Mark: Welcome to unsuitable on Rea Radio, the award-winning financial services and business advisory show that challenges your old-school business practices in the traditional business suit culture. On the show you’ll hear from industry professionals who’ll challenge you to think beyond the suit and tie while arching the meaningful modern solutions to help you enhance your company’s growth. I’m your host Mark Van Benschoten.
What would you do if your business were under fire? How would you communicate internally and to the media without making things worse? Would you turn to your crisis communication plan? Do you even have a crisis communication plan? Today’s guest has been involved in some pretty unique situations over the years of his career. Denny Lynch was the Senior Vice President of Communications for Wendy’s during some interesting times and his expertise helped the company navigate some very public crises. Denny’s here today to talk about what to do and what not to do when you know what hits the fan. Welcome to unsuitable, Denny.
Denny: Thank you very much, Mark.
Mark: I appreciate you taking the time to be with us today. How did you get started in this?
Denny: I got started in this because I joined Wendy’s company when it was relatively small and didn’t have the expertise as major corporations have. There wasn’t anybody in crisis management. There wasn’t really a lot of expertise in media relations, public relations, and things of that nature. I have a writing degree, background from Ohio State University so I learned about deductive reasoning and learned about how to ask a lot of questions and how to analyze situations. I learned to look at things from the consumer’s point of view. When a crisis were to strike or occur, they were looking for people who could be calm, collective in a situation, could navigate their way through there, ask a lot of questions, and try to figure out what’s the best way to respond and the best way to answer. I fell into it because I happen to have basic communication skills and I developed that expertise over a 34-year career.
Mark: You don’t just handle crisis communications, do you?
Denny: Correct. I was Senior Vice President of Communications, so all external and internal communications, I was responsible for with exception of financial media relations. The crisis management function fell under my area.
Mark: Is it a department at Wendy’s?
Denny: Communications is a department. It not only does a lot of the basic public relations, and public speaking, and speech writing and that, but that group also produced all the major meeting for the company as well as handle the charitable contributions, the intranet for the company. There was a lot of functions that were combined under this umbrella called communications.
Mark: You’re also engaged with the Dave Thomas adoption organization, correct?
Denny: Yeah. I’m the chairman of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. In my career I was extremely fortunate and highly blessed. I got to travel with Dave Thomas for 20 years. I got an MBA just hanging around Dave Thomas. That was a great, obviously, learning experience and he became an incredible mentor of mine. I was there on the ground floor when we created the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption with the simple message, simple concept. The government is not a good parent. Foster care should be temporary. It’s not a permanent solution.
Mark: Sure.
Denny: If kids come in to foster care, it’s not because the kids did anything wrong. It’s usually the parents are not able to take care of their children. That’s why they’re put into foster care. If the courts decide that the parents are no longer suitable parents, then that child becomes available for adoption. At that point, let’s get them a home.
Mark: Yes.
Denny: Let’s not let them linger in foster care any longer than necessary. The foundation’s sole purpose was, let’s get these children out of foster care, into permanent loving homes. Every child deserves a home. It’s a basic tenant of life that we all take for granted if we have or are fortunate enough to have parents.
Mark: I agree. Obviously you’re well-versed in your job. You’re a great communicator.
Denny: That’s one thing that I should have some expertise in, yes.
Mark: To start a conversation, if I said to you March 22, 2005, what would you say?
Denny: March 22, 2005. That’s a shutter because it sounds like that was the infamous finger in the chili.
Mark: Yes it was.
Denny: As it was in San Jose, California.
Mark: Put your name into Google, that’s what comes up.
Denny: Yes it does. That perfect example of crisis management, because I believe if I’m not mistaken, that was a Saturday or a Sunday. We got a phone call. I got a phone call at my house at eight o’clock that said that we have a crisis in San Jose, California. A lady claims there is a body part in her chili. The television station is at the restaurant and they’re going live in one hour. What are we going to do? That was the premise. That’s how we started. The premise here is, that is not the time to create a crisis management program. That is the time where you better have everything lined up so you can just trigger it, put it into action …
Mark: Interesting.
