Category Archives: Reputation Risk

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Jacksonville Murders Force Reassessment of Active Shooter Risks

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A mass shooting at a video game tournament in Jacksonville, Florida on Sunday has once again shined a spotlight on the growing risks businesses face even as they conduct normal operations.

A lone shooter, 24-year-old David Katz, opened fire on football video gamers at a pizza restaurant, killing two and injuring at least nine before turning the gun on himself in an adjacent restaurant. Reports indicate that Katz was allegedly upset at being eliminated from the tournament. One of the deceased victims was a player who defeated Katz in a prior tournament, leading investigators to believe there had been a motive for the shooting. 

The effect of mass shootings has left Florida numb, especially since this follows the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, which left 17 dead and 17 injured; and the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016, leaving 49 dead and 53 injured. These tragedies demonstrate that no business or venue should consider itself inherently safe and serve as reminders to risk professionals in all sectors that their organizations could be vulnerable to a mass shooting.

Public Safety
The shooting was unique in that it occurred during a live broadcast of the football gaming tournament. Gunshots were clearly audible as players delivered commentary during their simulated contests, prompting them to take cover and call the police, who responded minutes after receiving the first call.  

The incident marked the 235th mass shooting in the U.S., according to the Gun Violence Archive, an organization that collects information about gun-related violence in the country. The FBI and the United States’ Congressional Research Service consider a mass shooting to be one that injures at least four people, excluding the shooter.

In light of this increasingly commonplace threat, understanding how to respond to an active shooter situation can mean the difference between life and death. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has provided the Run.Hide.Fight plan for guidance in what to do in an active shooter scenario.

Mental Health
As more information about Katz emerges, the links between gun violence, mental health and public safety in the United States become more evident.

CNN reported that Katz had a history of mental health issues and legally purchased a 9mm handgun and a .45-caliber handgun in Maryland. How he transported the weapons and ammunition across state lines and into the event are details still being investigated.

CNN also obtained police records that show 26 calls to the police from the Katz family home in Columbia, Maryland, from 1993 to 2009, for issues ranging from “mental illness” to domestic disputes. At least two of those calls involved Katz arguing with his mother, although none of the reports provided to CNN indicate any physical violence.

Since 2013, residents in Maryland must obtain a handgun qualification license from the state police before purchasing a pistol or revolver. That means Katz would have submitted his fingerprints, undergone a background check (which includes disqualifying individuals who were voluntarily or involuntarily hospitalized for more than 30 days), and passed a firearms safety training course to buy those guns. This scenario has been met with wide skepticism. And since some of his documented mental health issues may have occurred before the gun laws were revised, the disqualifications may not have applied to Katz.

“That clearly is an area in need of reform,” said Democratic Sen. Robert Zirkin, who chairs a Senate committee that handles gun laws.

Insurance
Risk Management magazine recently reported that companies may not be aware of potential gaps in their coverage or that the limits of their coverage, when considering active shooter incidents, are insufficient.

“You might have property coverage, but you might not have assessed your properties in specific locations against this type of risk,” said Robert Hartwig, clinical associate professor of finance and co-director of the Risk and Uncertainty Management Center at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business.“You almost certainly would not have crisis management under your ordinary property or liability policy. So these represent gaps that, as a risk manager, you might be unaware of.”

Beyond property damage, it can be unclear what is covered after a shooting. For example it is difficult to establish the liability for allowing an assailant on a property. “Unfortunately, the increase in the number of active shooter situations has probably gotten ahead of the law on this issue,” Hartwig said. He added that a number of states do allow individuals to carry concealed weapons much, if not all, of the time. “So it’s not necessarily the case that, just by entering the premises with a weapon, individuals are violating the law. Therefore, a business is not necessarily negligent by allowing an armed individual to enter its premises.”  

Resiliency in 2018: Q&A With BCI’s David Thorp

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Organizational resiliency is a focus of the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) and executive director David Thorp. It was the theme of this year’s annual Business Continuity Awareness Week, which Risk Management Monitor covered in May, and was the focus of BCI’s updated manifesto.

We reached out to Thorp to get his insight on organizational resiliency, how businesses can improve their continuity plans and for ways to better incorporate them into their culture.

Risk Management Monitor: What companies have best demonstrated resilience?

David Thorp: A few examples of organizations that have displayed a high level of resilience are Apple, TomTom, and PostNL.

Apple displayed resilience when they reemployed Steve Jobs to reshape the company.

