EP72 The Stryker cyber attack and executive readiness, with Susan D. Nelson

Hey everyone and welcome back to the leading in a crisis podcast. We're so happy to have

you with us again. On this podcast we share stories from the front lines of crisis management

and crisis communications through interviews, storytelling and lessons learned as shared

by experienced crisis leaders. I'm Tom Mueller. Thank you again for being with us today.

As a quick aside here I'd just like to share some basic demographic information with you

about the podcast because I've been very surprised that the geographic reach that we've established

here. Right now we have listeners across 36 countries in this great big world. About 40% of our

listeners are here in America, 45% in Europe and then the balance are spread out across Asia,

Africa, Australia, New Zealand and some of the places that surprised me where we have listeners,

Ukraine, Sarajevo, Lithuania, Prague and of course major cities and across America, Europe

and Australia, New Zealand. So thank you to all of our listeners and a special shout out to our

international listeners there. Thanks for being part of the podcast. Hey on our show today,

we're going to talk executive coaching, executive communications with a very well-known leadership

coach who's based here in Texas and that is Susan D Nelson. Susan, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks Tom and congratulations for the outreach and how far your podcast is actually reaching

across the world. That's really exciting and hello to everyone that's there. Thank you so much for

that Susan. It's good to see you again as always. Hey a quick thumbnail on Susan's background.

As I mentioned she's a well-known executive and leadership coach. She is a guest lecturer at

Rice University's MBA program. She works frequently with executives at the Texas Medical Center here

in the Houston area and she is also certified in leadership and management from Harvard Business School.

So Susan, those are some pretty gleaming credentials you got there. We're very honored to have

you with us. Thank you so much and just just as a little caveat with the Texas Medical Center,

I'm working with their innovation factories. So they've got this concept of how to get from

idea to patient the quickest and so it's incubators and support systems throughout that space.

So that's it's just a really fun place to engage. Very cool. Need opportunity to coach there.

But now I know Susan you spend a lot of time with CEOs and senior executives and I'm wondering if

you see sort of common themes among the trainings that you do with those senior leaders and where do

you see opportunities for improvement or development you know kind of across your client base.

So I think that's interesting as we know when you get into crisis communications there's a lot of

blocking and tackling that has to be done and for so I don't know about you and some of the other

professionals out there but it always seemed like I was that connective tissue right that connective

tissue because you're trying to get the stories and know what's going on between all the different

places and so one of the biggest opportunities is just being able to connect and engage and

make sure that they are staying on top of things in that space. Generally speaking when I'm talking

to these executives one of the biggest challenges actually from a coaching perspective the biggest

challenges of leaders and executives is time whether you're in a crisis and you're just in your day

today operations it's always about time and it is a commodity that is non-renewable and it's one

of those that they chase constantly so if we think about crisis comms the biggest challenge to

that is preparedness you can't always be fully prepared for something because you don't know exactly

what's going to happen but we've got to be prepared on the front end of it and so that's the biggest

challenge I see from a coaching perspective communications training perspective is executives

and leaders actually carving out the time to be prepared for what could be coming forward.

I know you have worked many crisis situations with clients over the years

and if you've got any particular stories you can share of successful crisis communications and

executive leadership or maybe one that didn't go so well and left room for improvement and

personal growth as I like to say. Okay yeah absolutely it's always about learning and development

right so I work with several leaders from a training perspective and a coaching perspective inside

of striker organization which is a medical device company and if you follow the news they actually

unfortunately are dealing with a cyber attack that happened early yesterday morning I was supposed

to be talking to one of my leaders out of India really early yesterday morning who was absolutely

ghosted me unusual not part of their part of the interactions I've ever had with them so obviously

I stepped into place of grace and something's happened right several hours later I found out that

there had been a wipe or attack within the organization there's a lot of speculation there's

a lot of information out there they're still working through all the pieces what really worked

was that the organization decided to not stay silent and they went out and used what sources they had

they couldn't they couldn't communicate internally because employees were waking up and their

computers were completely wiped or their cell phones were completely wiped so they went to social media

and first knowledge I had it was a post on LinkedIn which was just what we teach Tom just

what we teach you tell them what you know and you tell them what you don't know and you tell them

when you're going to follow up and that's what they've done follow up there's been some evolution

as to what some of what they believe is going on and that sort of thing I've been in touch with a

lot of my leaders the biggest challenge is a lack of information because they just don't have it

and they don't have channels to get it there so really being creative in some of the ways that