Denny: … because you have about an hour in this case, about an hour to respond. We’re talking about a San Francisco television stations, which in today’s world has prospect of going national.
Mark: Correct.
Denny: It’s not like we’re dealing with something that will stay local. It’s probably not going to stay local. It’s at least going to get to San Francisco, at least get to the West coast. Maybe it goes nationally, but doesn’t. The premise is, you can’t decide then, “We’re in trouble. Who do we call?” You better have your list of contacts and better have your systems already in place.
Mark: What would be in that plan? What types of things would you be thinking about, “This is what we need to do”?
Denny: If I were counseling any business, small business, big business, I would start with what are the possible crises that are your worst nightmare? The ones that’ll put you out of business? If you start with that, and you say that’s the worst that could happen, then what I do is back a way through. If that were to happen today, what we’d do today. Then you start working it instead of, “I need to have a flow chart,” and, “I need to have an outline,” and “I need to have an org chart.” That’s what the textbooks do, but when you have a crisis, you have no time to go to a textbook. You have no time to go to a three-ring binder. You have to work at, “What did I teach myself,” or “What did I teach my support?” That’s my staff, on how to be prepared. One of the things Wendy’s restaurant, there’s 6,200 restaurants across the country. There’s a chance something wrong’s going to happen every day. We did, which we created five things that we wanted every restaurant manager to do. Only five, not a whole laundry list. It was take care of the safety of your employees and your customers. Close the restaurant if necessary. Turn off the cash registers. If necessary call 9-1-1. If not, call your boss. Talk to somebody if your boss isn’t there because today’s world you leave phone messages that may not get picked up for hours later.
Mark: Sure.
Denny: Call the boss’s boss. You have a phone tree all the way from the restaurant all the way to corporate office. My name and phone number was on 6,000 restaurants in the country. They didn’t all call me because that wasn’t the protocol. If they could reach anybody else, they’d have the freedom to call me.
Mark: You’re thinking worst-case?
Denny: Yes.
Mark: What’s going to happen worst case? What is going to put me out of the business and you’re trying to say, “Okay, we’re backing up from there.” Then we’re directing the people in control as to what to do if this were to happen, here’s some protocol.
Denny: Absolutely.
Mark: I find it interesting because you have franchisors who are really not your employees. You have a franchise agreement that you’d be dealing with. Was it baked into that? Was it part of that agreement like, “Here’s what you will do when a crisis…” because you could have a franchisor, “I’m not going to follow that. I’m going to go rogue. I’m going to handle it myself.”
Denny: Certainly because they’re independent business people, that’s their right to do but when you’re a franchise organization, one of the things that you’re buying into as a franchisee is a brand. You want somebody protecting that brand. The bad press in San Jose, California …
Mark: Effects everybody.
Denny: Effects everybody. If you’re the franchisee in Ohio, you want the franchisor Wendy’s to be protecting your assets …
Mark: Sure.
Denny: In California.
Mark: Sure.
Denny: In the California franchisee wants your assets protected in Ohio. It’s not written into a contract but the brand is there to protect all parties. Company, franchise, customer … It’s a Wendy’s restaurant.
Mark: Sure. We’ve worked another podcast to how important the brand is and having the brand have a seat in the board room. We talk about that in some of our previous episodes of our podcast here. Do we list 20 things on our crisis … or we want to make sure we address 20 things? Is it just the critical items? How deep do we have to go with items that we’re going to plan for?
Denny: If you plan for every crisis, if you were a retail business, so you have customers. If you worked a plan for every single potential crisis, you would have a three-ring binder that’s as big as some of your biggest client’s tax returns.
Mark: Correct.