TomTom started by making software for Palm computers. It has dealt with a rapidly changing marketplace and over the years it has:

  • produced navigation software for PDAs (personal digital assistant)
  • produced its own navigation devices
  • developed live traffic information
  • acquired a digital mapping company
  • developed navigation software for smartphones
  • struck up deals with car manufacturers

PostNL (formerly TNT) has had to adapt to the decline in regular mail as well as tapping into the requirement to deliver more packages (outside working hours) as a result of an increase of web shops.

RMM:  What do organizations most commonly overlook in their continuity planning?

DT: Two most commonly overlooked aspects are keeping plans up to date and exercising/testing.

Business continuity management is often initiated as a project, usually assisted with external expertise. Internal personnel frequently have this role in addition to their “normal” functions. As the organization changes, these plans often get overlooked. After one or two exercises have been carried out, the focus on exercising quickly diminishes.

Unfortunately, these two aspects have a large impact on the ability to recover as planned. It could be argued that this is an indication of a lack of management commitment.

RMM: Why do so many companies overlook their continuity planning and emergency preparedness?

DT: The biggest reason is that it is not a requirement for many organizations. When not required by a regulator or a customer, the organization must:

  1. know about continuity planning and emergency preparedness
  2. understand their risk
  3. understand its value before there is a possibility of it being implemented

By not having done a risk or impact analysis, it is also easy for organizations to think that a disruptive event will not happen to them and therefore not worth the hassle and investment.

RMM: How much time and effort does creating and initiating a business continuity plan take?

DT: This depends on the size and complexity of the organization, the ambition level and the resources available. For small organizations, it is possible to create and exercise plans within a month—but this would typically take a little longer as the required people will also have other tasks. For a large and more complex organization, it may take two-to-three years to reach the desired maturity level.

RMM: What advances would you like to see the global risk management community achieve with regard to planning and preparedness?

DT: I would like to see a better understanding of each other’s disciplines and a better collaboration between them. There is much overlap between the two disciplines and with better collaboration, we can more efficiently and effectively minimize risks and improve the continuity. We are currently working on better understanding how we achieve synergy between business continuity and risk management. We see this as being a prerequisite for achieving organizational resilience. Collaboration with other disciplines is also necessary.

RMM: We’ve seen examples of reputation crises that have in some cases forced companies to close. How can organizations avoid these pitfalls?

DT: A major factor in managing the extent of the reputation damage is the quality of the crisis communication. How well and honestly you inform those affected and of course how you deal with social media makes the difference in how you are perceived. The subsequent actions need to be in line with the messages communicated.

RMM: What has changed in the BCI’s Manifesto for Organizational Resilience that risk professionals should know about?

DT: The manifesto is built on the simple premise that resilience is not the responsibility of one part of the organization—it is the responsibility of discipline within an organization working closely together toward a common purpose. Risk Management, emergency planning, disaster recovery, security, facilities management, business continuity management, supply chain management, IT management, HR management…all have an equal role to play in delivering resilience.

The manifesto contains our undertaking to seek out alliances with other professional bodies along the spectrum of what might be termed “resilience disciplines” in order to work collaboratively. This would make organizations more resilient than if we each work within our own silo.

Starbucks And Coffee Industry To Reassess Strategies

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The coffee industry is poised for moderate growth in the next five years, but is warned of an emerging risk: an informed consumer, according to a recent IBISWorld report.

“Despite long-term, aggregate declines in healthy eating, consumers are more aware of health issues associated with fatty foods and are increasingly going out of their way to avoid them,” its latest Coffee & Snack Shops industry report notes. Consumers who are more aware of the nutritional information of a Starbucks Frappuccino, for example, may be less inclined to make repeat purchases. “The healthy eating index is expected to stagnate [in] 2018, but as consumers’ diets progressively improve, this driver continues to pose a threat to industry operators,” IBISWorld said.

Last week, in Starbucks’ financial release, President and CEO Kevin Johnson acknowledged his clientele’s evolving tastes. “We must move faster to address the more rapidly changing preferences and needs of our customers,” he said.

And so, with the Seattle-headquartered roaster and retailer leading the charge, the industry is expected to get creative and a bit more versatile. In its five-year forecast, IBISWorld suggests that coffee alone can no longer fuel the industry’s expansion, which is expected to stay resilient at an annualized rate of 0.9% to $51 billion. “Nontraditional, high-margin menu items, such as iced coffee drinks, breakfast items and wraps,” featured in “unsaturated markets while experimenting with different store formats,” will help generate growth, the report stated.

Furthermore, the collective habits may change everything from coffee retailers’ food and beverage offerings to their physical store layouts. The IBISWorld report stated:

Major operators, such as Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, are expected to expand their menus and remodel the designs of their locations over the five years to 2023 to increase sales and draw a wider range of customers.

