YouSaid · the spoken record

Cynthia Schneider

lines on the record: 74
first: 2022-07-13
most recent: 2022-07-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, look, if you, well, what would you like the company to do is just quietly improve and the customers shouldn't know? That's quite unfair. And the bar is pretty high for getting one of those. Trust me, they tend to not get written unless they're deserved.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really feel for the CEOs, and it's there's no amount of talking that gets them to really appreciate this, there may be 150 stories that are all very, very critical, rightly or wrongly, no matter what. There's one turnaround story. It's just You only get one of those”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's probably one of the biggest mistakes that companies make is by trying to do it too early when they don't have enough progress or milestones or growth to show that they have started to turn around. And they may put their CEO or spokesperson out there a little too early. They're not quite ready for that turnaround story. What you end up with is a story that is maybe 80% of rehashing the past, 20% of where you're going in the future. You want that flip.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Post crisis is actually not a moment in time. A lot of people look at are the stories stopping. Consider that the end. If the company actually did something wrong or has an opportunity to improve, whether it's been portrayed fairly or not, the end of the crisis is really once you've worked through all of that, right? Have you improved your privacy policies? Have you shipped a new phone? Have you improved employee morale or culture or whatnot? And that takes a much longer time.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is no division, and especially if you're a founder, CEO, you and the company are essentially the same. And even if the focus, let's say, of the stories are on the personal issue, guess what? Your company is going to be mentioned in every single one of those stories. So it becomes a brand issue for your company regardless. Yeah.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this is like the biggest thing that I think founders in particular have to go through if you're a CEO of a large company, you get it. You know, there's no separating you from that company. It's maybe harder for some of the earlier stage tech founders to have to go through and realize is that they think, okay, this is this very personal thing. And I don't want it to affect the company. So I will go deal with this personal thing on my own. And they don't necessarily treat it like a company crisis early enough. And then they have to learn the hard way when it becomes a full-blown crisis.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, there's an ethical component to it. Obviously, right? There comes a point when you're in our jobs, are we just like, you know what, you guys do that. I have to be out of here. And that is in tension with the other component, which is extremely equally important, which is loyalty because you don't want to ditch, you know, a friend or a company or a brand just because the going got tough. That happens to everyone. But there is a line and every person has to decide for themselves what is that line.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can say, like, I can't help And have customers, employees, and media believe that when you say something, that they can buy the product or take the job. And once you break that, like with media, it's basically a recoverable.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You've got a problem You get arrested, something like that. Your lawyer doesn't actually want to know kind of whether you did it or not because their job is to defend Keith. I actually like to know really what happened because once you lie to the media, you're basically fucked.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do, particularly when I have a trusted relationship. Here's where we're coming from, and also here is why we are not commenting publicly, right? Lots of very legitimate Very ethical, good reasons not to go on the record. There are a million shades in every story worth reporting has a million shades of gray in it”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, what do you tell the reporter on the other end? More importantly, the question this is the question I wanted to get at what do you think about going off the record and telling the real backstory and then certain things on the record off the record? How do you manage that?”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a part of yes, you got to get the facts out there. You have to make sure you have all those facts first. And then you also have to figure out like what's your argument. Like, how do you piece it all together? What are those important facts to piece together for people?”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Half the stuff And then there's the story that is out there externally, and really trying to understand, okay, so this is how it's being perceived based on the information that they have. So how do we handle that part of it? And how do we factor that in?”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You guys are just both like vehemently that's not possible. That's not how it works. It's impossible to control. And that's why, to Margaret's point, some people are better in those situations than others. Communications people are very comfortable in those situations because we're used to not being able to control. And that's to say,”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let's say you've done this, you know, there's two phases we've described. You have this information gathering phase of fact finding. You've been updating either publicly or internally all these different factors. And now we're in the actual response phase, like the formal response you might issue. So let's just go back now to the last phase, which is after the crisis.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, if you do an all hands meeting, you might want to do an email saying, like, everybody drop what they're doing and show up right here to signal, you know, shock and awe, right? You just need to understand what the regular framework is and whether you want to use that regular framework or you want a counter program and signal, you know, a big moment that way.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's very much a reason to do the opposite. If you want to signal to the company, look, this is a big moment for the company. This is a make it or break it moment. You might want to use the opposite tactics.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do we normally do those all hand meetings? How do we normally email? Who do those things come from? How are these, like, what is the culture of our company and how is that so far shown up in how we communicate?”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's great It's also, quite frankly, a baseline, a truth barometer. It's like a lie detector test. Is this person telling me the truth from the previous conversations or are they talking really weird all of a sudden?”