Crisis Management: What United's CEO Should Do Now

By now, we've all heard the United Airlines story. It's easy to be critical of the company. But put yourself in the position of the person who has the power to make a change. Imagine you're the United CEO. What do you do?

1. Acknowledge you f*cked up.

Good Lord. Why is it so hard for people in leadership positions get this right? 

You did not forget the ketchup on this man's hamburger. 

You—your company, its people, and its procedures—set into motion a series of events that led to a perfectly innocent man getting hauled off your plane, bloodied and in a state of semi-consciousness, completely humiliating him in full view of the rest of the passengers who, as your industry's own studies show, are already stressed out because this is how most people react to air travel.

(And it doesn't matter that United employees technically did nothing wrong—that some jacked-up lawman working for the Chicago Department of Aviation went way overboard in deciding to teach this guy a lesson. Put differently, if you had done this right, the situation would not have required intervention by the authorities.)

Three things happen when you either don't acknowledge your mistake, or—worse—release a carefully crafted statement that the entire world recognizes as BS.

• You announce you have no integrity.
• You set yet another example of bad leadership that perpetuates management cowardice.
• You are almost certainly ruling yourself out of a future job. 

Apologize. Be accountable. Imagine you were in that person's shoes—that you were that person's spouse, child, or parent—and react like a human being. At this point, no expense should be spared to make sure Dr. Dao is recovering from the event. Tell the world that your organization will immediately get to work to ensure this never happens again.

Once you've taken ownership of the situation externally, it's time to get to work internally.

2. Assign the problem to a person whose seniority and reputation for effectiveness will cause employees to say "Hmm, they're really taking this seriously." 

This person will be tasked with making things right. S/he must have the authority to bring about change. If the person is responsible only for studying the problem and bringing recommendations, it's possible (even likely) that they won't be implemented in ways that are consistent with the original intent since the initial pressure and urgency will have passed. This person must also be able to commandeer resources—people, systems, data—to do the job. The CEO needs to actively follow progress, making sure that solutions go far enough and maintaining urgency and momentum. 

3. Establish an immediate review process to determine what happened.

Within a matter of days—a week at most—you should have answers to the following questions:

• What was the timeline of events that led to the incident? Specifically, where were the critical decisions made (overbooking, deciding to bump passengers for crew, whatever else) and when? 
• What did standard procedures require us to do?
• Were the procedures followed? If not, why did we deviate from them, and were the deviations made according to known contingency plans? 
• Were there factors that arose which revealed holes or deficiencies in our procedures? What were they and how did they impact the situation?
• Were there other external events or people that became pivotal leading up to the incident? What were they and how did they impact the situation?
• What needed to happen to avoid having to drag a passenger off the plane s/he had already boarded?

There's a multi-layered discovery that needs to take place that starts by figuring out unambiguously what happened. What rules were in place? Were they followed? Was the incident a predictable outcome of those rules? As importantly, we need to know where there were decisions made by a computer, or a human, or both. We need to focus especially on what happened the day of the flight and imagine how events played out in real-time.

This discovery need to go beyond looking at the rules to also look at the people responsible for enforcing them. Did everyone follow procedure? Were personnel adequately trained? Were there places where employees should have had more discretion? Was there managerial oversight of the decision? If so, was it applied correctly? 

To United's credit, they've just announced a solution to the immediate problem of having to deplane a passenger who has already boarded to make way for deadheading crew. But it shouldn't stop there. Will United's reputation—whatever it was before the incident—be permanently damaged? If I'm the CEO, I'm not going to wait to find out. At minimum, I'd charge my leader to convene a small team of people that includes gate agents, flight crew, and operations staff to look at everything related to overbooking. I might even expand the inquiry to include any sort of flight disruption.

4. Tell people how you're going to solve the problem.

In a manner and venue consistent with the gravity of the situation, tell both internal and external audiences what you're doing by explaining steps 2 and 3 above. 

5. Get things done.

The longer the review goes on, the less it will benefit from the interest and momentum created by incident and the more it will become just another thing to do. 

6. Close the loop.

After you've finished the work, go back and announce internally and externally what you've done to solve the problem. 

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We live in an era where people mistrust corporations and institutions of all sizes. Why? Because they seem faceless, because we don't understand how decisions get made, and because quite often the decisions that get made never seem to reflect a basic humanity. United has an opportunity here not just to solve a business problem, but to equally demonstrate action that is worthy of being emulated. 

More generally, we have a right to expect people in power to act responsibly, thoughtfully, and respectfully. People in power should act this way as it is their obligation, whatever the context.

Jonathan Deitch is CEO of Bakamo Social, a strategic social listening company.