Artful Lying

We don’t eat candy at home, but sometimes my kids sneak candy at school. I discover this when I find wrappers in their pockets. Their brains are not sophisticated enough to figure out how to manage deceit thoroughly. Ironically, it’s only by making brutally honest calculations about the situation that liars can be successful. It is because my kids live in the moment that they make lousy liars.

Non profits, corporations, government entities are riddled with deceit. Some of it is not evil. Does it matter that embattled public servants claim they are leaving their plum jobs suddenly because they have the urge to spend more time with their families?

On the spectrum of harmful lies, UCLA Hospital’s recent deceit may not rise to the level of, say, whether or not justification exists for the war in Iraq. But the year-long public deceit about the lack of medical privacy for UCLA patients is a classic lesson in public relations mismanagement.

UCLA is a bit unique because its list of celebrity patients is long. Farrah Fawcett shows up for cancer treatment, Britney Spears gets treated for mental health issues, Maria Shriver checks in. All of this was just too much for some hospital staff, including doctors, who treated computerized medical files as if they were People magazine.

Last May the hospital discovered that an employee who they describe as “rogue” had looked at the records of Farrah Fawcett as well as 61 other patients. The employee was fired, but the patients were not notified about the breach and the public had no idea.

It wasn’t until Britney Spears checked in last January that the lie-by-omission began to unravel. After her visit the hospital admitted that a number of staff had ogled her private files, resulting in 12 people getting fired and 11 being disciplined. This became headline news, and the hospital portrayed it as somewhat of an isolated incident. Despite the hospital crackdown, Governor Schwarzenegger ordered an investigation.

In hindsight it would have been a very good idea to come clean about all of their privacy issues at that moment. Especially since the Governor’s wife was among those whose privacy had been secretly breached.

On Wednesday April 2 it became public that Farrah Fawcett’s records had been breached. On Thursday April 3 a hospital official was asked if any other patient privacy issues among celebrities had occurred, and he said “not to my knowledge”. On Friday April 4 state investigators found a hospital document that named 32 celebrity privacy breaches. A few days later the Governor publicized the information, and state officials promised to take action.

UCLA did everything wrong in their public relations. Figuring out how to communicate errors is a vital part of competent communications. It’s also something that’s not rocket science. After all, I have not met one person who says they have never lied, even if its just by omission. There is a lot of collective experience about lies and consequences that most can draw from.

Here’s a few golden rules about deceit:

One, make sure there is a very compelling reason not to be forthcoming with information.

Two, evaluate the likelihood that the information won’t eventually be discovered. An expose will almost always be worse than a confession. Be very honest about who knows the truth and where the truth may be found.

Three, be ready to act. In UCLA’s case, the moment that the state begin investigating would have been a good time to pre-empt further exposes.

Four, act boldly. Invariably, if an institution looks like it can’t regulate itself, an outside entity moves in. Once a situation begins to unravel an institution must make bold moves to position itself as proactive.

It’s hard to be honest. Every once in awhile we have “family meetings”, which means that we have a conversation with two rules: everyone is honest, and no one gets in trouble for what they say. If in a family meeting my daughter admits to the candy, I’m not allowed to punish her for it. One advantage of the meeting, however, is to practice honesty. It may not be a bad idea for some organizations to have “family meetings”, or at minimum call a time out from the spin to honestly assess the risks and rewards of being forthright.

Global Warming

Apologies for my blogging break. I took an unexpected business trip and am now back in my New York basement office. For those of you who are also in New York, I’ll be having a memorial weekend office party so please mark your calendars. I’ll be sending out invitations shortly.

Last night Al Gore announced a new publicity initiative on global warming. It took over a year after recruiting staff to make this announcement. Gore claims he will spend $300 million on an “advertising blitz” in an attempt to recruit 10 million names. The website is impressive, you can check it out wecansolveit.org.

One of the major calls to action is media advocacy on global warming. The effort hopes to get massive numbers of supporters to pressure political reporters to make global warming a key issue in the presidential race. Included in the call to action is this analysis of the electoral coverage:

“A League of Conservation Voters’ study found that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked presidential candidates more than 767 questions — only 5 of which were related to global warming. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked more than 402 questions — only 5 were about global warming. Sadly, other political commentators and reporters have shown a similar disregard for this key issue.”

The campaign also reaches out to bloggers, offering to send “breaking news” to those who sign up.

It’s an impressive communications strategy, I’ll be tracking to see how well it works.

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