The reasons can be many. The mobile phone rings just as you are explaining the finer details of your new product. Everyone in the room focuses on the person taking the call; they are all curious to know what it is about. Then again it might be that someone comes in to the room, perhaps to prepare coffee for the break, or to whisper a message in to the ear of one of the attendees.

Whatever the reason, wandering minds are a serious cause of communication breakdown. They can’t be helped, they can’t be avoided, but they can be handled.

Preparation, as always, is key to the solution. If you are about to attend an interview, give a sales presentation or deliver a project proposal to senior managers then prepare well in advance.

Find out where the meeting will take place. If it is in the person’s office then be aware that they will be concentrating on the papers around them and not you. So whenever possible hold the meeting on neutral ground. If there are windows then close the blinds to prevent outside distraction.

If at all possible try and find out who will be attending. Find out as much about them as you can. The more senior the person the more likely that they will have half a mind on other things as you are delivering your message. Get to know their likes and dislikes, try and find something that you have in common and watch out for the time of day.

The time of day you are speaking can be critical. If you have a choice then make your presentation mid morning or mid afternoon. First thing in the morning they are keen to answer all those emails that came in overnight. Late morning they are thinking about lunch, after lunch they are sleepy and late afternoon they are panicking about all the jobs they haven’t done. Perhaps an oversimplification, but timing is everything to gain attention.

If you are expecting to speak for fifteen minutes, then aim for ten to twelve minutes. Don’t cram too much into the presentation. People only take in about 40% of what they are told. So it is better to concentrate on three key points, say them clearly and often and then repeat them (by saying them in slightly different ways).

Make sure that you get your key points made within the first three minutes, the optimum time for holding attention. This is most easily done by using the old technique of telling them what you are about to say, then saying it and at the end telling them what you have said.

Remember KISS – Keep It Short and Simple. Short, simple and to the point presentations are easier to follow and much easier to remember.

If your listeners are interrupted then take them back to the key points you had been making before the interruption. Help them to re-engage by giving them a summary of what you had said before the interruption.

If they look worried or absorbed after the interruption, then pause. Give them time to think about the problem and wait until they re-focus on you. Then repeat again what you were saying.

In extremis abandon the meeting and try to rearrange. You are a busy person too. If they clearly show little interest in you and your product then withdraw politely and find a better time or place when they are less distracted.

There are three ways in which you can be more active on LinkedIn which will help to raise your profile; they are through adding more connections, joining groups and answering questions.

LinkedIn, like most online social media, can absorb a lot of your time and it needs to be carefully managed. Whilst out of work, it could be worth your while giving an hour a day to using LinkedIn, more than that and the potential returns drop off quite quickly.

Moving on to the three methods outlined above, the most obvious first move is to increase your connections. Again, be careful and be sure to develop a strategy. Some people work on the basis of getting lots of Connections; anything over 500 and you are designated a LION or LinkedIn Online Networker. If you go down this route then you will be connecting with anyone and everyone that approaches you as well as spending a lot of time seeking out other people.

Alternatively keep your connections limited and professional. That means deciding on what sort of person you are happy to have as a Connection. Almost certainly people in the same profession; definitely people who are opinion formers and influential in your line of work. Probably not more junior people than yourself. Avoid adding lots of friends and family, use your Facebook account for those people.

If you are starting out then prepare a list of people you know with whom you would like to connect. Then go up to the Search box (top right on the top navigation bar), type in the name and see if you can find them. If you can, then go in to their profile just to check that it is the correct person. You will see a yellow button to the right of their profile box, it says ‘Connect’, press that and you will be invited to connect with the person. Complete the box and click on ‘Send Invitation’. If they don’t wish to connect with you then you will hear nothing further. If they do connect then you will get an email telling you as much from LinkedIn.

Another way to add connections is to use the top right hand box on your home page entitled ‘People You May Know’. Click ‘see more’ and scroll down to see if you recognise any names or see any useful job titles. To the right of each name is a ‘Connect’ heading. Click on that and then follow the simple procedure.

Using these two methods you can quickly build up a useful Connections list. On your home page you will see what it is that these people are doing once you have connected. Equally if you have a Twitter account, a blog or just by using the ‘Share an Update’ box at the top of the main column on your LinkedIn Home Page you can tell them what is on your mind.

Try a very simple, ‘Hi Everyone, I have just left XXX and am looking for my next big opportunity.’ It will reap rewards.