Denny: That’s not impossible. What you can treat, you can teach a management approach to crisis. At Wendy’s we said, what is a crisis? It’s anything that will affect your sales. That’s what we teach the managers. Anything that’s going to affect your sales or affect the safety of your employees is a potential crisis. If that occurs, we want you to do these five things. You keep it simple because you have to. If you’re the owner, then you could be as complex as you want, but if you’re trying to create a system that your entry-level employee can follow, then it has to be as simple as possible. If I was an entrepreneur and I was a small business owner, if you’re a franchisee, this is what you look to the franchiser to do.
Mark: To provide that to you.
Denny: Provide that service to you.
Mark: Right.
Denny: Coincidentally, a side note, I would find most Wendy’s franchisees, they don’t want to handle it.
Mark: Not trained, don’t have the skill-set.
Denny: Exactly. They don’t have the trained skills. It’s like I say, you don’t put me in your restaurant at noon running your grill because I’ll slow down the line. I’ll slow down everybody. I’ll have everybody screaming because …
Mark: You’ll do a nice job telling the people it’s slowed down.
Denny: I’d try.
Mark: Because you’re a good communicator.
Denny: I said, “Why would I want you to be in front of a television camera if you’ve had no training?” Everybody is good at doing something and make certain you find the right people to do that job.
Mark: Right.
Denny: If I was an entrepreneur and I had a small business, I would have an attorney. I would have an accountant. If I didn’t have all of this expertise in crisis management, I would call the law firm. I’d call the accountant and say, “Help me. Find me some people that could help me in this situation,” so that you’re not trying to do it all on your own. I would still go through the process of saying, what’s my worst case scenario? If that were to happen, what do I need to do and who do I need? Who do I need the help from? If I get the police, it’s … We were in the food service business. If we have a crisis, this is not the time and health department’s coming in? It’s not the time to introduce yourself to the health department.
Mark: Make sure …
Denny: You should have done that beforehand. You should have a relationship with the health department. If you’re a retail business, you should know who the police precinct is and who’s there so that you’ve got some familiarity.
Mark: Some rapport.
Denny: In case something is happening, and you don’t want anything to happen, but in case something is happening, you’re not introducing yourself for the very first time to people that are going to have an impact on this crisis. They could influence it in a positive or a negative way.
Mark: You mentioned these five things. Are you allowed to say those five things where you talked about the phone tree? Safety?
Denny: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Some of it came very simple. If we’re a retail business, if you take care of the employees and the customers, that’s first and foremost. If that means call 9-1-1? You call 9-1-1.
Mark: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Denny: If that means close the restaurant? Close the restaurant. If it’s food related, then we want to have … If you have the food, then isolate it and put it in the freezer because all of the food that comes in the restaurant starts somewhere and it’s coded.
Mark: You could track it?
Denny: I can track it to the hour it was produced.
Mark: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Denny: Even the day the lettuce was pulled out of the field in Salinas, California. That’s the back off of a system that a big company has for its procurement and its quality assurance. To be able to have that evidence is helpful in tracking what caused the incident or what happened. Go back to San Jose, it was a fingertip that the lady put into the chili. This was consumer fraud. That’s all it was. Consumer fraud. She put it into her chili. The police came because they were called. In fact, she might have called the police. They came to the restaurant and told the restaurant manager to throw away all of the chili, so he threw away all of the evidence. We had no ability to track whether or not that fingertip was in our chili or just in her chili. We could resolve this in 24, 48 hours.
Mark: If you had not done that.
Denny: If we had not done that, but the police told the general manager. The general manager followed the authority.
Mark: Sure.
Denny: You can’t belittle and berate the general manager. He did what he thought was the right thing to do.
Mark: Correct.
Denny: If it’s product related, isolate the product so we can get the code numbers and start the phone tree. Start calling up the phone tree. It is a simple idea because if there’s a crisis occurs, and again if you’re a retail business, there’s emotion that is this high.
Mark: Yes.
Denny: If someone got hurt, it’s personal and you’re not thinking as clearly as you need to be thinking. It’s similar in a mindset of a doctor and a patient. The doctor sees the symptoms. The patient’s living the symptoms.
