9/11 to Today: Ways We Have Changed in Communications and in Business

A few episodes back, we looked at the JFK Jr. Plane crash, how it was reported and what it would have looked like if the crash happened today. I stated that a number of you knew exactly what you were doing on that Saturday when you heard the news that JFK Jr. S plane was missing in the waters off of Martha's Vineyard. This week on the podcast, I am asking the same question and I can almost guarantee that, that the majority of you listening now know exactly what you were doing 18 years ago this week on that Tuesday when you heard about what was happening in New York City. Today to mark the 18th anniversary of the tragic events on 9 11, I want to do something similar. I want to look at the impact of the attacks and how we were all glued to one particular medium and why news dissemination is so different today. But also a lesson on operating in the past. How business leaders who anchor themselves to a that's how we've always done it mindset could be limiting themselves in today's high tech, fast moving communications environment. From 9112001 to this week, on today's episode of the Confident Communications Podcast. Hey there everyone. Welcome back to this edition of the Confident Communications Podcast. As you hear me say frequently on this podcast that we live in a social media driven society, in many, many ways this is a very good thing, but in other ways, not so good. And I hear a lot of feedback in my work how social media can breed false information and hate. I was just in Buffalo, New York yesterday, sitting in on a course that someone else was teaching and at a table. That's what they all talked about is how they can't trust anything that comes from social media. Hmm. And the person was over the age of 50, so that's not surprising. I hear that a lot now in some of my workshops. I kick it off with an exercise and I ask the participants to tell me the first memory they have of an event of national significance. And I had to add national significance because one gentleman told the room about the time he found out about his wife. And that's when I knew I needed to amend the description. So it had to be an event of national significance that everyone in the room would know about. And so the feedback that I would get, the answers. The JFK assassination, that's always a big one. And the participants are usually in school. Nixon's I'm not a crook speech, sometimes a three mile accident, that was in 79. Ronald Reagan, the assassination attempt. Most people saw it on television. The Challenger crash, of course, in 1986. Chernobyl disaster. And then I'll hear every once in a while the OJ Simpson car chase, Princess Diana when she died. Once I heard the murder of Phil Hartman as one of the first memories. But a memory that I don't hear often, often in my audience is the 911 attacks, of course, on September 11, 2001. And the one reason why not many people mention it, it's just because of their age. It's most people in the room are over the age of 45. So I'm going to keep hearing the same, the same examples over and over. Now one of the reasons why I do this is it helps me gauge precisely how old someone is because I want to know how I'm coming at them and if there's any type of bias that they already have relating to a certain medium like television or specifically social media. And as I move onto the exercise and move through it, the point of it, or the thesis is, is I remind them and I ask them, you know, how did you first hear about this event? And all of the events that usually come up have one thing, thing in common. They all happen before social media. And some of these events, you will always, the people will always hear it the exact same way. If they mention the Challenger explosion, I will know that one, they are likely close to my age and they are going to say that they watched it on television, likely on a television that was rolled into the classroom because the event happened during the week when most of us were in school. And so it's a really interesting exercise for me for my type of intel on my audience. But also it lets them know that they need to make a mind shift that how they thought about communications with other people or in business, you know, as they were getting into business, as they were aging, that there was a huge shift in how we learned about these events. People heard it through television, through radio, through word of mouth. They didn't hear it through social media. And I would compare it. Now, how do you hear about an event that happens today? Everyone is going to say on their phones it's gonna be a notification. And many times I would do this exercise as a notification was popping up on my phone. You know, something would happen at 9 o' clock in the morning. So it always just wove together perfectly. Now as it relates to 9 11, everyone over the age of 30 likely has some memory of 911 more, some more sharper than others. Many people around the country knew exactly what they were doing when they heard about the events. But for many of the people living and working in New York City and in and around Washington, D.C. their stories are a little closer to the edges of all the events that were happening. People who work for the airlines or people who worked at airports, in the government, military transportation, you know, they're a closer ring as well. Or the people who live near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I mean, you get the idea there's different rings of experience with 9 11. But for most of you listening, and I know my audience, you all remember it, and you remember it clearly. You know where you were, you know how you heard it. You likely know, like me, what