To join groups, all you need do is go to the top navigation bar on your Home Page, find Groups and then click on Groups Directory. LinkedIn will give you some suggestions based upon your profile, but better still use the Search box on the top left. Where it says Keywords, type in your professional keywords. Account Manager, for example, brought up 97 groups. You can click on a group to find out more about them before you make your decision.

Don’t join too many groups, about six or seven is more than enough. Join the right groups for you and then get involved. Answer questions, pose questions and most of all, keep yourself informed about the latest developments in your particular professional domain.

Groups are also a good way of connecting with like minded people who may know about jobs. Beware joining too many recruitment agency groups; you will find yourself inundated with information about jobs that are of little interest to you.

Finally, it is worth exploring Answers. Go to the top navigation bar once more and find ‘More’; now click on ‘Answers’. This will take you into the public arena for LinkedIn where anyone can ask or answer a question. A golden rule is to answer more questions (ratio about 10:1) than ask questions. There are plenty of silly people on LinkedIn and you will quickly identify serious questions from the flippant and attention grabbers.

In the right hand column you will find a section entitled ‘Browse’. This has a broad list of professional types. Find your professional interest and then narrow down your search. You will find a rich seam of questions and some interesting answers. By answering questions in a knowledgeable way the person answering the question can nominate you as an expert which will raise your profile further.

In each of the three methods mentioned above you will need to find your niche, decide on the amount of time you want to commit to the project and then be consistent. If you use all three methods then you will widen your network, get connected to people with the same professional interests and, as a result, get noticed.

You need to start on your LinkedIn Home page. In the right hand column you will see a section entitled ‘Jobs you may be interested in’. In the box there will be a selection of three or four jobs.

It is worth checking those jobs every day. The jobs will be targeted towards whatever it is that you have populated your profile with in terms of key words and industry sectors. That is why so much emphasis was laid on getting your keywords right in the first blog of this series.

If you click on one of the jobs in the box you will go into the advertisement page for that job. Usually it contains a job description or detailed description of the job.

If you look to the top right of the script in the advert you will see a small box that says ‘Posted by’. This is a useful tool which ordinary jobsites don’t give you.

By clicking on the name in the box you get to find out something about the person who filed the advertisement. You could, if you felt inclined, make a connection with that person or get an introduction through your contacts. As a minimum, it will be worth looking over the person’s profile to see what you can find out about them.

The person concerned will almost certainly have the name of the employer and possibly their website address on their profile, which in turn means you can check out the organisational site and find their website very easily.

If you can find the website for the organisation then check out if they have a careers or jobs section. If they do then that is always the better way of applying. Better still, get a telephone number from their ‘Contact Us’ page and ring the person direct to see if you match their requirements. The personal contact always works best when searching for a job.

To go back to the LinkedIn site, you can decide if you are a good match for that job and if so you could select to apply for the job by clicking on the ‘Apply Now’ button at the bottom. Ideally, have your CV and covering letter prepared and ready to attach.

At the very bottom of the page you will see two very useful additions. A section entitled ‘People who viewed this job also viewed’ and Search more jobs’. Both give you additional search options. If you look at the ‘Search more jobs’ it will help you to narrow down the categories that are most appropriate to you. This will open you out into a myriad of further jobs in that subcategory.

Naturally, the jobs you are shown are only as good as the information in your profile. Equally, the jobs categories you see in the ‘Search for more jobs’ section relate to the particular type of job you are viewing. For example, you may be looking for a job in internal communications, but the job you clicked on may be more marketing oriented. In which case the categories you will see will be more marketing focussed.

You can overcome this problem by going back to the Home page. Go to the top navigation bar and click on jobs. Put in a job title in the ‘Search for Jobs’ box. This will bring up further jobs options. Look at the left hand column on this new page and you will see that you can refine your search even further.

LinkedIn will encourage you to join up to their Job Seeker Premium service. This will cost you £12.95 a month for the basic and up to £32.95 for the Job seeker Plus. Don’t sign up for the annual subscription unless you expect to be out of work for that long. The value of this service remains questionable at present.

By now you should have found a large number of potential jobs. Now the hard work of filtering through those jobs begins.

In the third and final blog on finding a job on LinkedIn the focus will be on raising your profile even further in order to get you noticed.

I am often asked if there are any additional methods beyond the traditional adverts, agencies and networking approach. The answer is yes. Searching for employment has never, in some ways, ever been easier. Or at least finding a suitable job; the rest is down to you and the quality of your Curriculum Vitae (CV) and interview skills.