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's situationally very, very specific. I will also say you ought to start an internal communications cadence very early on. Don't wait for the crisis. You want to have built trust with the employees because let's say there's a lawsuit. Your company all of a sudden is in a lawsuit. You feel is completely unfair. But like you are very much shackled. The lawyers are telling you this pending litigation. You can't afford it. You can't afford a leak even if you are doing an all-hands meeting and there's nothing written down. You know, stuff could be recorded. People could leak it anyways. You just can't say anything. If you have established trust with the employee base beforehand, they will have faith that you're doing the right thing for the company and that you would be more forthcoming were you able to. That's great. Right. So that is just important to establish, you know, way before you hit a problem”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the most important parts of this whole crisis scenario is what happens on the internal communication side. It is so important to be talking to the employees about what's going on. Ideally, they know if it's a big story that's going to break. They know about that story before it breaks. And they understand where it's coming from, maybe background, the real story, if it's different, what have you.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's also this element of some people do really well in a crisis and some people do not well in a crisis. And some people... A very good at listening to like, this is what the community is actually saying. And some people need to put their blinders on. A lot of the ability to manage through is sort of the ability to deftly manage, read the room, read the signals, understand who is good at what, who can handle what to get to the outcome that you need to get.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why you have to have this core team that are in your either virtual or real war room who are all communicating with each other very clearly on here are what our touch points are going to be. So in this situation, we need to check back hourly or we're going to get back on the phone all at four. And here's where we're going to have figured out by then. And then here's who's in charge of this monitoring. Here's how these reports are going to be going out. We're going to come back at this time and figure out, okay, based on that, here's what we're going to do.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you do that in a constructive way, though? Because I can't imagine it's very constructive while you're trying to figure this out. You already have all this information streams coming to you. Do you have like an hourly report, a daily report? Does everyone look at it at once? Do you send a report to the people, all the stakeholders? Does someone gather it? If you're in the middle of a crisis in a war room, you can barely check your phone. How do you, I mean, kind of break it down for me like tactically.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Might just be trusted with their community. It doesn't necessarily have to be like through PR immediate, but how much are they talking directly to their customers? Like, what is that language that they're using directly through that product to handle things? So when we talk to people about building their brand, it's also like, how do you build yourself a really strong brand that can withstand some of these crisis situations where you can maybe come out of it like better for it versus like even more in a deficit?”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not everybody has access to top-notch PR and comms people. I mean, they might be starting out. They might have a very junior person working with them. How do they sort of get that sort of trust and currency if they don't already have it?”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this is where it's really important what your record is up to the date that the crisis happened. And this does at the culture point you're mentioning. How well have you articulated what it is that you guys do, who you guys are, what you stand for? Have you built relationships in the media? Do people feel like you've been forthright? Like, have you built that trust? If you don't have much of that, you're going to be in a much, much worse place because people are coming from a lack of understanding and they're probably going to assume the worst. But not everything.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was just listening to a podcast we recently did where one of the machine learning startup founders described how when it comes to machine learning and AI, it feels like a black box a lot of people. And so you kind of want to actually intentionally give transparency to how the algorithm arrives at a decision or how it works. And I think this problem will come more and more as you have a lot of tech that's obscure to people. And they don't know quite who to blame.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And, you know, the thing that that example shows was also appropriate for the reader, developers, technical people, right? So it's just really hard to do any hand waving to a community like that. And you're like, you know, trust me, it's not going to happen again. Salesforce actually was a really good example way back in the day when I was still at Outcast, they had some outage problem. That was way more common then because, you know, weren't all as savvy at it as we are now. And what they did, they went full transparency. They put up a site and it was a permanent website and you could just see what the status was. People calm down because they could just go to that separate site”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the example that pops into my mind as Amazon, they had a huge outage and they never have an outage. And they did like a very detail, to your point. Very factual. Like, here's what happened there was a cascading error, it went from this system to this system. I did read it carefully. I don't remember them actually saying like, we're extremely sorry for this, but they did say something to the effect of we that we care about you and this is very top of mind for us.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sounds like no offense to the lawyers, founds that some lawyer wrote it to protect you while you're apologetic. Like, actually, do it. This is what happened. Here's how we're fixing it, you know, on and on and on, right? And then with a heartfelt apology, right? You can't expect, so if you don't do it properly, there's this cognitive dissonance, right? Where one company, then you have this weird other language and I don't actually understand what happened, but you keep wanting me to buy your stuff. It just doesn't quite i”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, those are all the things that you have to figure out because each of these situations is going to be so incredibly unique. But are we people who blog a lot? Do we have a really vocal community and we're talking to them all the time? Are we stealth and we actually are rarely out there ever? You know, would it be really setting a huge precedent for us to write a when we've never really talked about what we're doing up to this point?”