The Socially Responsible Tech Company
Last week, Ian Mitroff and I joined Gerald Harris for a discussion on crisis management for the socially responsible tech company, hosted by The Commonwealth Club of California.
I encourage you to watch the full video to hear all the insights shared during our 1-hour discussion, but the primary theme we covered was perverse incentives.
Inside most tech companies, firefighting is glorified over fire prevention. This is particularly prevalent among product development and communications teams. Unfortunately, this also leads to incomplete regulatory responses.
On the product side, we’ve allowed companies to become addicted to rapid-fire feature roadmaps, regardless of whether we truly understand their impact. Few product teams in tech conduct sufficient and honest research into a problem space before building a product they’ll market as a solution. Too often, press attention and publicly are misinterpreted as influence over sustainable business outcomes. They are not the same thing.
Journalists covering tech need to push harder on companies to produce the market research and product testing behind their creations. Strong product development processes will aid companies in building trust and credibility. For others, exposing an emperor without clothes is the least reporters can do for consumers right now.
For communications organizations — the people usually tasked with reputation management in our job descriptions — careers are still too often built on swooping in during a crisis instead of steering businesses away from disaster. Kicking the tires to uncover issues before a launch is met with hostility, in part because it rubs against the performance incentives of product teams. There is little or no reward for thinking longterm about how to establish effective checks and balances, ethical norms, or rigorous governance required for effective crisis management.
As I’ve mentioned before, the practice of crisis heroism in the communications profession can lead to serious problems for a company:
It was obvious that very few communications teams were providing this level of support to the organizations inside their own company whose ongoing success was so critical to the operations, reputation, and stability of their business. They were simply waiting for something bad to happen so they could ship a statement and get promoted.
For regulators hell-bent on holding companies accountable for irresponsible behavior, don’t let up — but we also need someone to focus exclusively on outcomes for consumers. Punishing companies is not the same as protecting consumers and one without the other is insufficient for driving lasting change within the tech industry.
Fortunately for companies, consumers, and regulators alike, the best approach to crisis management is also an effective path to social responsibility. However, the only way change happens is with someone inside the company with the backbone and authority to consistently call out behavior that falls short.
