Communication Matters: Flops
David Glenn
Founder @ Connected Research and Communication Consulting | Behavioral Economics
Communication efforts can end in flops, particularly due to all the matters that do not connect between message sender and receiver. Keep in mind that a person receives 4,000 to 10,000 messages a day! The next article will address communication triumphs.
Flops come in many flavors. Here are a few examples based on our research and that of Beekeeper:
Starbucks
In 2018, two men went to a Philadelphia Starbucks to meet a friend. They sat at a table waiting to order and asked to use the restroom. The result? The manager on duty called the police and the two African American men were—wrongfully—arrested for trespassing. This fueled a massive boycott.
Yahoo
In 2016, Yahoo leadership acknowledged a 2014 data breach that exposed the accounts of 500 million users to hackers. Three months later in December, the company then announced that there was another breach from 2013 that affected one billion accounts. Nearly a year later, in 2d017, Yahoo announced that, in fact, the data breach affected all 3 billion of its customers.
Wells Fargo
In 22016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were alerted to potential fraud. Responding to a top-down demand for aggressive customer quotas, employees at local branches created upwards of two million fake bank accounts in customers’ names but without their consent. The bank was fined $185 million.
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Nike
Female employees in 2018 spoke out about the male-dominated culture that fostered harassment and discrimination in the workplace. It started as an anonymous survey by a group of women at the company’s Beaverton, Oregon headquarters about their experiences. Reactions were slow.
NASA
Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. The NASA program managers decided that their current level of testing was sufficient, and further testing was not required.
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