters at independence by the President. The film is interlaced with his harrowing experiences in the war, and just in case you miss it, first peppered then doused with phrases such as “the British stole our land”, “they tortured me” and so on. I don’t know much about the real Kimani, indeed, that he had been a freedom fighter was a revelation to me. My gripe is with the cinematic and casting choices of the producers and its billing.

The First Grader bills itself as an exploration of Kimani’s journey, a quest for education and

Britain’s colonial legacy, yet its far, far from that. For a purportedly Kenyan story, about a Kenyan, set in Kenya, the story is terribly thin on the Kenyan experience. The illiterate Maruge speaks fluent English. The real center of the film is Maruge’s teacher, Jane Obinchu, and is played by Naomi Harris (a Briton).

 Even from the poster, it’s pretty clear whom the focus is on.

I suppose they couldn’t find a Kenyan actor to play the brave woman who made Kimani’s story possible. Indeed, big time Kenyan actors are edged to hanger-on roles in this production. The beautiful Rosemary Waweru (remember her from Tabasamu?) has her 15 seconds as a secretary chasing Kimani and shouting “Excuse me Sir.” Shish, from Tahidi High, fares worse, she’s a stay home “mama wa ploti” who tries for all of five seconds to stop Naomi from stomping to some place I forgot. I was going to make a joke about another African getting overrun by a Brit but I think this is not the place. Gideon “Churchill” Ndambuki at least shows up in a couple of scenes, as a tout, and also doubles as a radio host. The next four major actors, after Harris and Litondo, are all South African.

Yet the bullshit deception flows deeper than the superficial­ the very heart of the First Grader is a web of lies. Perhaps a story shall illustrate. Last year, I organized the screening of Nairobi Half Life here on campus. The film is rough and gritty, and downright hard to watch in some parts.

After the film, the very first question I received from the audience was “Is this really Nairobi?!” About half the crowd stayed for an hour thereafter, and we continuously rewound it, going over scenes and filling in background information. I can bet my wedding finger nothing like that will happen with First Grader. Nothing in it, and I mean nothing is surprising or worthy of explanation to anyone. For a foreign film, that’s an achievement. The focus on colonialism just jars reality. No one goes around Nairobi demanding special treatment or showing scars, yet the colonial legacy was flogged about every fifth minute. And sixth. And seventh. The filming locations, were the wide romanticized expanses of   the real Africa.

The director himself admits how un-Kenyan the film is, saying “We could have shot it in South Africa, but Kenya has this unbelievable, inexplicable energy ­ inherent in the children, and the people we were making the film about". That’s right, they considered cutting out the whole Kenya angle, but Kenyan children were much more energetic than South African ones. A story really about British Colonialism, or even about Kenya, wouldn’t have been wrapped around a feel good story of a patriotic man who wanted to read. It wouldn’t have glossed over the tragic post-independence fate of the Mau Mau, nor spent so much time around crap Kenyans wouldn’t relate too. I mean “First Grader”.

Even if all these were plugged as background info, and the filmmakers had little space to deal with it all at length, the film still comes short. If you measure it, if you take away the pleas related to his desire to read, we hear and learn surprisingly little about the eponymous character. What was his life like, between his Mau Mau days and his first day of school? How did his immediate family take his decision to go back to school? What was his family? (The only snippet we get into this is some market women who imply he has 3 wives).

When asked if Nairobi Half Life was authentic, my answer was an emphatic yes. Sure, its overly exaggerated. The grit was a tad over the top (think the police station bathroom) and the lawlessness too gratuitous (even in Nairobi, getting robbed five minutes out of a Matatu, and getting arrested by Kanju three minutes after is too much). But that really was Nairobi, in blood and flesh. I recognized the streets, the language was the authentic sheng’ I know and love, and the only accommodations paid for those who didn’t was in accurate subtitles. And the actors were people I stand a fair chance of bumping into on the streets. From the onset though, First Grader is a story is for a Western audience. Its dumbed down where it needs to be dumbed down, vilifying where present realities say it needs to be and out rightly bending truth so as to fit to certain preconceived notions and sensibilities. Watching it was a bit like walking around Nairobi with a friend who insists on calling matatus “buses”, and, you can swear, is the sort of chap to write “mom”. And that is the fallacy of this film. It purports to be about Maruge, but isn’t. About free education in Kenya, but the children hardly speak, about British colonial legacy but not really, about Kenya no effort to relate to … Its endless.

I have no gripe with Justin Chadwick, or anyone else involved in the project. They are merely people responding to the fact that the real money in filmmaking comes from audiences, and at the box-office, African audiences are “mlio wa chura” (of little consequence). The real money is elsewhere. And if that means bending a story backwards, so be it. The real culprit here, is more complex than a single man or a team. The fact that we don’t spend much on cinema, hence our film industry is still nascent, the fact that in the little we spend, we spend conscious of this fact. Nice Githinji vs Halle Berry, anyone? I thought so. All these are stories for another day...

I can imagine some portly woman, in the South of England dabbing her eyes with a kerchief during the token torture scenes, yet being entirely unable to relate the consequences of those events with her own fortune. But her momentary sadness is elevated as good finally triumphs over evil, Kimani reads his letter and learns it promises compensation, the good headmistress is reinstated, and the world is once more as good as it was when she walked into the cinema. I knew little about Kimani. But I can’t help feeling he would be severely disappointed.

This is an article by Raymond Machira

raymond.machira@gmail.com 

 Disclaimer

The views expressed in this article do not represent the views of the author of this blog. This work has been in no means altered except for the amendment of grammaticals and formatting of the appearance and replacing the word "titular" with "eponymous".