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And white actors are apologizing for, right? Wrong. And what are you apologizing for? You don't want to, I think, rush that too much because number one, you want it to be thorough. You want it to be accurate. And you want it for the right genuine? You know, talking about how do you react to the situation, I think this is where you really have to go in and consider like who are we as a brand? What is our voice? How do we normally communicate with people?”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't think that every company just automatically apologized. I mean, I think some companies wait for bad cycle number five to go like, all right, I may have to, you know, and then some apologies are just shitty, right? So I think Ben, I forget who where did this quote originated, but like when you eat shit, don't nibble. That's a Ben quote.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just totally freaking disagree. VW did none of that. They went through the legal process of how much they need to give their customers back. They could have saved themselves some time. So you're saying apologies”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People that just don't think about that enough. Don't overrotate on the response at the expense of actually trying to figure out what it is. I'd love to get your guys' thoughts on the right way to do this. Because you guys have said in the past, like, own it, own your narrative. And I agree that's a good thing to do. But it feels like people are now sort of automatically playing this playbook. Like you just automatically issue an apology.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, yeah, it was more of a yes and. It's not like you go quiet in the time that I'm just saying, in the arc of history, do you actually get to end what does it permanently tarnish your people that just don't think about that at all?”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Crises are schizophrenic because you do need to show that you're on it, but I think people often overrotate on having the statement. I actually think the way to think about it that's more important is, okay, so people have a certain understanding of your company before the crisis. And when it's all said and done, what you want them to think about the company after the crisis. And you do get some time. And then can you put it behind you where people go like, oh, that's VW. They cheated on their emissions testing. And this is what happened. And now I can buy that car again. That's the, and that can take a while.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They can't put all their clients on their website necessarily. So there's the identification of the crisis, a quick huddle with all the key stakeholders to quickly figure out if there's an initial response. And then there is the getting everyone together to actually talk about the what and the fact gathering phase. And then there's how do we. Respond after we've done the fact gathering. What happens if fact finding takes too long and you need, you feel this urgency to respond?”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Find these people. You need a Google search. Yeah, names will pop up, but that business is so discreet, it works purely by referral. Yeah. And if you have worked with them, then you know like, oh, they handled this and they handled that. But like they can't talk about their work. So it's. It's purely a referral thing”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What are some of the tips you have for thinking about crisis firms versus regular PR firms? Like, what's the difference? I mean, do you do a Google search like crisis PR firm? How do you find these people”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do we have all the right people together to help us figure this out? So in some cases, you may need to hire a crisis firm. These types of folks are very accustomed to actually jumping in very quickly.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like spotting that. And then the process kicks in, and there was this other loop that you identify the crisis, you do the quick huddle, and then you have these daily or hourly phone calls. And just know that usually every one of those calls, they spin up another set of activities. Yeah. So for example,”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find it most often happens to maybe companies that are misunderstood or maybe haven't done as great of a job with their story. They might get lumped in because people just don't understand it as well.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You also have to think about the current environment and what's going on. Like, what are the media paying attention to, chasing? So, you know, we all experience there in us. We all experience sort of what's been going on with Uber recently. There were zenefits last year. There are, you know, these companies that go through these big media cycles. And so that's very much on people's mind. And so when you can see maybe similar patterns or...”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Isn't there sort of a phenomenon on here? And I've noticed this in particular with tech folks, and I've worked with those kinds of folks for a long time as well. That there's this sort of belief of truth as what's in code and what sort of like the sort of neutral idea of facts. There's a surprise, that perception can be reality.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they often are feeling attacked. You know, it starts with, let's say, a claim somebody's come out to make about your company. It could be a lawsuit from another company. It could be a story that's coming out and trying to do an expose on the company or make a claim. And so, you know, immediately are put on the defense. So these founders, these CEOs, it's their company. It's their baby. So, yeah, I think it's normal for it to become a heightened emotional situation and with that is going to come some therapy. And there's a bit of detective work that needs to get done. And some of the folks involved may not understand what information is most relevant to what you're dealing with. And so you have to ask really smart questions.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“CEO, and not to minimize it. If there's a problem at the company, you know, I think people assume that people lie, but people do also sometimes lie to themselves because what is really going on is sometimes very hard to face.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Accurately And the other value besides trust is this openness I'm hearing because I think the instinct when I think of therapy as an analogy, what's the point of hiring a therapist if you're not going to tell them the truth and you're just sharing the same lies you lie to yourself without talking to them about it? No, I'm serious. Like if you think about it like a crisis feels like a moment of therapy with you and the CEO.”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they're often going to be your voice publicly, too, because PR folks are the ones who are taking all the calls from the media. They're representing you and they can't represent you well or accurately or fairly if they don't know what the facts are”
2022-07-13 · a16z Podcast · Crisis Communications 101 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source