1) Definition of a Crisis
Noun:
A time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.
A crisis is not a disaster, or predicament, or even a catastrophe. These situations may be a crisis and that is because a crisis is born out of these incidents.
2) An Introduction To Your Crisis & Strategic Communications Planning
When your organization is operating under blue sky conditions communications are easy, even the tough questions of the day can be handled with minimal stress. However, when your organization is operating under grey sky conditions, and a crisis is impacting your operations or those you serve, your organization must bring order to the chaos.
Crisis and Strategic Communications are enabled to handle small and large incidents and encompass everything from a social media post that negatively impacts the public’s perception of your organization or a large scale natural disaster devastating a region.
Established Crisis and Strategic plans are scalable and adaptable, to address legal actions and aircraft disasters; scandals involving senior leadership and acts of terrorism; disruptions to operational services and severe weather, and anything else in between.
Crisis and Strategic Communications plans should be embedded with stakeholders before an incident occurs. Stakeholders that should be included in pre-planning and incident operations change depending on whether an organization is governmental or corporate, however regardless of operating structure, executives, legal, operations and human resources should all be part of the Crisis and Strategic Communications plan.
3) Awaiting A Crisis
Preparing for a crisis is PRIMER : Plan, Rehearse, Implement, Maintain, Evaluate, Recover.
If one fails to plan, then one has planned to fail.
Your organization must plan and rehearse its Crisis and Strategic Communications.
Your organization must work at all levels to implement its Crisis and Strategic Communications.
Your organization must maintain its Crisis and Strategic Communications.
Your organization must learn to evaluate what it has planned and rehearsed for the implementation of its Crisis and Strategic Communications.
Your organization must learn to recover from its Crisis and Strategic Communications so it can transition back to normal communications operations.
Your organization’s communications team should conduct a Threat Hazard Identification & Risk Assessment (THIRA) annually. This assessment determines the most likely threats to impact your organization within the next year. Following the annual THIRA assessment, your organization’s communications team should then conduct a Strength, Weakness and Opportunity analysis, to close any communications training gaps discovered during the THIRA assessment.
These assessments should address likely crisis situations, such as a flood or hurricane in certain geographic locations; a product failure that leads to a recall or fatality; a data breach; or transportation disaster; as well as personnel and reputational matters.
Senior leadership involvement is critical in identifying the top five most likely incidents to occur in the next year during these assessments. As well, the communications team needs to identify other potential crisis situations away from the senior leadership to develop Crisis and Strategic Communications plans that can protect the organization as a whole, from a different perspective.
This annual analysis also enhances the capabilities of your organization’s communications team in their ability to mitigate potential incidents, to defuse them in a proactive manner, before they become a crisis.
4) Enhancing Organizational Reputation Under ‘Blue Skies’
Enhancing an organization’s reputation under ‘blue skies’, rather than protecting a reputation under ‘grey skies’ builds public trust and allows an organization to grow its positive public perception rather than fight to build public trust after an incident has occurred.
Enhancing a positive organizational reputation does not just involve donations, and placing a sign with your branding up, it is hands-on involvement, through putting boots on the ground to help clean up a park, put up fencing at an animal shelter, partnering with a food bank or finding out what the community needs and working to make that a reality.
Establishing and maintaining an authentic connection with the communities your organization serves aids in mitigating criticism and fosters a more forgiving atmosphere during a time of crisis, because your organization is seen as a partner in the community, rather than a faceless entity that happens to also be in the community.
Beyond the goals of reducing the need for Crisis and Strategic Communications due to an incident, being an authentic partner to the communities your organization serves offers additional positive impacts to your organizational reputation. Organizations that are genuinely concerned about the people and communities they serve also increase their attractiveness to investors.
5) Your Reputation and Relationships With The Media
The media is not your enemy. Even in times of crisis, when media attention may seem overwhelming, they are not your enemy.
Your organization should consistently work with the media, and show the media a level of transparency, during ‘blue sky’ operations, to ensure the media is able to trust you when an incident threatens to negatively impact your organization’s reputation during ‘grey sky’ operations.
Preparing your organization’s senior leadership and front line management for media interactions should start with simulations during exercises and evaluations long before a reporter starts asking questions. The time to learn how to interact with the media, or get comfortable with a media interview, is not at the same time your Crisis and Strategic Media Plan is being deployed in a real world situation.
If your organization’s leadership has experienced an adversarial relationship with the media, at any level, your Crisis and Strategic Communications Plan should include opportunities to seek out friendlier journalists under ‘blue sky operations’ to reduce the level of strain with adversarial media outlets before ‘grey sky’ communications occur.
There are ample opportunities, under all conditions, to build positive relationships with the media, and enhance your organization’s reputation.
Whether you like it or not, the media is a stakeholder in your communications and outreach.
6) Failing To Prepare = Preparing To Fail
Preparing for a crisis that is likely to cause severe damage to your organization’s reputation should be routine for your communications team. The damage caused to an organization’s reputation if an untrained or inexperienced communications team is faced with a significant crisis can be devastating and long lasting. However, a communications team that is properly trained and well prepared can navigate an organization through a crisis effectively, quickly restoring credibility and rebuilding an organization’s reputation.