Mark: Right.
Denny: For a franchisee to be able to talk to somebody, in many cases me, I’m on the other end of the phone, who’s calm, who’s collected, saying, “I’d like you to do these things.” I would talk through three or four or five different things and if Mark, if you were emotionally caught up in your crisis, if this was your crisis, I might say, “Mark, just do one then call me back.” I’m not going to give you five things to do.
Mark: Right. Get lost.
Denny: Because the whole point is, you have to act. If an incident occurred and you went to the media and said no comment, Mark, what’s your interpretation if I’m Wendy’s and saying, “No comment”? What does that mean to you?
Mark: Guilty.
Denny: Yes.
Mark: … and you knew it.
Denny: In today’s world, you are guilty if you say no comment.
Mark: Correct.
Denny: … and you don’t believe politicians when they give you fake answers. They want to know that a corporation is one, taking it seriously, doing an investigation, they’re going to do something about it, they’re going to hold people accountable. Themselves, or they’re going to find out what is going on. That’s the importance of a brand. I look at it, a brand, put an analogy into a bank. Your business has a brand image.
Mark: Yes it does.
Denny: A major reputation. Every time you do something good, you’re making an investment, a deposit into your bank of trust, to your customers. Now something goes wrong. You’re going to have to take a withdrawal. It might be everything you’ve got. You have to have something in that trust bank in order to take something out because the customers will give you the benefit of the doubt if they trust you. If they believe you. An example in Columbus last year, Jeni’s Ice Cream.
Mark: Yes.
Denny: They had a serious problem and the first time that it occurred, the owner came out and she said, this is what the problem is and this is what we’re going to do about it and we’re going to re-open at this particular date. Because they have built up so much good will and image or reputation, the customers say, “Okay.”
Mark: Right.
Denny: Unfortunately they compounded the problem in that it wasn’t completed. It wasn’t finished.
Mark: Right.
Denny: That unfortunately hurt more the second time around because there was trust.
Mark: A withdraw was made a second time.
Denny: … and there’s nothing left in the bank to withdraw.
Mark: I get the sense that this doesn’t just apply to retail or large corporations. It could apply any. It can apply to the accounting firm here. We have trust and something critical could happen to us. I shudder to think what those are. Those are for off-mic conversation, but we should have a crisis plan and I would think all of our clients would have, or not-for-profit clients here the Dave Thomas Adoption organization should have a crisis plan because something could happen that as we’re talking about mix and withdrawal out of … and hurts your brand, and things need to be communicated and addressed. I agree with you that showing we’re looking into it, we take this seriously, goes a long way. Obviously you need to follow up on that. You need to be true and honest about that.
Denny: Absolutely. You cannot try to BS your way through a crisis because the truth will come out. If you make up an answer, look at politicians and how many times they get burnt by the fact that somebody’s going to fact check what they’re saying. Look at businesses that have chosen to say no comment or to deflect the blame onto somebody else.
Mark: Yes.
Denny: Ford had a problem once, the Explorer with their tires. What did Ford do? Mistakenly blamed the tire manufacturer. The tire manufacturer says, “You lowered the standard of quality and that’s why you got bad tires.” As a customer, I don’t care. I’m not going to buy that tire nor am I going to buy a Ford.
Mark: What other low quality are you accepting that I don’t know about?
Denny: Right. It’s not my problem, but neither of you have distinguished yourself and have been honorable and reputable. There are example after example. Unfortunately, the businesses learn this example after they’ve been severely burned.
Mark: Right.