One of the growing new ways of searching for employment is through social media. Over the next three blogs I will discuss finding a job through LinkedIn, the professional businessperson’s social media site.

This blog looks at setting up a good LinkedIn profile and how it will help you to get recruited.

To start with, ignore most of the advice you have probably been given by friends and family. Your LinkedIn profile should not be your CV placed online, nor should it be a heady text of your needs, desires, visions and interests. If you really want to find a job then your profile should be as skilfully crafted as your CV.

Let’s start with the headings. In your ‘Professional Headline’ it is pointless putting the job title of your previous job. Instead you should indicate what it is that you do for a living. So instead of ‘Assistant Manager, Payroll and Benefits’ you might put ‘HR specialist in Payroll and Benefits’. This assumes, of course, that this is what you want to continue doing for a living.

The next section of job search importance for you to complete is the ‘Professional Experience and Goals’ section. There is a lot of poor advice floating around about what to put in this section. Some say that you should write it like a story in the first person. Others say that you should write about what you are looking for rather than what you have done. These two items of bad advice will not help you to get a job.

Instead write your entry in similar style to the profile at the top of your CV. This section should say what you are, along with your key skills. Make it rich with the things you want to do (i.e. probably the things you most enjoyed doing in your previous job) because by inference this will tell any potential employer what you want to do in your next job.

A typical entry for this section might read as follows:

‘An experienced Sales and Marketing Director within the pharmaceutical sector. Extensive exposure to worldwide markets, culturally sensitive and accomplished at researching, developing and implementing complex marketing strategies. An adept team leader used to handling morale issues and drawing out the best from the team whilst meeting demanding deadlines’.

Below that comes the specialities section. Most people either don’t know what to put in this section or they fill it with waffle. This is perhaps the most critical section of your whole profile. The golden rules are to keep it short, preferably use bullet points and it must be keyword rich.

In fact your whole profile should be keyword rich. That means that you should use the professional words you would expect to use in your everyday work. As a communicator, for me that means words such as, copywriting, proofreading, press releases, internal communications, external communications and so on. If your specialisation uses lots of acronyms then use them; software proficiency language such as Java, Perl, Python etc are very important. Project management skills such as Prince2 or legal jargon such as PQE 10 years are all important additions to your profile.

Going back to the specialities section, don’t overdo the specialities. If you put in lots of bullet points then you are hardly a specialist. As a general rule six bullet points should be the maximum. Your bullet points should reflect the types of keywords a recruiter might type in to their keyword search. Below is an example:

• New business startup & setup (& business rationalisation)
• E-commerce development
• Affiliate marketing
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Website design
• Article marketing.

The fourth and last section to be covered in this blog is ‘Experience’. This is the section where you list all the jobs you have done in chronological order starting with your most recent.

Again, some golden rules.

Don’t cut and paste from your CV. LinkedIn is a public site which is open to anyone and everyone. There may be things in your CV which should not be broadcast to a wider audience.

You don’t have to put down every job you have done. If you put lots of jobs, does this mean that you have no staying power? Probably not but it could look like that. You needn’t go back more than fifteen years (i.e. to around 1997). If you have worked for just one employer for a long time then split this up into the individual jobs you have done whilst working for that employer.

Having laid down these golden rules, it is important to put something in the ‘Description’ part of this section. Ideally this will include a one or two sentence description of your job at that employer. For example:

‘Responsible for providing full time management, communication, administrative and logistical support to the CEO of this rapidly expanding international organic produce retailer’.

Underneath that put some bullet points giving your key achievements in the job. Again, don’t put too many bullet points. As a general rule the most recent job might have up to six bullet points, but as you move further in to the past the number of bullet points will decrease. Make sure that in these bullet points you make the text keyword rich with language that will draw a recruiter to look at your profile.

If you follow this advice then your profile should look professional, be rich in keywords and prove a handy additional tool in your work search. One final point, don’t forget to put a good quality photograph into your profile.

Next time, we will look at how your profile helps LinkedIn find a career opportunity for you.

The process is pretty horrid for all concerned. Of course we all give our thoughts to the employee who has been made redundant, but it is no easy thing for most managers or HR professionals to have to do, and it is hard for those who are left behind.

That is why having to serve notice is all the more difficult. The statutory notice period is one week for each complete year the employee has been continuously employed with them, up to a maximum of twelve weeks.

Now that really can be a lingering death.

Even the most conscientious employee will find it difficult to concentrate on the job. If the process leading up to the redundancy has been contentious or acrimonious then some employees could be apathetic, obstructive or even destructive in their remaining weeks. The workplace could be filled with poor productivity, petty arguments, poor timekeeping and absences.

