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An advance "kidnap warning" issued by the RCMP in Richmond, B.C., President Obama's pre-election Facebook campaign, and the damage-control strategy adopted by Maple Leaf Foods following a Listeria outbreak traced to its Toronto plant -- are all examples of outstanding leadership in challenging times, according to a disaster management expert.

"People are going to make mistakes," says Jim Stanton, founder and president of Stanton Associates, a Vancouver-based crisis communications consulting firm.

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"That's why I've got this saying: Mess up, Fess up, Dress up. When you make a mistake acknowledge it, and tell people what you're doing to clean up."

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Stanton was speaking at the World Conference on Disaster Management 2009 held in Toronto last week.

A model that works

In a talk titled "Lead, Follow or Get Out of The Way", Stanton cited Maple Leaf Foods' "brilliant" handling of the Listeria crisis as a model that should be emulated.

"It's a fantastic example of brand recovery."

In August 2008, the outbreak of a food-borne illness, caused by the bacterium -- Listeria monocytogenes -- was traced to a Maple Leaf Foods plant in Toronto. The outbreak claimed four lives.

The typical reaction of most big organizations at the centre of such a catastrophe would be to clamp up, Stanton noted.

"Maple Leaf Foods didn't do the typical thing."

Instead, he said, the firm's approach was to:

1. Tell people what happened
2. Take responsibility and say they were sorry
3. Acknowledge they didn't know all the facts, but were going to find out
4. Outline what they were doing to remedy the situation and regain people's confidence  

Such a strategy, he noted, may not find favour with many so-called experts, who are petrified of lawsuits that may follow any admission of culpability for a disaster.

But, according to Stanton fessing up is not only right, it's also the smart thing to do.

"The lawsuits are going to come anyway. When they do, if you're exonerated in the court of public opinion, it will go a long way to helping you in a court of law."

 On the other hand, he said, if a cover-up is detected, chances are penalties from the law courts will be "higher, more dramatic, more draconian."

Stanton noted that Maple Leaf Foods has already settled all its lawsuits ... for $26 million. "It's done, out of the way. That's the model to follow."

A nutty response

The approach to be avoided is stonewalling, Stanton said.

Sadly, that's a common – though destructive – attitude adopted by firms when confronted with a crisis.

It was what executives from the Peanut Corporation of America did when their firm's products were found to be the source of a salmonella outbreak that killed nine people, and sickened more than 600 between September 2008 and February 2009.

Even after the Peanut Corp. learned its products were tainted with salmonella, it kept shipping them to unsuspecting customers, putting profits ahead of public safety, according to documents presented at a U.S. congressional subcommittee hearing in February.

At one point during the hearings a congressman held up a container of the Peanut Corp.'s products and asked company president Stewart Parnell if he would dare eat the contents.

Parnell pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer the question on grounds it would incriminate him.

Stanton said greed of the firm's executives coupled with their refusal to fess up after the catastrophe sealed their fate. "The Peanut Corporation of America is out of business today."

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