Assessing the Risk of Growth
The forecast was certainly prophetic, considering that Starbucks announced plans to close 150 stores due to underperformance just last week. It seems that more manageable expansion efforts will level some profit margins; where Starbucks wanted to hit 3-5% growth, 1% is more pragmatic. According to the company’s statement:

Starbucks is optimizing its U.S. store portfolio at a more rapid pace in FY19, including shifting new company-operated store growth to underpenetrated markets, slowing licensed store growth, and increasing the closure of underperforming company-operated stores in its most densely penetrated markets to approximately 150 in FY19 from a historical average of up to 50 annually. In FY19, this will result in a slightly lower growth rate in net new company-operated stores. 

Last August, Risk Management Monitor reported that Starbucks’ expansion efforts were to the point that there was almost a store on every corner—with an estimated 3.6 locations within a one-mile radius of each other. The realization marked the end of an aggressive growth strategy, in which 8,000 shops were added over a seven-year period. It was also underscored by a 1% downgrade in its share price. IBISWorld still ranks ‘Bucks as the leader of the coffee and snack shops market in the U.S. with a 23.2% market share (followed by Dunkin’ Brands at 17%), and the move is apparently part of a refocused strategy.

Michael J. Mazarr, a senior political scientist at RAND Corporation noted that reassessing Starbucks’ growth rate will help maintain its leadership status. And while businesses can learn by following the company’s example, they should ask deeper, more strategic questions.

“Clearly a major risk to a company like [Starbucks] would be even a modest swing in consumers who believe that the company has gotten too big. The fascinating questions would be: ‘To what extent did they analyze this?,’ ‘anticipate possible changes?,’ ‘think clearly about risks and outcomes?,’ and ‘did they get some assumptions or expectations slightly wrong?” Mazarr told Risk Management Monitor. “Businesses obviously have invalid expectations all the time—not all of those cases are examples of failed risk management or being blind to consequentialist thinking. Sometimes they are trying to think deeply and rigorously about consequences; they just guess wrong.”

Mazarr has contributed to Risk Management magazine with an article exploring consequence management and the “character of risk,” which you can read here.

Reputational Crisis Forces Cambridge Analytica’s Closure

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Most of us are aware of the recent scandal involving Facebook and political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, wherein the latter company obtained data from up to 87 million Facebook users and, in turn, built profiles of individual voters and their political preferences to best target advertising and sway voter sentiment. This information was used to enable Donald Trump’s campaign in the 2016 presidential election.

Right around that time it was reported that the Cambridge Analytica board of directors suspended CEO Alexander Nix. This action was taken after a whistleblower claimed Nix set up a “fake office” in Cambridge to present a more academic side to the company, and made comments to undercover reporters  that “do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation.”

A feature about the scandal in Risk Management’s current issue explains why the incident was not a data breach and how companies can learn from this and comply with EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in time for its May 25 implementation.

In the aftermath of the scandal and Cambridge Analytica’s concession that it will not be able to recover from its reputational crisis—although the company’s leadership maintains that it acted ethically—the UK-based firm and its affiliates announced on May 2 that it will be “ceasing all operations.” Excerpts from its statement are below:

Over the past several months, Cambridge Analytica has been the subject of numerous unfounded accusations and, despite the Company’s efforts to correct the record, has been vilified for activities that are not only legal, but also widely accepted as a standard component of online advertising in both the political and commercial arenas.    

Despite Cambridge Analytica’s unwavering confidence that its employees have acted ethically and lawfully, which view is now fully supported by [Queen’s Counsel Julian Malins] report, the siege of media coverage has driven away virtually all of the Company’s customers and suppliers. As a result, it has been determined that it is no longer viable to continue operating the business, which left Cambridge Analytica with no realistic alternative to placing the Company into administration.

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This once again demonstrates how attacks in the court of public opinion can cripple a business.

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Despite a fast reaction and being exonerated by a credible authority, no amount of crisis management and communication could make up for the actions of Cambridge Analytica’s leadership. It also seems that the company had not considered a business continuity plan for a reputation crisis of this magnitude.

Last year, Steel City Re CEO Nir Kossovsky wrote for Risk Management Monitor about reputational risk—reflecting on it and warning of the consequences to an organization. When public anger rises, he said, “more blame is being cast upon recognizable targets, such as CEOs.”

And while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems to have dodged the bullets fired his way during a Congressional hearing last month (did you #deletefacebook?), Cambridge Analytica’s leadership knew that, based on its actions and the cavalcade of accusations, neither their clients nor the public would ever “like” them again.

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