Ultimately the organisation will suffer through low productivity and falling morale.

For those who remain there will be feelings of guilt and, even worse, pity for the person who is leaving. Unfortunately it can also be a time where the sharp witted and even sharper tongued can revel in hurtful jokes. For some it may be a time to whisper in corners or ‘get even’ for slights that have festered way beyond their time.

The effect can be corrosive on those who remain and can break down team bonds as views differ on the person about to leave.

For the person about to leave, the situation is arguably the worst. They are forced to sit there listening to the gossip, fending off the ‘kind’ words and counting the days to the end of life as they have known it. Each day becomes a chore. Each hug another reminder of their situation. One person described it as the worst form of rejection; a sense of worthlessness and a lead weight on their self confidence.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

The company or organisation could choose to give the employee gardening leave; that means they have the time to find a new job whilst still technically employed. The survivors of the redundancy period can settle down into a new ‘normal’ without having to worry about the feelings of those leaving. The company can rebuild productivity as well as morale by moving forward with those who remain.

For example, ‘At peak periods aircraft land at Heathrow every ninety seconds’. This generalisation doesn’t tell us when those peak periods are, nor does it spell out that there can be huge variations in timings across those peak periods. As a general rule, though, it helps us to get a picture in our minds of the volume of traffic going in to Heathrow.

How we then perceive that individually is another matter. An air traffic controller working at O’Hare International airport in Chicago, which has the second largest number of movements annually, would not find that especially high (Heathrow ranks 13th in such annual movements). Someone working at Bournemouth Airport would find the figure quite staggering (they manage around one every three minutes). Someone who knows nothing about the travel industry might wonder at how it was possible to land an aircraft and get it off the runway in such a short period of time before the next one arrives.

Nevertheless, such a generalisation helps us to interpret a lot of things about Heathrow from our perspectives.

Generalisations are often linked to statistics; ‘the average manager gets paid this amount’, ‘the speed of cars on that stretch of motorway is this’, ‘the hotel trade has a staff turnover of around 60% annually’ etc.

When generalisations become linked to groups of people then they can start to be dangerous. ‘All bankers are corrupt’, ‘all business owners are greedy’, ‘all politicians are in it for themselves’ all display one thing in common; a negative generalisation of a group of people. Of course you could have, ‘all nurses are angels’, all pilots are clever’, ‘all social workers are caring’.

In both sets of cases the generalisation is wrong. Not all bankers are corrupt nor business owners greedy; nevertheless the generalisation targets a group and encourages a negative perception which leads to distrust, suspicion and, in some cases, violence. Equally, not all nurses are angels, pilots that clever or social workers caring; and yet it encourages us to think favourably of such groups, to trust them and to act kindly towards them.

It is such generalisations that the media love to play to such effect. A good generalisation followed by a request for examples of ‘where you have been fiddled by a banker’ (for example) provides a rich seam of stories that allow the media to reinforce the generalisation and turn it into a scoop. Almost every example used by the media will be negative because positive stories don’t sell newspapers; they don’t play on your prejudices.

So next time you hear or read a generalisation just give it some thought before you get stuck in with your own lurid examples to back up the story. One day that generalisation could be about you and your kind.

Meanwhile, did you spot the deliberate omission in this blog? If you did then you will have spotted how prejudices can creep in to any story

Of course what he meant was that few managers have been taught how to look out for telltale signs of things that might be going wrong within their team.

Bearing in mind the current economic climate and uncertainty surrounding so many businesses it might be worth looking at some key ‘hidden communications’ signs.

Appearance can often be a giveaway.  Is someone dressing in a different way.  Perhaps they have suddenly lost interest in themselves and they start coming to work looking dishevelled.  If so it is worth checking out.  It could be that the person concerned is depressed, are losing their self respect or may be hiding a medical condition.  Whatever the reason it may be that giving them the opportunity to talk might help the manager to understand what can be done to help.

Of course, it could be that they have started turning up to work looking the bees knees.  In which case check out to see if they are leaving the office to make telephone calls and having prolonged lunch hours.  If so you can be pretty sure that they are probably looking for a new job.

There are other factors that can communicate a lot.  Has a normally good timekeeper suddenly become a bad timekeeper?  In one recent case it was all because the mother of the employee had been diagnosed with a serious illness.  The employee was trying to look after the sick mother and do their work at the same time.  The manager concerned was able to arrange for additional time off whilst the mother received treatment.