they're they're doing that well this is very common with cyber attacks you know historically

you know the criminal elements have been involved so it's been more ransomware lock up everything

you know take over your computers everything and pay us a ransom and we'll give you a key

may or may not unlock your your devices but yeah the challenge then is if you lose access to your

hardware then it comes back to well what's our plan in place for dealing with that eventuality

and I think in my experience I find you know most companies really struggle to plan ahead for that

type of a black swan event that could hit the company right how do we if we lose everything

what's our plan B or plan C for maintaining communications with our employees with updating

our social media channels all of that it takes a huge effort and a lot of energy and to your point

earlier about executives it takes time to do all of that so that's something that I've seen you know

in different clients that I've worked with over time so glad to hear there's a sort of a successful

workaround that's in place now how how are you still dealing with it I'm sure how are you assessing

the communications coming out of that so far you mentioned the LinkedIn post so internally the

communications that's going on with some of the leaders that I've worked with they're they're

getting some communications it's still sporadic but what strikers done a really good job of is they've

they really teach their leaders to support their people support the business one of the things

that I've worked with them as they push decision making down in the organization so I would assume

that there's a lot of that going on right now the challenges is when you can't communicate when

you don't have the channels when I don't know what's going on I've got a team of 50 people or there's

250 people in the organization underneath me what do you do as a leader when there's that lack of

communication and it goes back to what we just said treat them there's their human and tell them

what you can tell them and tell them what you can't tell them and so that's what I've been coaching

with my leaders around is what can you do right now we're still waiting on what's coming in there's

limited information and so first thing they're doing is they're checking in with themselves this is

a time of extreme emotional intelligence right we've got to really check in with ourselves and

figure out how we're going to do this and then start to plan because they've got a little a little

bit of blackout time to think through how do they want to communicate with their employees how

do they want to communicate with the vendors that they're working with they're going to get that

messaging from from the corporate environment like like the work that you and I have done historically

you know we we've done that messaging down what gets really impactful is how do you take that

messaging and make it impactful for your people your your stakeholders whether it's your employees

your vendors your customers so that's some of the things that they're thinking through right now

so there's a lot of creative energy being expended here now reestablishing those communications

channels and then working on messaging you know cyber attacks are always challenging because

you know it's not like you can see the fire over there you can put fire trucks on it you know it's

going to be out soon with these cyber things it takes a while for the forensic work to get done to

really understand you know what's happening here and and then to make the big decisions you know

about are we buying all new hardware across the company or are we bringing in lots of people to

redo and rework all of these laptops across the organization so there's a huge operational

component here that the company has to deal with and then as you mentioned just talking to employees

talking to vendors vendors have got to be wondering are we vulnerable because we connect

to the company right through their portals the vendor portals or whatever it might be

so always a huge need and demand for communications in those in those incidents

talking about the partnerships and who you're working with and who's supporting you and

like they like one of the communications that they put out is that they are working diligently with

Microsoft because that's this you know their systems are in there and so they're they're not just

doing it in a black hole I'd also go back to where we started with you have to prepare for this

stuff even though you don't know what's coming we've got to spend the time on the front end

and front load that work at least from a skeleton perspective so that when we have to dip in

and deal with some of these issues we know at least some of our foundational work is there

excellent points there I'll a quick example from my work history a client I worked with

I spent a lot of time working on that cyber crisis prep and putting together kind of the plan B

of if we get hit with a major ransomware and we lose access to our computers you know our network

systems our internal communications channels now what putting in place some backup channels you know

sort of dark channels many companies have dark websites out there for communicating in a crisis

well we actually built a dark website for internal communications right so that employees who had

the log on credentials could log into this offline site and pick up information that was being

posted by company heads and company department heads and whatnot and then take that information

and then go back out communicate it in your business unit or in your business

and then another aspect was creating backup emails for people you know it's good old Gmail accounts

that never ever get used until you really need them so there are and as we've talked about most

companies you know just don't have energy and time for that kind of preparation but it's all about

risk management right where are we comfortable with the risk I remember and what did we learn and

what are we doing different so yeah I did a we're down in south Texas so hurricane preparedness and

that sort of thing and I remember back in the day when we realized we couldn't reach our employees

in the Gulf because they've been hit by hurricane what we did discover is email didn't work phone

calls didn't work text messaging worked so we leveraged text messaging and then the next thing we

did is we leveled up and made sure that each of the sites had sat phones sometimes you just have

to go through the fire and learn it and then what are we going to do with it yeah that's right

experiences the great teacher here absolutely and I'd offer up that as we get older and wiser

sometimes we take the experience that somebody else had to go through to apply towards our work

so that's staying on top of what's going on with others in your industry or in organizations

similarly size to you is important as well I'm curious how many of the people you work with are

natural communicators versus people who have to really work at being good at this what's your

experience so you know what it really depends it depends on the level and where you are and

