Lovell Communications Inc.

Like many of you, I’ve been following the Toyota recall with great interest. Aside from the many PR lessons to be learned, I’m fascinated by the role Toyota’s corporate culture seems to have played in shaping not only the company’s response to the crisis but also in shaping the very crisis itself.

Revered for its meticulous attention to quality, many industries – including healthcare – have tried to take a page from Toyota’s playbook, developing ‘lean’ business processes and encouraging employees to take ownership of quality. The famed “Toyota Way” empowers employees to pull the andon line – a cord placed on every assembly line – and stop production when they see a problem. It also advocates going to the root of a problem to solve it and sharing that information across the company.

However, new reports suggest Toyota’s top management may not have been practicing what it preached. A recent Wall Street Journal article examined how the company’s secretive culture likely contributed to its problems. Long known to regulators as being resistant to outside input, Toyota appears to have turned a blind eye to information coming from within its own organization as well.

After the first cases of sudden acceleration were reported in 2004, the company worked with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on multiple investigations over the course of three years – each time denying problems. Even as a 2007 probe resulted in the recall of 55,000 vehicles for floor mats that could pin the gas pedal, Toyota insisted no defects existed. It continued to make this claim as new reports of fatal crashes tied to sudden acceleration – including those involving vehicles without the defective floor mats – began trickling in.

At the same time, Toyota was dealing with similar problems across the pond. Incidents of sudden acceleration in Europe were traced to a defective part in the gas pedal – a problem that would later be linked to a second, much larger U.S. recall. However, the company failed to share this information across its own organization. Even as the pedal was being redesigned in Europe, Toyota was insisting a similar problem didn’t exist in the U.S. It later admitted it “failed to connect the dots.”

While it’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback, it certainly appears Toyota’s arrogance factored heavily into its current situation. Had the company pulled its own andon line at the first sign of trouble, perhaps it might have been able to avoid production shut-downs and plummeting sales. More importantly, lives might have been saved.

This story serves as a powerful reminder that a company’s culture – no matter how renowned – must continually be nurtured. And that starts at the top.

I have been blessed to work with some of the finest corporate attorneys in the country, but it is not always an easy partnership.  At times it can seem like legal and PR professionals are formed differently in the womb.  But when these experts make a love connection, the work product can be truly magnificent.

Because of my work in corporate crisis communications, I frequently interact with general counsel and corporate litigators in the areas of regulatory compliance and medical liability. These legal professionals are navigating highly sensitive issues that threaten significant consequences to their company or client – consequences like million dollar fines, restrictions on business development, cessation of the company’s operations and even jail time.

In my experience, productive and reciprocal relationships with attorneys correlate to successful business outcomes.   Attorneys who understand and appreciate – though sometimes grudgingly – the perspective of public relations professionals prove to have their clients’ best interests at heart … not just their legal interests. Some attorneys will go so far as to acknowledge that PR professionals bring a different and valuable set of tools to the table that can, in some cases, actually help to pre-empt further legal tribulations.

But partnership between practitioners of these arts is not always comfortable, particularly when they are “thrown together” just as their client’s issue has caught fire. Consider how seemingly divergent legal and PR gut instincts can be:

Legal:  “Say nothing.”
PR: “Be transparent.”

Legal: “Protect everything from discovery.”
PR: “Protect your stakeholders from surprises.”

Legal: “Preserve attorney-client privilege.”
PR: “Preserve the brand.”

Legal: “Keep your head down.”
PR: “Keep your relationships strong.”

But these natural tendencies can be overcome when the two functions work together to achieve common goals. Consider a few examples from our firm’s experience:

• We developed and helped implement a “Sorry Works” approach to a medical liability situation involving the preventable death of a 30-year old pregnant mother and her child; no civil suit was filed.

• We helped craft the legal response to a survey that was part of a regulatory investigation with the goal of preventing misleading sound bites that could be taken out of context. We also helped the client to educate reporters and explain the circumstances of the investigation.  Ultimately, media coverage was minimal and neutral – though coverage of a very similar issue at another company was extensive and inflammatory … and damaging.

• After a crime was alleged to have occurred at a New Orleans business following Hurricane Katrina we worked closely with legal counsel and media to ensure the company was not inappropriately associated with the crime. Media interest has continued for years, but our client’s name historically appears in less than five percent of coverage.

In truth, legal and public relations professionals must work together on heated crisis issues.

Be assured, if PR is not brought to the table at the onset of the issue, they will be needed down the line.

Visit our blog next  week when I discuss how the courts of law and public opinion intersect (with sparks) in the arena of social media.