Watching for the tension in a team can also nip problems in the bud before they get serious.  A person refusing to help with the work of another, turning their back on others, talking over other people, rubbishing their contributions.  All of these could be seen as signs of a tense situation which needs to be managed.

What about the quality of the work?  Telltale signs can be more mistakes made than normal or blame being placed on others because of shoddy work.  Or it could be deadlines missed where before they were always met, or an inability to complete work.  Where the quality of work deviates from the norm for that employee then the manager should be alert.

How about if they are slow in decision making?  It could be that they are unsure about the level of their authority.  The manager may have delegated a responsibility to them without making it clear the level of empowerment they have on the project.

In each case it requires effective communication from the manager to ensure that the problem is resolved.  But only if the manager knows what to look for in the first instance.

Building a record so that you have the facts in front of you is important.  Not being judgemental is equally important.  Instead approach the issue calmly, prepare for the meeting and then deal with it directly by sticking to the facts is always the best approach.

Recognising the hidden messages in people’s everyday habits and mannerisms can help managers to be better more attentive and proactive team leaders.  That is what ‘reading the room’ Is all about.

His lead was impressive. According to an Ipsos Mori poll in the Irish Times he was on 40% with Labour Party candidate, Michael D Higgins, on 25% and Sinn Fein candidate Martin McGuinness a distant third on 15%.

A few hours later his campaign was in tatters and Michael D. Higgins went on to win the election. In the end Seán Gallagher took just 28.5% of the vote.

So what happened?

On the Monday evening the Irish television channel RTE there was one of the traditional television debates with all the presidential candidates. During the course of the debate Martin McGuinness accused Gallagher of collecting a cheque from a convicted fuel smuggler on behalf of the opposition Fianna Fail party.

At the time Gallagher was a member of the Fianna Fail national executive and had attended a party or reception at which some photographs were taken. Subsequently it appears that he took a copy of a photograph to the fuel smugglers house and, according to the fuel smuggler, was given a cheque for €5,000 for the party. Gallagher struggles to remember what happened.

Nevertheless the implications were made and the suppositions were drawn.

So what went wrong?

Seán Gallagher is an entrepreneur and a judge on the RTE equivalent of Dragon’s Den. He has more than one business and leads a busy life. He is also very much in the public eye. He goes to lots of events and he does lots of things. It would be difficult for him to remember every event he attended and its details. Despite this, an audience member, the chairperson of the debate and Martin McGuinness all attacked him, on several occasions without giving him time to explain.

On his part, Gallagher gave long convoluted answers that left the impression that he was trying to avoid the questions. He part admitted that he may have delivered a photograph and he part admitted that he may have received an envelope. The very fact that his answers were ambiguous condemned him.

Even worse, the following day he was forced to abandon his campaign and his ‘meet the people’ visits in order to trail around the broadcasters to explain his version of events. But the damage was done and the campaign was lost.

What might he have done?

This story had been rattling around for a week before the TV debate and it was posted on Sinn Fein’s website. Seán Gallagher’s campaign team should have identified the potential threat the moment it arose and clarified exactly what had happened. From that point on everyone involved in his campaign should have taken the message out and repeated it continuously. The message should have been clear, simple to understand and unambiguous so that further accusations could not be made.

As it was, different people were giving different accounts of what happened including Mr Gallagher himself. That was a recipe for disaster.

It is interesting to note that the accusations came from the convicted fuel smuggler himself along with Martin McGuinness. Seán Gallagher might have expressed amazement that his integrity was being brought into question by a convicted criminal and a former Provisional IRA leader.

Abandoning his campaign at the last minute was also a flawed move. Difficult that it might have been, he should have remembered that his only audience were the people of Ireland and not the broadcasters who were having so much fun with the controversy.

Instead he allowed himself to be drawn into further confrontation with various broadcasters. Inevitably the story moved on; he found himself having to explain why he had not been clear about what had happened from the very start rather than dealing with the substance of the accusation.

Of course, if he had nothing to hide then his first and most obvious reaction should have been to tell McGuinness to prove it or shut up. Such a show of confidence would have killed the story dead.

See a You Tube clip entitled ‘Sean Gallagher just can’t tell the truth’ from an interview the day after the debate.

www.youtube.com

Others, however, need to be more careful if they are to be taken seriously.

A well known polling agency undertakes a monthly opinion poll of business leaders. They ask important questions about perceptions, opinions and views. As with all polling the result of the survey is only as good as the accuracy of the questions being asked.