I would actually offer up that even at the top of the house sometimes those people communicate

really well in certain situations we all have our own comfort levels and so we have to have really

great self-awareness as to where I'm super comfortable I can sit and talk on I worked with an executive

who was great on an investor relations calls working with his executive team the board of directors

was fine but you wanted to stand him up in front of a group of 500 employees and he just would

get literally nauseous and not be able to handle it well it just was not a comfort zone for him

so whether they're naturally comfortable communicating or it's a challenge I'd still say we still

need to take the time take the energy do the self-reflection self-awareness work with our

comms teams are other professionals are a legal team everywhere because it's a big collaborative

effort to really understand what I need to do to be prepared to provide the best leadership guidance

decisions necessary and to be able to support the organization and the rest of the org

well what's your coaching for that leader who's successful you know in operations and management

but is terrified of getting on the stage because it's part of the job right you can't really

delegate that to you know vice president or somebody else so how do you how do you coach them

through stage fright like that so you know obviously they do want to hand it off to somebody else

every time right I want to outsource that let's take that off let's take that off my plate right now

speaking of I don't have time for that that's where that some of this work comes into play it's not

just about the operations part of the business it's about who we are as human beings and leaders and

what's underneath that so if you're going to work with an executive from a coaching perspective

or you're the comms person and you've got somebody who's really resistant and instead of saying it's

not that big a deal it's easy to stand up on stage I got to stand in the middle of the stage

everything's done we've done all the messaging for you you do this all the time with everyone else

it's really important to stop and pause and realize that our executives and our leaders are human beings

they have their own belief systems their own value sets their own fears their own insecurities

and that's where communications professionals we can support them in a different way

is to say you know what I don't know what's going on here can you tell me what's the real struggle with

this what's the problem with this with the leader that I'm talking about right now we had that

conversation what we come we came to find out was I had a leader who was afraid of heights

something that's simple it wasn't about that there were 500 people in the room it wasn't about

that we were doing a really uncomfortable message it was around the fact that personally as a

human being there was this own challenge and so being on a stage and being able to see the edge

and where you would fall off that's what the challenge was so then we came up with a creative

solution together and that solution actually interestingly enough was to put six foot tables

across the front edge of the stage and have them fully skirted so we couldn't see all the way over

the edge and so we just put a big branded lovely logoed you know those tablecloths that cover

made for great optics and it created a sense of comfort for him and he would knock it out of the

park every time you know what strikes me is the humanity of that because when people are in

senior positions we have very high expectations of them and I'm sure they do of themselves as well

and so if you're if you're not meeting those self-expectations it brings even more pressure on you

when we're working with these folks are you know working one on one with those folks so much of

the time you're right they even see that that's the need from themselves and so there's an

opportunity to really stop reflect and create a high level of self-awareness is to where do I really

shine where do I struggle what needs to be done differently in fact you've mentioned the MBA

and the EMBA and hybrid MBA groups that I work with at Rice I just got through doing a program

there just a month ago and interestingly enough the number one topic that came up from all of these

professionals that are up and movers shakers in their organizations the question I got the most

was season can you talk about imposter syndrome wow really absolutely and I was curious I'm like

I because I had one person asked that question I thought sure we can talk about that thinking

in my head yeah I'm going to set that aside we'll talk about that offline let's let's come back to

where we were where we were focused and somebody else in the room seconded it somebody and I just

stopped and said okay how many of the people in this room of about 50 have imposter syndrome when

you're working within your organization almost every single person in the room raise their hand

wow because they were in a safe space right they were with they were with their peer group their

colleagues this was a safe place this wasn't the people that report to them or that they report to

that they see on an everyday basis that they're going to sit in judgment of them

what I've discovered is this imposter syndrome and it's there's lots of literature and

information around it all that sort of thing one of the most interesting nuggets I've taken away

from doing this work for more than 15 years in this coaching space is that imposter syndrome

only shows up with people who are in stretch goals are or are learning if I'm comfortable with

where I am and I'm not doing anything new or not changing what I'm doing or trying to

