When a crisis affects you or your organization, you should always aim to to have a timely, informative, and compassionate response that ultimately restores trust. Unfortunately for Boeing, the company was not well-prepared to handle what should have been one of its most highly-anticipated potential crisis scenarios. As Boeing’s reputation continues to reel as a result of its failure to effectively manage a crisis caused by two fatal crashes of its 737 Max planes, it is important to reflect on the organization’s missteps in handling the crisis.

Public opinion condemned the response for being passive and defensive. Let’s explore these accusations.

  • Silence

By saying too little, the company created a vacuum and enabled others to shape the narrative before they had the chance to do so. Letting others take control of your narrative goes against one of the most important rules of crisis management — get in front of the story. In a time of public confusion and panic, Boeing’s leadership remained silent. This silence created an atmosphere of confusion and suspicion. From a PR standpoint, it was a major blunder as it also suggested that there was no plan in place to address a very obvious potential crisis.

  • Too slow

The company’s apology came 26 days after the second crash. This was too late — crisis communications should be quick. While it’s always good to first gather the facts before putting out a public statement, this process should not take too long, especially in a time when bad news travels incredibly fast. Due to its slow response, the company was unable to convince most people that it genuinely cared.

  • Lack of openness

The statement given by Boeing CEO Denis Muilenburg was delivered in the form of a pre-recorded video. While it was a good statement that rightly included an apology, the format undermined it. People prefer to see a human empathetically deliver a message live and in front of the press. People also like to see that leaders are prepared to face scrutiny in the form of press questions. A live format would have allowed for a few questions to be taken and would’ve made the company appear more open.

  • Inconsistent messaging

By insisting on the safety of its planes while also apologizing for the crashes and pledging to create a fix, the company put out conflicting messages. In communications, entities should always look to put out consistent messages and provide clear, strong evidence to support their chosen position. An apology acknowledges fault (though doesn’t show to what extent). If indeed, Boeing was sure that its planes were completely safe and therefore not at fault, there would be nothing to apologize for. The conflicting messages only left passengers fearful and confused.

  • Delayed action

The company should have been the first to ground its own planes. Instead, it delayed and waited five days to ground planes. Furthermore, this only came after airlines, countries, and regulators had already moved to ground 737 Max planes. This meant Boeing was the last to take action. Boeing’s response was slow and the company appeared to the dragging its feet in protecting passengers.

A Controlled Response

As a rule, an organization’s response during crisis should meet the following criteria:

  • Transparent
  • Timely
  • Compassionate
  • Informative
  • Open
  • Consistent

The response of an organization striving to meet these criteria should more readily be characterized as proactive and open.

  • Proactiveness

The company would have been better off had it taken ownership of the situation by declaring an airline safety problem and immediately grounding its own planes.

Of course, a standard example of this framing tactic can be seen in the classic Tylenol poisoning crisis of 1982. While this case study is frequently over-applied and oftentimes, wrongly applied, the product-recall technique used in the Tylenol case is relevant to Boeing. Johnson & Johnson’s CEO at the time, James E. Burke, was first to declare the situation in which Tylenol capsules were found to have been laced with cyanide, a public health problem, immediately springing into action where lives were at stake. The company recalled all bottles of Tylenol capsules against the advice of the FDA; designed new tamper-resistant packaging; and delivered newly packaged capsules in six weeks. By promptly framing the situation as they did, J&J was able to show that they understood the nature of the problem their company and the public were facing, and were eager to ensure this problem was effectively dealt with.

  • Openness

According to crisis communications scholar Timothy Coombs, corporate openness is defined by a company’s availability to the media, willingness to disclose information, and honesty.

Boeing should have made itself more readily available to the media, revealing all that it knows about the situation without waiting for probes — so as to not appear dishonest and cagey. The company ought to have held a press conference clearly stating all the information at hand and indicating that they were still investigating the issue. Media training and the selection of empathetic spokespersons pre-crisis, would have helped the company appear more honest, informative, and compassionate during the crisis.

The result of Boeing’s handling of the crisis was that it found itself on the defensive against damaging storylines, with employees telling the media that a shift in corporate culture over the past decade led to the prioritization of profits and shareholder value over safety. The crisis could have been used as an opportunity to show consumers and the public that Boeing values the lives of people. By inadvertently making it appear as though the organization valued avoiding liability over all else, the company suffered a major loss in the court of public opinion.