The most recent poll conducted this month was asking questions about the likely impact on stakeholders. The problem was that they didn’t define stakeholders, nor did they make it clear in the question which stakeholders they were asking about.

Stakeholders, if you have looked at our paper on ‘Identifying Stakeholders’, come in all sorts of shapes and sizes both internal and external.

A stakeholder can be a primary stakeholder without whom the company could not survive. A good example of an external stakeholder might be a customer. An internal stakeholder might well be your employees.

Or you might be more concerned with secondary stakeholders who can have huge influences on your business. The banks would rate government and its agencies such as the Financial Services Ombudsman to be very important secondary stakeholders at the present time.

When considering your stakeholders it is possible to group them into large groups, such as ‘Suppliers’. But suppliers can cover a multitude of different people who interact with your organisation in different ways. Suppliers could be contractors or consultants who work closely with part of the company; or they could be suppliers of the materials needed to conduct your business. In the latter case it could be as broad as electricity companies providing power through to stationary suppliers providing your photocopying paper.

In each case the relationship has subtle differences. So when the survey of business leaders asked whether they thought a particular action was good for stakeholders or not, it left a lot to be desired.

If they meant that the action was good for the directors, senior executives and shareholders of the company then the answer was an unambiguous yes. If the stakeholders concerned were the customers and suppliers then the answer was an unequivocal NO!

So which stakeholders did they mean? They didn’t say. Which means that the whole survey was open to dispute. As the saying goes, rubbish in, rubbish out.

For four days last week the Research In Motion (RIM) Blackberry system collapsed across the world. The problems started on Monday 10th October. In the London based business newspaper, City A.M., on 12th October editor Allister Heath was criticising Blackberry for their slow response to the crisis. This is what he had to say:

‘What’s wrong with Blackberry? I am a heavy user, a genuine addict, which means that I – together with millions of others – have been hugely inconvenienced by the system’s collapse during the past two days To add insult to injury, it came back up on Monday night, just to implode again yesterday. Instead of pro-actively explaining what was happening, Blackberry’s owners, Research in Motion, waited for hours before issuing a statement; for a company that makes mobile phones, its inability to communicate with its users has been astonishing to behold.’

Poor Blackberry. Their system had a catastrophic failure and within hours the editor of a London business newspaper was squealing as though the end of the world had come about.

It does neatly demonstrate the way in which the world has become so immediate. People want things now, not yesterday or even several hours ago. They want explanations and they want them now.

To a point Allister Heath is correct. Blackberry has built its reputation on providing ‘reliable real time communications around the world’. This is the phrase that co CEO of RIM, Mike Lazaridis, used in his videoed apology on Wednesday 13th October.

Lazaridis went on to say that “We did not deliver on that goal this week” and “We have let many of you down. You expect better from us and I expect better from us”.

Lazaridis looked positively distraught in the You Tube video and he spoke in a very wooden manner, obviously reading from a teleprompter. The performance may just about have done the job, but it was barely convincing.

Alas, this is not his first clumsy outing in front of the cameras this year. In April he stopped an interview with BBC reporter Rory Cellan-Jones when he was asked about security issues in the Middle East. In the interview he looks unprepared, even surprised at the question despite its topical nature at the time.

So what should and could RIM have been doing? Well none of it is rocket science.

As a major telecommunications company with around 50 million users across the world they must have an operations room which monitors all traffic. As soon as they realised they had a major problem, which must have been in minutes rather than hours, they should have gone into crisis mode.

That means wheeling out a media savvy spokesperson to present a holding statement, apologise for the inconvenience being caused and answer media questions – even if the answer was ‘we don’t know but as soon as we find out we will let you know’.

If you decide that you need to use the CEO then there has to be a very good reason. It became inevitable by Wednesday because RIM had not reacted quickly in the early stages of the crisis. But by Wednesday, three days in to the crisis, the apology seemed too little too late.

If you decide to use your CEO then also make sure that he has had some crisis media training. Rather than look as though he is about to jump off a cliff he has to appear concerned about the effect on the individual but he should also look as though he is in control.

The April incident suggests that there is no pre-interview planning or preparation taking place at RIM. As a minimum they should have identified every possible issue that was going to come up and then prepare an appropriate response (what we call ‘lines to take’).

Finally, with a $4.2 billion turnover and corporate reputation to protect they should have the very best of corporate communications departments, a crisis plan and a back up PR agency to support them.

Winging it in the way that they appeared to do it last week simply will not work in this world of instant satiation.