Top 12 Barriers to Effective Outrage Management

Fear of setting a precedent. Senior executives often fear that “pandering” to an individual stakeholder’s demands will lead to claims from other stakeholders who will want similar or even more extreme accommodations. This sort of slippery slope does sometimes occur, so it’s worth thinking through in advance to what extent management will validate the precedent and how it will explain why some stakeholders are being treated differently than others. But slippery slopes are less impactful in outrage management than you may imagine. Stakeholders mostly know who you treated really badly and whose outrage is through the roof. It doesn’t feel unfair to them that those are the folks who get the biggest apology and even the biggest compensation.

Belief that responding to “that person” would be futile. The conviction that it would be futile to respond to a stakeholder’s concerns is often grounded in the belief that the outraged stakeholder’s personality is the problem, that he or she is “crazy” or “obsessed” and will never change. To the contrary, both evidence and experience say that stakeholder outrage is usually situational, grounded in the difficult circumstances we have put the stakeholder in. Empathetically addressing those circumstances can often mitigate the outrage, albeit not always and not completely. Ignoring the circumstances and blaming the stakeholder is sure to exacerbate the outrage.

Belief that better information is the answer. “Just educate them!” managements sometimes insist. While more and better information is often a necessary condition for calming outrage, it is almost never a sufficient condition. Upset people resist learning why they’re wrong to be upset – especially if (as is often the case) they are right about the ways they’ve been misled or mistreated, even if they’re wrong about how endangered they are. Mere information is unlikely to change the opinions of people even when they’re calm. A variety of cognitive biases (heuristics) distort what we learn. Worse, we are all attached to our attitudes and beliefs, and work hard not to learn that we are mistaken. It’s worse still when we’re outraged. You might imagine that people who think your project is killing them would welcome information that their risk is tiny. They don’t. People can be so attached to their outrage that they applaud when someone at a public meeting shouts, “We’re all gonna die!”

Misplaced persuasion strategies. We tend to believe that our task is simply to convince stakeholders that the proposed project is good for them (or good for everyone) and then they will accept it. Thinking well-crafted PR/persuasion messages will break through with stakeholders is an improvement over thinking clear information is all that’s needed. Skillful persuasion is sound strategy when people aren’t upset. But once people are upset (outraged) about a risk, whether the safety hazard is real or they see it that way because of their outrage, persuasion is no longer the task. Upset people have different needs: to be listened to; to have their grievances acknowledged; etc. Save your persuasion skills for later when they’re calmer.

Fear of upsetting supporters. This is a totally valid fear, a real downside of outrage management. The sorts of things you say to mitigate the outrage of your critics tend to exacerbate the outrage of your supporters. That includes your Board, your boss, and your subordinates as well as external allies, everyone who wants you to stand tall for the team and never acknowledge the other side’s truths or give the other side credit or respect. An effective external outrage management effort is therefore likely to require significant attention to the damage it does to internal morale.

Fear of transparency. This is a valid fear too. The sorts of things you say to mitigate the outrage of your critics tend to make it tougher to convince low-information, low-interest neutrals to take your side in the controversy. Outrage management requires acknowledging the other side’s truths about the downsides of your project or the prior misbehaviors of your organization. Your critics already know all that, so acknowledging it helps mitigate their outrage. But optimal outrage management clues in the low-information, uninterested, uncommitted PR audience to things you’d rather they didn’t know. Conversely, at least in the short term, optimal PR is one-sided in ways that exacerbate critics’ outrage. The question is which matters more to the success of your project, the casual opinions of the majority or the fervor of your opponents. (In the long term, it may be wiser and is certainly more ethical to tell even neutrals the downsides of your project. Getting it all on the table reduces the risk of later “why didn’t you tell us?” outrage. But that’s even more counterintuitive than outrage management.)

Silos of internal opposition. There are three competing approaches to risk controversies: (1) Supporter mobilization aims to empower, arouse, and mobilize your team and your allies, to get those who love you now to love you even more. That’s usually a key concern of government affairs and employee relations people. (2) Bystander conscription aims to interest, convince, and inoculate huge numbers of uninterested people, to get those who have no view one way or the other to like you at least a little. That’s what PR people focus on. (3) Outrage management aims to mitigate the outrage of your critics, to get those who hate you already to hate you less. In most organizations that’s nobody’s job description. Although you can craft compromises among the three strategic options, the best approach to any of the three is likely to damage the other two. So different pieces of your organization are likely to champion different approaches – and outrage management is least likely to have strong champions inside the organization.

Counter-intuitiveness and unpleasantness. Many core outrage management strategies – acknowledging problems, sharing control, giving away credit, admitting mistakes, etc. – are profoundly counterintuitive. They are psychologically difficult. Even imagining doing them feels wrong and weird to most people. And actually doing them is unpleasant. Frontal counterattack is the intuitive, soul-satisfying way to address opponents; it feels right in concept and feels good in action. If conventional responses to controversy are boxing, outrage management is jujitsu. Deciding to take an outrage management approach is thus a victory of reason and evidence over intuition and desire. It requires management to choose to end the fight rather than fight back. Managers often insist that risk communication won’t work mainly because they don’t want to do it.

Misdiagnosed greed. We tend to misdiagnose outrage as greed. People who sue companies are usually more outraged than greedy (their lawyers may be greedy). Similarly, people who join local activist groups usually do so because they are outraged, not because they’re greedy – though professional activists may be “greedy” for more members, more victories, or more impact. The difference matters. The paradox here is that stakeholder greed isn’t your problem, it’s your goal. (Think “rational self-interest.”) Greedy (rationally self-interested) people want what’s good for themselves, whereas outraged people want what’s bad for you. Greedy people see an offer from your side as a sign of negotiation progress, whereas outraged people may see it as a bribe. Since outrage preempts greed, it helps to conceptualize the goal of outrage management as getting your stakeholders’ outrage out of the way, so rationally greedy stakeholders and a rationally greedy company can bargain rationally.

Self-esteem depletion. Like individuals, organizations are self-esteem maximizers more often than profit maximizers. That is, we tend to do what makes us feel good about ourselves rather than what achieves a better outcome for ourselves – not to mention a better outcome for our project or organization. A key downside of outrage management is that it tends to deplete self-esteem. Many of the core outrage management strategies have a “one-down” feeling to them. Instead of telling critics off, you’re listening to their complaints. Instead of explaining why they’re wrong, you’re focusing on the ways they’re right. Instead of taking credit for project successes and blaming them for project failures, you’re giving them credit for the successes and taking the blame for the failures. (Note that self-esteem matters to your critics too. Some of what looks like outrage may be injured pride.)

Our own outrage. Risk controversies generate outrage on both sides, not just the other side. Having your expertise and integrity questioned is insulting. Having your project delayed is infuriating. Having insults hurled at you – or sometimes rocks – is terrifying. Injured pride, anger, and fear (for your job, for your project, sometimes even for your safety) go with the territory. The difference between community outrage and company outrage is that the former is usually hot while the latter is often cold. Your critics know they’re outraged; at meetings they’re inclined to shout. You, on the other hand, may imagine you’re being calmly reasonable when you’re coming across as coldly passive-aggressive. Their heat makes you colder; your coldness makes them hotter.

Blocked creativity. Good outrage management often requires creative solutions. People are not at their most creative when they are busy stifling their hurt pride, angry feelings, or fears.