to be better do better try something new innovate they don't experience imposter syndrome ever

it is truly an indicator that you are stretching and growing and being even more than you have been

and going beyond so oftentimes when I work with folks on imposter syndrome I'm like congratulations

you're making a difference in the world I love the way you frame that up though it's you're stretching

yourself whether it's personally professionally in this situation you're stretching the boundaries

and that's why you feel that insecurity I was coaching a group last week a fairly senior executives

and same thing we were you know kind of one-on-one with some and the confidence level just wasn't

quite there you know even in a senior position but I'm like hey fake it till you make it you know

you've got the skill sets to do this you're in the position you've just got to stretch yourself

and deliver it it's fascinating though imposter syndrome is I'm just amazed it's as widespread it

as is but that's a testament to the culture of over achievement perhaps perhaps which is where we

have leaders and executives in organizations are often those high achievers go getters those people

who want to make a difference yeah and I love that you brought up the comment around discomfort

because that is that's one of the places that I think all of us as human beings that's where we

can evolve is when we get comfortable in the discomfort talking about I Brunei Brown talks about

it as vulnerability which is a form of that discomfort when we actually get to the point where we

can sit with our undiscomfort is where we can grow both for ourselves but when we can sit with

discomfort with an organization that's when the organization can grow develop innovate strive for

more and what is more uncomfortable in a place of discomfort than when you're having a deal with

across the situation it coach the coach a little bit here for us Susan so for that young

communications leader you know who's sitting with a vice president and or a division head

and they're not particularly comfortable what would she where would you take them so it's

it's like you storytelling which you mentioned earlier so I actually had a very specific event

happen in my head of when this happened to me not as a young communicator but just a few years ago

but I think the advice to those communicators is first of all be highly aware of who's in the room

meaning if there's if you've got 14 other people in the room and there's discomfort it could

just be somebody that's in the room I don't know it's sometimes legal we'll do that for us sometimes

the safety group sometimes it's the finance folks that are in there but who's in the room so often

times if this is really the case I try to get the executive one-on-one you know can we just take

a break right now just everybody take a break and come back in about oh 20 minutes yeah okay and

you start to watch the room clear and then you look at the executive and say you and I just a minute

so you let the room clear and then I work from a feedback loop of you know I just like to share with

you that I'm observing significant discomfort and validate what you've known with them I've worked

with you for several years now you usually have real confidence and things are you cut your

presence is really big and what I'm sensing right now is some reticence some discomfort

just don't feel it just doesn't quite feel like who you are what's going on with that and just

open a big huge open-ended question challenge you don't ask are you okay don't do that

because that's it yes or no question ask a big juicy open-ended coaching question you know

what's going on with you today what's the biggest thing getting in your way

what challenge do we need to tackle around this like I said I did this with an executive that we

were doing a training very high-level executive at a very very prestigious organization and we

were doing media training believe it or not which is a big part of crisis but we're doing some media

training and just oh my gosh all I could think of was looking at my kids when they were three years

old when they cross their arms and stomp their feet and say I'm not gonna because that's what we

were getting from this executive and so and of course we had all kinds of people in the room right

we had from the organization I called for I called for a break let everybody lead the room

and I sat down with this executive and I said I had since a lot of tension a lot of frustration

in the room as well but I'm curious what's going on with you and he was like I've had this career

for more than 25 years and my claim to fame is within this organization I've never had a media

interview which was just stunning to me especially inside this organization I was like I didn't go

to well why not I went to and what makes you so proud about that he was like they didn't get me

if I don't put myself in the situation they can't get me so when when you're doing this kind of

coaching you have to listen not to what's being said but what's underneath what's being said

actively listening and I was like well that makes me curious was there a time when somebody in

the media actually caught you and he went on to share that as a teenager in a very small town

he had done something and the media showed up and it was one of those things that was supported

and he was supposed to do all this wonderful stuff and he was super excited about what happened

but it got chopped up in the little bitty pieces and they actually presented it from a

perspective a hundred percent a hundred and eighty percent from when he put it out and so it came

off as he was not connected to the community he was not connected to the organization that he was

engaged with so this 13 14 year old kid as they say in Louisiana and got bitten the butt

so he had spent his entire career avoiding it that was the point where we could start the work

it had nothing to do with his communication skills had nothing to do with his confidence had nothing

to do with his abilities or his knowledge set it had to do with who he was and what had happened

to him in his past right well so many of us get burned you know though who deal with media regularly