Denny: Those and a lot of it is because the senior management has closed their ranks and listened to those advisors that they believe will help them the most and my belief would be, those advisors aren’t telling them the absolute truth that this is the consequences. Benefit of Wendy’s, we had a legal team, very commonsensical lawyers, we had accountants with HR folks. They were all on our crisis team. We would bring the situation into a room and our CEO ran it. We would meet once or twice a day depending on the severity of the crisis and really hash through what we were doing. We had a situation one time where unfortunately there was a robbery and they murdered three of our employees and it was during … the restaurant was open at the time and we offered and thought that the right thing to do was to pay the funeral expenses. The insurance folks and lawyers says, “Well, you know you’re setting a precedent. You can’t do that just setting a precedent.” I have an Irish temper and it went off. I said, “Yes. We are setting a precedent. The next time somebody comes in and shoots and kills our employees we’re going to cover their expenses too.” That’s the precedent, so what’s the right thing to do?
Mark: Correct. Be honest and true about it.
Denny: There was no more conversation. It was the business approach, minimize expenses, minimize the damage, cut it off here, don’t do this … boy that comes out of the woodwork like that because we’re kind of trained that way.
Mark: Sure but then you lose … that damages the brand and this withdrawal. It would be tremendous.
Denny: Ultimately it does so, back to what I was circling back to say, in your confidence, you can’t just have people who are going to agree with you. You have to have people who are going to be honest with you and tell you this is what’s really going on. It doesn’t mean you have to go their way but you have to be able to hear. You have to hear both sides.
Mark: I agree. I love when you’re in a room full of ten people and you have one person with a descending opinion. I love that, just to get that out there on the table. I think that is so impressive. Some things that I’m taking away from, I really liked your thing about, we’re going to come up with this plan not when we’re under duress. Where you can think clearly. Here’s what’s going to happen and I might be feeling this way so I need to make sure I’m doing this and not fall into a trap. We talk about that with our clients when they’re negotiating. Don’t try to settle something when you’re all stressed out. Hopefully try to anticipate what might happen before you even sign an agreement. You’re not under duress, you’re thinking clearly, you’re not emotional similar to what you said.
Denny: One of the little tools I always employed was I would say, “I want to do one, two, and three.” Then I’d say, “Okay, that’s what I want to do.” I visualize looking through a glass door and that was my view. I visually went around the other side and said, “Now I want to see it from that person’s point of view.” It’s different. Is the picture different?
Mark: Right.
Denny: Significantly different, then I’d better stop what I’m doing and find out why is that picture significantly different? That willingness to do that is so important because you’re going to minimize making a further mistake.
Mark: Correct. When you started that hour time frame, you don’t have the ability or the mental capacity to remove yourself and step around them.
Denny: Exactly.
Mark: You can’t do that.
Denny: Exactly. One of the very first steps that I took that night in that first hour was, there was somebody at the restaurant and I got them on the phone and I said, “I want you to put the phone down and you go to every employee and you check their fingers. I want you to tell me.” They said, “This is …” you know, I said, it’ll make a difference. “I want you to tell me that.”
Mark: Right.
Denny: The reason that because I was able to say to the media that the employee who made … we make our chili in the restaurant every day. That’s huge piece of news to know because it’s not brought in so I’m able to say that if everybody’s got their fingers okay, it didn’t come from us.
Mark: Right.
Denny: It could have, unless we had an employee sabotage, but putting that aside, you’re able to cast just a little bit of doubt into the story.
Mark: You could also have said you’ve launched your investigation.
Denny: Very true.
Mark: I could have helped you out.
Denny: You could have helped me out there, Mark.
Mark: Before we wrap up, Denny, there’s a question we ask every guest. If you could have one super power, what would it be?
Denny: The capacity to really live in the moment, to enjoy everything that life is presenting. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I don’t mean enjoy the ugly, but you appreciate all of that. You appreciate everything that you’ve got in that moment. If I could do that, I just think that it would add so much greater richness to the life that I have.
Mark: Very powerful. Thanks for joining us today Denny. Listeners, if you want more business management insight, check out the additional resources we’ve included in this episode at www.reacpa.com/podcast. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or on SoundCloud. Until next time, I’m Mark Van Benschoten for unsuitable on Rea Radio, encouraging you to loosen up your tie and think outside the box.
