In today’s “I want to know right now world,” journalists and their readers and viewers want answers immediately — and they are getting it — one way or the other.  Unfortunately, these answers are not always factual or accurate, but in today’s 24/7 news and blogging cycle, that is what is going on.

In the case of  Toyota, first, it was the floor mats, then the accelerator mechanism and now some are saying it is the electronics.  Who really knows?  Coming from a manufacturing background, I have seen multiple problems with products that are thousands of times less complex than an automobile, problems that took days, weeks and sometimes even months to figure out.  I feel for Toyota, a company with a stellar reputation for quality and reliability.  At the beginning, they appeared to be behind the curve in disclosing the problems, then once they began addressing them, the story took on a life of its own.  Questions remain as to whether they truly understand the problems and if their fix is going to work.

A couple of weeks ago, they instituated a proactive public relations program consisting of appearances by the company’s chairman and paid television and print  advertising featuring current customers reaffirming their loyalty to the brand, but unfortunately additional mishaps occurred and college professors began touting their engineering analyses of the problem, while plaintiffs attorneys started lining up at the courthouse steps with their class action lawsuits.  Clearly, all of the paid stuff got trampled.

On a separate note, Orlando, Florida  Sea World faired better for several reasons with a crisis of their own, the killing of one of their Killer Whale trainers duing a public show.  What was the media’s immediate response?  They started Googling and visiting news archives like Lexis Nexis to look for background.  What did they find?  They learned that Tilikum had killed before.  Next the animal rights groups weighed in saying that killer whales should not be in captivitty and held Sea World responsible.

Fortunately for Sea World, its corporate communications team was on its game.  The very next morning the curator for the Orlando park was conducting interviews.  He said it was an accident and that Tilikum did not mean to harm the trainer.  He stood up to multiple hard questions from the likes of CNN and others dealing with the past and future.  He said they would review their safety protocols and promised to reenstate the shows that very week, which is what they did — and they did it the right way, by holding a memorial ceromony for the deceased trainer and once again, conducting interviews with their top people as spokespersons.

Although Sea World’s crisis was much more isolated than Toyota’s, they were able to determine what went wrong, made the necessary protocol  changes and honored the dead.  They also took on the cries from groups and  induviduals who were demanding that Tilikumbe released into the wild.

If you think about it, Sea World had a much simpler job, since they didn’t have tens of millions of their product on the roads around the world.  Theirs was an isolated incident.  Toyota’s was not.

Once again we learn that answers and solutions to complex problems cannot always be delivered when it is needed.  Sometimes, it is better to punt and let everyone know you are working on it instead of providing definitive  answers you may not have.