you do get burned and it gets harder and harder to trust these days and you know look at our society

today you see a real lack of trust in media so that's a natural instinct to have it's almost a

self preservation instinct today but this almost sounds like a psychotherapy session Susan trying

to get him past this moment of PTSD essentially and back to the position the executive leadership

role he's in now and how do you do that did were you successful I was very successful and I'm

going to tell you you nailed it we leaned into trust this executive happened to be working with

an organization that had lots of support systems in place and I said you've got to put your trust

in the people that are there you've got to be honest with them and say hey listen I've been burned

this is a sensitivity for me how are we going to manage that and they came up with strategies

on how to make sure that that was managed in a really great perspective in fact one of their

communications professionals agreed to sit in on the interview at any given time with full

full accountability as well as permission to call it at any point in time sometimes if I just

know somebody's got my back I'm good as executives and leaders sometimes we feel like we are the

front face of things and that we are there alone on an island with no protection so you're talking

about that that safety perspective and that trust perspective that's when it's taught that's

when we lean into our teams and that's when we have to lean into our teams from a level of trust

so our communications professionals got to build trust and leaders you got to build trust

and the only way to build trust is to be vulnerable is to be honest and the only way you can get

honest with somebody else is if we take the time and work on ourselves as leaders that's why

working with coaches is so important is we work on ourselves and oftentimes it can be like we're

talking about in posture syndrome but it also can be that inner critic which is that little

bit of voice in our head that just starts napping it's like a chihuahua nip in at your ankles

it's like you're not good enough you're too lazy all of those things well if I do the work as a leader

and understand that when that happens I've got strategies in place I know how to manage that

I have sources that are trusted that I can go to to support me in this then when somebody comes in

and says hey Susan I want you to do this interview and you go I'm not good enough I don't have enough

credentials I don't have enough experience that's when we lean into those trusted sources and we

stay vulnerable I've been asked to do such and such and all I want to do is throw up then we can

have those support systems lift us back up okay that this is a very new perspective on on this

for a lot of our listeners I think Susan again back to the expectations that we have of those

senior leaders you know they're super people super human and you know frankly in my career I've

worked with a lot of executives who were just so good and so it was you know when you run into

somebody who's dealing with those kinds of issues it's to me it's a little unusual in my life

experience but obviously from your perspective it's out there and it happens I had one question

for you around the MBAs that you work with now here we're talking about incubator companies

and up and coming executives who are building companies from the ground up you're working with

them as part of you know MBA programs what's the key coaching that you find works well

for younger executives in those situations so the incubator programs is what that Texas Medical

Center group and during a lot of work with them and there is a lot of incubator work a lot of

startup work that's going on there I actually want to throw out that we believe that they're on

the young end but some of these folks are there in their second third fourth rotation of this

because they are serial entrepreneurs so to speak one of the biggest challenges for that

group is having to wear multiple hats so startup companies people who are incubators those lean

in mean organizations is they tend to have to wear multiple hats as they're building the plane

as they're flying it so to speak and so what happens is is being aware of what those tipping

points are and where can we actually pull the lever that says okay we are now to the point where

we need to hire in a CMO we need a chief marketing officer versus the five of us or this group is

doing it or we're outsourcing it so really that's that's one of the biggest challenges is them

wearing all the hats and then how do they scale and evolve the company a lot of entrepreneurs

like wearing the multiple hats and so that becomes a tension point for them is to okay I'm now going

to be the CFO or I'm now going to be leading operations oh but I was doing marketing and I was

working on this and I'm doing some finance stuff so those serial entrepreneurs oftentimes like to

have that broader responsibility and at that point in time they just need to understand when

when is good enough for them to go look for their next adventure or when do we shift our skills

and our focus and our intention to being more on the rails for what's needed as you scale an

organization okay well Susan thank you so much for coming on and talking to us it's really been a

wide-ranging conversation we've covered a lot but as always it's fascinating and fun catching up

with you so thank you oh thanks for having me I really appreciate it it has been a lot of fun and

I just leave you with one thought which is leaders and executives are human first and as we deal

with them as communicators coaches spouses neighbors we have to remember that who we are is not always

what we do all right Susan D Nelson thank you so much and that's going to do it for this

episode of the leading in a crisis podcast thanks again for being with us we truly appreciate you

giving us your ears for these sessions again if you'd like to email the show drop me a line at

tomat leading in a crisis dot com and we'll see you again soon for another episode of the leading

in a crisis podcast take care