Sorry seems to be the hardest word.

Toyota, Wall Street Bankers, Tiger Woods. I feel for you all. Who among us hasn’t cut a few corners to get a job done? Bet big and lost? Had sex with 11 porn stars and nightclub hostesses and pancake house waitresses?
Sure they’re all feeling really bad about what they’ve done. But how do you go about making amends for it all. Atoning for your deeds. Or at the very least, damage control. This is not a job for amateurs. I know because I heard it from the master.

In 2001, I met the devil. He was a friendly little Italian guy from Brooklyn in a gray suit. And he had been at every major corporate catastrophe in the past 30 years. He was in Bhopal when the Union Carbide spill created the worst industrial disaster in history. He was in Chicago when tampered with Tylenol packages killed 7 people. He worked with Jack-in-the-Box in 1993 when 2 people died and 400 were left ill from tainted meat. He was unseen and on the scene. The puppet master pulling the strings on the front lines. Although in his case, the front lines were a sumptuously decorated boardroom with really swell catering.

“Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.” he said, introducing himself. Okay, he didn’t actually say this, but in my head that’s what I heard. I didn’t have to guess his name because his name was Gerry. He was with a major global PR firm. And he was the Fixer. And this was another disaster.

We were in the boardroom of a great big Auto manufacturer who’s sport utility vehicles had a recent disturbing habit of rolling over when a tire blew. The tire manufacturer blamed the automaker. The automaker blamed the tire manufacturer. And consumers just blamed them both.

Gerry’s experience around the planet with corporate disasters made him the go-to guy for crisis management. He knew what would happen, how the manufacturer would react. How the press would react. How the board of directors would react. And if they followed his directions, how to get out of this mess.

As he had predicted, the first thing management did was deny the problem existed and then turn turtle. That would simply not do, said Gerry.

He then gave the Auto Guys their marching orders. Here are some of Gerry’s main points:
LEAD THE STORY—the press will fill in the blanks of a story with the information that’s available. And they want that info right away. Today. Having that void filled with all kinds of conflicting information would be a very bad thing. The manufacturer must be the lead information source to show openness, progress, leadership and remorse for the event. And to not let the story get away from them.
LEAD WITH THE SCIENCE—Bring out the guys with the white smocks. Appoint a scientist/engineer or someone with expertise from the company who can be the point person for all information about how the event happened and what the company is doing to fix it.
LEAD WITH A LEADER—someone, most likely the company President, will be the point person for all info that will be generated from the company about what they are doing to move forward.

Pointers like this may be self evident to good PR people but few of them have lived the crisis from inside the bunker. And that’s what Gerry had done over and over.
At that time, the management of the auto company was kind of collectively traumatized. They don’t teach you in biz school how to deal with stuff like this. Gerry was just the kind of face slap they needed.
That auto manufacturer got through it. Those rollovers are now ancient history. And as Gerry had predicted, the CEO, after decades with the company, got the sack a few months later.

So what have we seen in the media so far? Toyota turned turtle and let the story get away from them. Had a quick fix solution and then they didn’t. Had all kinds of conflicting stories in the press. And finally, Akio Toyoda, President of Toyota and scion (pun intended) of the founding family has come forward and apologized. Although he’s only been President since June, he’s taking the hit. He described his company in rather strange biblical terms in they are “seeking salvation”. This may be too little, too late. U.S. Congress has “invited” Mr. Toyoda to come on down to Washington to “clarify the situation”. This is bad. The worst possible outcome is to have the government involved. Remember the tobacco guys?
As for Wall Street, there will be no mea culpas. I suppose, they really are too powerful. The closest we could get to a public apology was seeing MSNBC host and Wall Street head cheerleader Jim Cramer drawn, quartered, vivisected and disemboweled by Jon Stewart. Sure it felt good, but Jon wasn’t exactly picking on the big kids in the schoolyard.

And the there’s Tiger, the piano-toothed God of every cowpatch hacker on the planet. He decided to stonewall and the media just filled in the blanks with some of the wildest speculation imaginable. And that apology. That don’t know where to look it was so bad apology. The faux sincerity. The Dr. Drew therapeutic jingoism. It’s what supreme arrogance looks like when it’s forced to it’s reconstructed knees. Just about the only thing that could save Tiger’s reputation at this point would be to spend a decade washing the feet of lepers.

Or he could just accept the fact that the Tiger corporation is now closed for business. Forget the money. He could get back his amateur status and play for nothing. Play for the smell of fresh cut lawns amid the dewy haze of a summer morning. Play for the feel of a sweet pure stroke as that white ball bisects the fairway. Play just for the sheer love of the game.
Naaaaah.