| The 1357th meeting of the Connecticut
Academy of Arts and Sciences was held on Wednesday, January 19,
2005 at 5.30p.m. at Connecticut Hall of Southern Connecticut
State University in New Haven. Some fifteen members and their
guests attended. Dr. Ernest Kohorn, the President of the Academy welcomed the audience and announced the election of three new members: Arden Gordon, Woodbridge, Robert S. Gordon M.D., Associate Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine Emeritus, Yale University and Maija Jansson, Director, Center for Parliamentary History, Yale University. He said he was very pleased to see the new members, the Gordons, in attendance. Professor Harvey Feinberg, Vice President introduced the new President of the University, Dr. Cheryl Norton, who made a brief presentation describing her goals for her Presidency and her hopes for initiating a Renaissance of Southern Connecticut State University. Dr. Feinberg introduced the speaker for the evening, Frank Tavares, Professor of Communication at Southern Connecticut State University. Dr. Tavares' talk was entitled "Crisis? What Crisis? The new Environment for Crisis Communication." Professor Tavares described the importance of perception in times of crisis, and that perception becomes the reality. He defined crisis as a sudden overwhelming, unexpected negative event that has the potential to significantly damage an organization. The damage factor is the difference between problem solving and crisis intervention. Since he is associated with National Public Radio, Dr. Tavares described the effects that budget cuts and the ensuing large cuts in personnel had on the station and how that showed him the importance of crisis communication. The rumor mill is an all-important factor in an impending crisis and that is one of the first issues that had to be dealt with. However, since no one really knew what was no going to happen or how to deal with it, that created a problem! How does one react to the bottom falling out of your life? He realized that communication planning was of essence as was consistency. Identifying the stakeholders and supporting them in their struggle for survival was equally important. Having learned the hard way he began to look at crises such as Three Mile Island, Tylenol and the Exxon Valdez and realized that had they been handled differently the damage to the institutions would not have been as great. As he mentioned at the beginning, perception was of essence and the question organizations need to ask at such times of crisis is "Do they, the public, understand what we understand?" When the organizations understand public perception they can respond appropriately. Unfortunately, silence is often the reaction and that is the most damaging. Lying is another damaging reaction as in the case of Martha Stewart. An inability to communicate as in the case of the recent Tsunami can have even more devastating effects. Dr Tavares then talked of "focusing events", certain things that happen that have a tremendous impact and that change the way we think about things and he cited Columbine as one such event. On a theoretical level Dr Tavares described the stage theory of crises: the prodromal stage in which there are always warning signs, often ignored because they are subtle or we do not have the tools to deal with them or there are false positives which we certainly ignore: the crisis itself: the chronic stage and finally the resolution from which we have hopefully learned. Chaos occurs at any stage when decisions are made at one level and then not communicated correctly. Dr. Tavares concluded by noting that technology has certainly changed not only the way we communicate crises but also our expectations. We look for leaders, for father and mother figures who will take care of us, as in the case of Oklahoma City and the Twin Towers. Technology has also made it more difficult to "bide time" informing the community of crisis events. The media allows no breathing space. Dr. Tavares was the perfect communicator, charming, clear and informative. He might do even better on television than on radio! |