((PKG)) CRISIS MANAGER
((Banner: Crisis Manager))
((Reporter: Dora Mekouar))
((Camera: Kaveh Rezaei))
((Adapted by: Bronwyn Benito))
((Map: New York, New York City))
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
I fix things. I’m probably just a natural fixer. I like to make them better and I’m quite good at it. And I’m quite good at knowing the right way to think, the right strategy to adopt to fix a problem.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
I’m Davia Temin. My company is Temin and Company. We are a boutique management consultancy. That means we’re a crisis management and reputation management firm. We work to create, enhance, and save reputations.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
I love to deal with every kind of crisis because it really is like a detective story. It’s like a mystery that you have to uncover. How do you find, just the right thing to start to fix it?
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
I can’t tell you who my clients are. Obviously, we sign nondisclosure agreements. They are a number of the Fortune 500 corporations.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
When companies come to us, when we work with them, they know who we are. Our reputation is to be a purpose driven, ethical, socially responsible crisis management firm. Now that doesn’t mean that I’m not competitive as all get out. That doesn’t mean that I won’t work on every single way, all the ways, to get to the right point and to have the client win but it means that we’ll do it in the right way. And so, most companies that come to us share those values.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
Most of the crises I work on, you haven’t heard of.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
My track record is pretty good. In fact, I am hard-pressed to think of a stratagem that didn’t work in the end.
((NATS))
So, everybody talks about crisis being the new normal today and I believe it is because we’ve got so much in the world and it all comes at us at different angles.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
((NATS))
So, we can decide when want to publish it.
One of my crisis rules that I think is really, really important and it’s hard for people to understand when they are in a painful situation.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
Pain gets better. And if you can remember that when you are in the moment of deepest pain, you won’t panic. You won’t do things you shouldn’t do. You won’t put in fixes that are the wrong fixes. You’ll tough it out.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
Some of the worst mistakes that you can make is to go into denial and not take action very quickly. The next is to give up your control. It is very interesting how many organizations have a tendency to just sort of, in a crisis, roll over. No, no, no, no, no. You learn how to fight. And you do it smart and you do it realistically but you learn how to fight. Another mistake you can make is to not apologize when you should apologize.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
An apology, well done and one that is from the heart, not sort of a false apology, is really, really important.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
There are a couple of ways that it’s different being a woman in a high-powered position. Mostly I don’t notice it.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
But what I am finding is that as a consultant, there is no HR department to make sure that people get paid the same amount. And I am competing. There is a subtle bias that I see that they’ll pay men consultants more than women or they’ll question it just a little bit more.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
It’s one of the last bastions of unconscious bias.
((NATS))
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
About 13 years ago, I was in the back of a taxi, and the driver went nuts. He went running red lights and he died in a crash that ensued. It was a huge crash. I almost lost my leg.
((NATS))
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
In that moment, you have a little conversation with whomever, your maker, whomever it is. If you let me live, I’ll give back. I’ll make it count. You don’t go into denial. You go into action. And all of a sudden, I figured out how I was going to save my life. I did it. I rolled onto the floor. It protected me from the impact. I used all of my crisis management rules in that moment and in the time around it to save my life. And I did save my life. They work. I promise you, they work.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
I’m going to be in the world. I am going to be creating value, not only for my firm and for us, but for others.
((Davia Temin, Founder, Temin and Company))
One of my biggest rules of crisis management is what I call the ‘karmic cockroach test’. This is a litmus test to use in crisis, to know whether you’re going in the right path or not. So, what I say is: if anything I say or my firm says or does or suggests to a client, that they say or do, will bring them back in the next life as a cockroach, you can’t do it.