you were wearing. I clearly remember what I was wearing that day. Now, if we look at 2001 as a time capsule for communication. In the early 2000s, there were like 60 million daily newspapers in circulation. That number today has dropped more than half. Network news viewership has dropped significantly through 2001. The top television shows at the time, the Sopranos, er, NYPD Blue, the West Wing, cable news. In August 2001, many of those stations did not crack a half a million viewers in primetime now combined. You know, most get over a million people had cell phones in September of 2001, but many were flip phones. And if you remember trying to use your phone specifically, if you lived on the east coast, you had trouble getting ahold of anyone. Now think about how you first found out about the events on 9 11. Most people, I assume, were clued in from television or they found out from someone directly and then went and found a television. And many of you, I assume, turn the station to a network station. You were watching NBC, the Today show, when Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were reporting live because they had live footage of the plane crashing. Remember Peter Jennings? You know, he was sitting at the anchor desk for ABC News. So a lot of people were watching ABC News in the evening, CBS News with Dan Rather. A lot of people were naturally defaulting to the networks and supplementing a lot of the viewing during the day with cable television news. I know that's what I did. Now imagine if the events of 911 happened today. What would change? Well, one that I can see right away is people would not be running to find a television. They would be running to get their phones out of their back pockets or it's already in their hands or it's in their bag and they would start scrolling immediately. A lot of people would find out about it on a notification. They'd find out about it on Facebook. There would be word of mouth. People would talk about it in person. But let's face it, most people, I don't have any scientific evidence to prove this, but most people would find out about the events in their hands or on their laptop. Now, certainly how we view terrorism has changed dramatically as well. I mean, think back to 2001. In August, we weren't thinking about gun safety in schools, we weren't thinking about mass shootings. We weren't thinking about terrorism. But a lot of that dialogue that we talk about about those things happen online, but we really didn't have that type of online communication. Now compare that to now at the time of this recording, there is a hurricane that has been stalled over the Bahamas and this hurricane is a top news story, Hurricane Dorian. But I'm just offering a personal perspective here. When people talk about the hurricane in my world, it usually relates to they work for FEMA or in the travel industry, you know, how could their flight be affected or our weekend weather with a hurricane. And most people that I'm in contact with when we talk about the hurricane, they say I'm not really sure where it is at the moment. Like people lose track of it. You know, unless you're in South Carolina or North Carolina preparing for the track of Dorian to hit the coast, most people really aren't that wired into it. If you think about it now, I was guilty of this as well. You know, I really wasn't tracking it anymore. I was tracking it more because I had a flight that that week. But with the sheer amount of media outlets available to people literally within arm's length, it has drastically changed how the public receives their news. Now why am I talking about this on this podcast about 9 11? The reason why I use the timestamp exercise in my workshops again is to remind people how much time has passed and how much time has passed regarding the technology that we used to disseminate news and content and the context in which people receive it. I want to transform the thinking of that's how we've always done it to everything has changed. So we can't rely on how we've always done it as a way or a successful way to move forward. How people receive their news and content today compared to 18 years ago is vastly different. So we can't expect the business to consumer relationship to stay the same either. I want you to go Back to Tuesday, September 11, 2001 and retry and remember it. How did you first hear about the attacks of the World Trade Center? Where were you again? I asked, what were you wearing? How did you speak to people that day? If you Were in an office, were you in a meeting, were you talking to people in a hallway? Were you on a cell phone conversation? Or were most of your conversations back then by landline? When you first heard about 9 11, if you were not in front of a television or listening to a radio, were you listening to Howard Stern in the morning? Did someone call you on a landline to tell you to turn on the television or did they walk into your office? For me at that time I was working in Arlington, Virginia. I was the head of communications for the cruise line industry. So I was watching the news stories out of the network. Remember watching NBC at the time, just after the first plane hit the tower, we have a breaking news story to tell you about. Apparently a plane has just crashed into the World Trade center here in New York City. It happened just a few moments ago. Apparently we have very little information available at this point in time, but on the phone. And I remember the discussion in the office about what an unusual story it was. And as the story unfolded, the events unfolded a little closer and closer to me because first we had to ascertain where my brother in law was. He was an FBI agent in New York City at the time. And before