Regularly conducting Crisis and Strategic Communications Plans exercises and evaluations, involving your organization’s communications team and senior leadership is critical to effectively preparing for meeting crisis incidents head on.
Developing realistic crisis scenarios and simulating your organization’s responses for a full communications cycle, from start to finish, allows for the evaluation for your communications capabilities and will identify training gaps that need to be addressed prior to a real crisis occurring.
Crisis and Strategic Communications exercises should include press conferences, authoring press releases, compiling press materials, managing deadline media responses and creating effective immediate release holding statements.
7) The Crisis Has Occurred
From the moment your organization’s communications team becomes aware of a crisis, regardless of whether the story has become public, it is essential that accurate information be gathered and verified. A ‘control document’ should be started immediately, which establishes the roles of every person involved in carrying out the Crisis and Strategic Communications Plan, reducing the potential for confusion during the incident communications operations.
When possible, designate a conference room as a Communications Command Center, or in virtual environments create a single online conference room that everyone is connected to during the incident. Your organization’s Communications Command Center, whether physical or virtual, should include representatives from the Senior Leadership, Operations, Legal, and Communications, and other relevant stakeholders to the incident that has created the crisis.
Establishing an effective Working Group that shares the responsibility of carrying out your organization’s Crisis and Strategic Communications Plan will reduce response times when making key strategic decisions at the higher level.
Should your organization need to coordinate a wide scale or global, response, ensure that messaging across all departments is consistent. Every department and every level of management should have a single page document that establishes the core messaging talking points, defines the key documents and contains the unified contact information to be shared with the media and the public.
Always be mindful that incorrect information will be fact checked and broadcast before your organization will ever have the opportunity to correct itself.
8) Crisis & Strategic Communications Team Roles and Responsibilities
Your organization’s communications team must identify who-handles-what during a crisis incident long before any incident is on the horizon.
Be mindful that any person, at any level, that your organization selects to act as a spokesperson interacting with the media or the public must go through media training.
Ideally during a crisis your organization’s senior leadership or your communications team will act as spokespersons, but during a localized crisis it is more than likely the media will be on scene very quickly requiring front line managers to have basic media training.
Media training is a perishable skill, and as such senior leadership and members of your organization’s communications team should attend media training annually.
All approved spokespersons and media handlers should clearly be established in your organization’s Crisis Response Plan, as well as defined in your organization’s chain of command chart. Those selected to serve as spokespersons or media handlers should be calm and methodical, enabling them to control the pace of a press conference or media questions. Communications management should be comfortable handling calls from the media and drafting statements, while the entry level members of your organization’s communications team should be tasked with media monitoring and cataloging what messaging needs to be addressed or corrected, to support the communication’s team management.
All members of your organization’s communications team, whether or not they interface with the media or address the public, should be trained in Crisis and Strategic Communications, including the execution of full cycle crisis communications.
9) Your Stakeholders, It is Not Always Who You Expect It To Be
Your organization’s communications team must address stakeholders it may not regularly address. During a crisis incident stakeholders are no longer executives, internal departments or aligned organizations. When a crisis occurs your Crisis and Strategic Communications Plan stakeholders are largely external, and messaging must address each of them effectively.
Each crisis communications stakeholder has a pain point that must be acknowledged. Each stakeholder must be addressed with empathy, while being mindful that overpromising and underdelivering can severely damage your organization’s credibility, causing further reputational harm.
Depending on a crisis incident, your organization’s crisis communications stakeholders may include:
Each of your stakeholder audiences likely needs their own messaging.
For example, following the crash of an airliner each stakeholder has their own time sensitive communications needs from an airline.
Local media tends to be initially focused on the immediate impact to people in the area where the crash occurred, and as such messaging needs to be focused on the airline working with local officials to minimize the impact to the community where the disaster occurred.
National and international media tends to be initially focused on the cause of the disaster, requiring messaging that conveys that the airline and airframer are focused on safety and transparency to ensure whatever caused the disaster does not happen again.
Business media will discuss the financial impact to the airline and airframer, requiring messaging that conveys a sense of calm and stability so there is minimal impact to stock values and that Wall Street doesn’t overreact to an isolated disaster.
Family members will need immediate information regarding the details of being reunified with their loved ones or how to connect with a crisis counselor should they need to recover the remains of a loved one.
Shareholders need to be reassured regarding their investment, while employees need to be reassured that the company is concerned about them and that there are resources for them to move forward following the incident.
Government agencies need to be coordinated with, so messaging to the public is consistent during the ongoing investigation.
The Public
The Media
Customers and Clients
Employees
Investors and Shareholders
Governmental and Quasi-Governmental Agencies
Family and Next of Kin
10) A Holding Statement : Simple But Effective
Holding Statements are precisely what they sound like, a released statement that is intended to provide the media, and the public, a brief account of what your organization can confirm, as well as what your organization is doing, in the immediate aftermath of a developing crisis incident, while more information is being gathered.
The purpose of a Holding Statement is to keep the media, and the public updated as quickly as possible while protecting your organization’s reputation.