the towers fell, we knew he was escorting Governor Pataky near the towers. So when they did fall, so did our hearts because the family had no idea where he was. That was that first personal jolt where 911 was felt. It was, you know, instead of felt in my head, it was felt in my heart. And the last we heard is that he was on his way to the World Trade Center. It took about a few hours for us to find out that he was fine, but he was very close. But then as the reports of the plane were heading into D.C. that's when everything amped up in my office very quickly. That moment in the crisis business is called the unknown unknowns. You knew that you were perhaps a target of something, but you didn't know what. And in the case of 9 11, if you worked in Washington D.C. or nearby in Alexandria or Arlington, Virginia, you knew that the area was a target, but you didn't know exactly where anything was going to hit. But you knew planes were in the sky and there was still one headed somewhere. I remember a very eerie calm in my office. It was also a lobbying firm, so there was a lot of good intel coming from the Capitol. Lots of people knew lots of people and lots of people were scared. And then from my office we could see the smoke rising after the explosion from the Pentagon. We could watch the Pentagon burn from where we were working. And that was the first time that I can say I was very scared. I was pregnant with my oldest child on 9 11. And I distinctly remember that line of demarcation. I remember sitting there at my desk, watching television, looking out my window, thinking, this baby is going to be born in an environment of fear. Everything was changed. There was a new normal that I remember precisely the moment it happened. And since our building was one of the tallest buildings near the Pentagon, we were all told we had to evacuate. And we did. And for the life of me, I cannot remember why I didn't drive that day. I think it was from the gridlock in Arlington, from the proximity to the Pentagon. I ended up taking the Metro home. I lived in Old Town Alexandria, which is located on the other side of Arlington, and I had to take the Metro through the Pentagon, under the Pentagon, and as the subway, as the train pulled into the Pentagon. And I remember the train being silent, no one said a word. But as we pulled in and you see the signs on the wall that say the Pentagon, I remember the doors starting to open and they slammed them shut right away because the Pentagon was filled with smoke. So this was a time before they shut down the trains going into the Pentagon. It was absolutely surreal. And so when I made it home to the townhouse in Old Town, I was called right back into work because I worked in the maritime industry. So instead of talking about things that can happen on a cruise ship, port security was now a significant issue. So we had managed the issue of maritime and terrorism a few months earlier when the USS Cole was bombed, I believe. Oh, my gosh, that was March. And the cruise line wanted to keep an arm's length from that issue. Of course, we didn't want to tie in a terrorist attack on the USS Cole with people associating it with going on a cruise, of course. So that was our first taste of it. So it did help that we had already managed the issue of terrorism somewhat earlier that year. But port security was now my primary function because at that time, the cruise line industry, it was like a $60 billion industry. And cruise ships needed to retain their customers. They needed the passengers to keep cruising. And in September, there were a lot of fall cruises that were coming up that were that already the itineraries were already set, and we needed to make sure that those cruise ships were going to set sail. Everyone has a 911 story. Everyone. And that was mine. But I think all of you could say that post 9 11, when we talk about 912 almost everyone in their work had to start working with a new normal. I remember even running the next day, like going out on a run the next morning on 912 and there was still smoke in the air from the Pentagon and thinking to myself, you know, I, I even think I was using a Walkman at the time, you know, a yellow Walkman to listen to radio reports about Pennsylvania. That's what I remember. That this was the new normal that here I am running when the Pentagon is burning. But the new normal of 911 to where we are now, everything looks different today. It's these unknown unknowns that we must try to prepare for. But I think when it comes down to business nowadays, it's more impactful that we accept that everyone is working in an unknown, unknown environment. Because anything can change at any moment. And I'm not talking about big life changing events like 9 11, although they do happen. But I'm talking about the day to day, the rhythm, the pace between your business and your customers, how your customer gets their information, that can change as well. The successful businesses and organizations are the ones that are ready to pivot when something happens, ready to change, accept change, and accept that their customers expect them to change. If you operate from a mindset in the past, the budgets, the systems, the communications, the commitment to customers, it's a fast track to failure. And I see it happen all the time. The organizations that lead with a, this is how we've always done it and it's always been a success. Those are the first organizations that are gonna fail or they're gonna go through really, really bumpy, bumpy times. And where do I see this mindset happen the most? Of course, in the online environment, particularly social media. Now, social media folks, it is here to stay. As much as people want to resist it, some of the older generations, I'm sorry, I'm just calling it like I see it, they, they don't want to change anything because everything's been fine. How we used it before now a brief history of social media. Back in 2001 there was a website, it was a social site called Six Degrees and it had about a million members. And you don't hear about it, but it was widely considered to be the very first social networking site. In 99, there was LiveJournal and then there was Friendster. You remember hearing Friendster slowly as we got into the 2000s, we had LinkedIn, we had Facebook, which of course started at Harvard, and then the schools, and then, and then branched out to everyone. We have Twitter, we have Snapchat. And today we have fake News. We have 6,000 tweets per second. We have polarizing views online. Social media is an outlet that people can feel like their voices are being heard. Social media allows news and information to get out faster than ever before. And social media causes us to no longer feel as unified as we once were in certain areas because there is so much bias and there is so much anger online. But at the same time, it does build community for good and bad. It could be a community for good, but it could be a community that will attack a brand or an organization. So if you are a leader who manages in the past for the past, it's time to change. If you are an employee working for a leader or on a board who manages in the past, it's time to offer suggestions for how to make updates and changes. Sometimes the block is simply not knowing the first step to make a change. Reluctance can appear in the form of lack of leadership or a leader lacking the knowledge for how to make a change. I see that all the time. You know, we've always done it this way. And I don't know how to make this change. I don't even know if we need a new website, if we need to add online chats to our Facebook page. Where do we start? Where do we begin? But remember, new normals are being forced on us all the time for good. Like our customers want to hear from us online. To bad, oh my gosh, our customers are bashing us online. You need to create a new normal. You need to come up with a plan to do that. You can never fully prepare for the unknown unknowns, but you can weather them if you are leading with a mindset of change, adjusting, recalibrating, modifying, upgrading, whatever you call it. But change is going to happen and in order to be successful, you need to be prepared for it. Now yesterday I was in Buffalo for work, as I mentioned, and I was awaiting my delayed flight at the airport hurricane. I was eating wings because when in Buffalo and I was seated next to a guy who started chatting and he was an engineer, he was eating wings as well. And we started chatting about, well, get this, engineering. I can probably count on one hand how many conversations I've had about engineering. One of those was on a podcast. I spoke about how engineers can better communicate and I'll include a link to that podcast episode in the show notes. And so as we were sitting there eating our wings next to each other on the bar, I told him that I work with a lot of people who Are former engineers current engineers or people with engineering mindsets, or people who are engineers who were promoted into leadership positions and they could no longer think like an engineer, but had to think like a business leader. So I had asked them, I said, give me a term for someone who's forced in that position. And I wanted a term like, I wanted something that I could add to my lexicon, that I could throw into these conversations with these engineering types so they could understand what I was talking about. And I guess I was looking for the word inflexible. And I wanted a word that only an engineer would know, or someone who scored 1600 on the SATs. And he said, I got the perfect word for you. Elastic modulus. Isn't that a great word? So if you're an engineer, I'm sure many of you know exactly what that means. I, of course, had to Google it again. But it's a quantity that measures an object or substance resistance to being deformed elastically when stress is applied to it, refusing to form resistance and stress. A perfect metaphor for a leader or a culture that refuses to budge, especially in times of stress, because that's when you are going to see the problem. Or more important, that's when your customers are going to see the problem when you refuse to budge. Now think about how you went about the business of doing business in August of 2001. Now think about how you do business today. What has changed? What hasn't? What change has been thrust on you just because of technology? Okay, so you use a cell phone now more than you use a landline. But what changes has your organization not made? Or what haven't you adopted simply because you don't want to or you don't think it's important to change? Take a cue from how you communicated back then in August of 2001 and apply it to how you operate today. In August of 2001, you went about your business in a certain way. But all of that changed when we all had to experience a new normal on September 11, 2001. Now, what is your new normal? If it's new and if it's in the right direction, then may success shine on you. But if it's not, it's time to change. If you feel like someone who may need a nudge in this direction, you can download my free cheat sheet, top five Rookie Mistakes Seasoned Business Leaders Make. You can find that online if you text 345345 and you'll get signed up to be able to download the sheet. Or you can also find the free cheat sheet on my website, molly mcpherson.com so that's all for this week. Thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to speaking with you next Tuesday in September. Sam.