Issuing a Holding Statement is of the utmost importance; act with speed and confidence when a developing crisis incident threatens the reputation of your organization. Your organization’s statement needs to be crafted delicately, meeting the needs of the media and public, while also adhering to the pre-established guidance of your legal team, and being ready for release in a matter of minutes.
The following are basic tips for drafting effective Holding Statements:
Include tangible actions that help demonstrate your organization cares, is being transparent, and is taking action.
Ensure that the public knows that during your organization’s crisis response the priorities are people, then the environment and not profits.
Never speculate under any circumstances. Include basic confirmed facts regarding the crisis incident, but never why the crisis incident occurred.
Do not disclose organizationally sensitive information.
If key facts are unknown, be very clear in that information is not being withheld, but rather that the information is not yet known.
Care and concern for any and all persons who have been affected. A statement such as “It is with great regret that Airline Company confirms 32 deaths as a result of the crash of Flight 123.”
Control over any crisis incident at the most senior level, such as, “every possible action is being undertaken at this time to bring the situation under control,”or “We are fully cooperating with law enforcement as they launch an investigation into the ongoing incident.”
Commitment to helping those affected by an incident, or investigating the cause of the incident. For example, “We are deeply committed to investigating the cause of the incident.”
Your organization’s Holding Statement, and all subsequent statements, should always express:
An effective release of a Holding Statement is within 15 minutes of a crisis incident breaking, and no more than half an hour after the crisis incident has become known to the media and public if an organization wants to maintain control of the crisis incident’s narrative.
Pre-planning your organization’s Holding Statement, with a pre-written statement template, including blanks spaces left in the document, allows for your organization to be out in front of a crisis incident as the crisis becomes known to the public and the media. As a Holding Statement is typically lacking details and is meant to merely confirm your organization is aware of the crisis incident and is taking proactive steps to manage it, a pre-written Holding Statement template allows your communications team more time to provide updated information, after having already been proactive in communicating with the media.
11) The Inside Information
Your organization’s employees should be kept up to date quickly and regularly during a crisis incident. A lack of internal information causes confusion, which in turn causes disharmony.
Internal communications platforms, whatever they may be, should be updated at the same time a ‘Holding Statement’ is released and with every update released thereafter. Proactively placing timely information in front of your work force builds internal trust and confidence, while reducing the spread of internal rumors.
The same sentiments that your organization shares with the public, that of a commitment to transparency, that all who are impacted are cared for and that everything is under control, should be contained within every internal communication with your organization’s employees, regardless of platform.
If injuries or fatalities have occurred as a result of a crisis incident, person to person communications are likely to be required to reassure your organization’s employees, as well as to demonstrate care and concern for the well being of those who serve your organization. Formats for these engagements may be team briefings or town hall meetings.
Each and every communication with employees should remind them that only approved spokespersons should speak to the media and that if they receive an enquiry from the media, it should be immediately forwarded to the communications team. Employees should not make any statement of any kind to the media under any circumstances following a crisis incident.
12) Mitigating Reputational Impact
Crisis and Strategic Communications is designed to handle any crisis situation that occurs with a comprehensive strategy that has been developed to minimize reputational impact. Once a crisis incident passes, it is vital that your organization’s credibility remains intact, that the media is accurately reporting that the organization has acted responsibly and fairly, and that public sentiment has not shifted against your organization.
Authenticity, openness and integrity are imperative to achieving the protection of your organization’s reputation.
13) Is An Apology Acceptable During A Crisis Incident?
Should an organization offer an apology during a crisis incident is something that needs to be decided on a case by case basis, and with consultation of your organization’s legal team.
Your organization offering a sincere apology at the appropriate time can be an important and positive gesture to win over public sentiment … however … your organization offering a sincere apology also indicates that your organization has done something wrong.
A carefully worded apology, authored with input from your organization’s legal team might be able to meet its intended goal, however it is likely that any apology related to a crisis incident opens up your organization up being legal liability.
So, is an apology acceptable? The answer is, it depends.
14) After a crisis
A post crisis incident after action report and evaluation is a vital part of the Crisis and Strategic Communications process. Any crisis incident that occurs once has the potential to occur again.
Your organization should be given the opportunity to provide honest feedback, at all levels of the organization, on how the processes worked. Additionally, every team member who participated in the Crisis and Strategic Communications deployment should receive individual feedback allowing them to enhance their crisis communications skills.
Most importantly following a deployment of your organization’s Crisis and Strategic Communications Plan, an after action report should examine how your organizations communications team handled the crisis incident as a whole.
The after action report should examine:
The extent and tone of media coverage, in traditional, broadcast and social media.
What was the post crisis incident outcome of the company’s reputation?
Was there a shift in public sentiment?
Did the organization’s pre-existing relationship with the media positively or negatively impact organizational reputation?
Were there any issues in managing senior management’s communications response?
Was there any internal feedback from senior management regarding the operations of the communications team?
The data gleaned from the Crisis and Strategic Communications Plan after action report should be used to assist in the preparation for the next crisis, in the weeks following the crisis incident, as the communications shift from ‘grey sky’ operations back to ‘blue sky’ operations.
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