Crisis? What Crisis? Ten principles of crisis communications
Use these tips to prevent an incident becoming a crisis…
The events over the past few months have seen crises in the financial, media and tourism sectors. They all have two things in common. Firstly, they failed to take ownership of the issue. Secondly, they lost control, others stepped in and events drove the narrative.
Why is that many still believe that incidents will simply pass without effective communications management?
By the time you find yourself in a crisis it is too late to prevent damage to your reputation. At this point, the response is about minimising stakeholder impact and supporting the recovery phase.
Isn’t it time that we take our seat at the senior management decision making table and put away the corporate mop bucket that leaves us cleaning up such events?
As a strategic function it is our role to get the business to focus on incident management to avoid crisis management. This is done by taking ownership through preparation and planning. It ensures that actions are coordinated and backed by effective stakeholder communications.
This is how reputation is protected and enhanced.
Here are 10 principles to prevent an incident from escalating:
- Plan and test: Don’t hope it won’t happen. It will. Think ahead about the scenarios – there’s nothing that you can’t anticipate. Prioritise the most likely and impactful, then plan, test and make them part of your everyday business processes.
- Be accurate and immediate: The ‘golden hour’ no longer exists. You need to respond immediately. Where possible, drive your response through social media; it’s the most effective channel to help you communicate quickly. You are aiming for engagement, not a one-way dialogue.
- Take ownership: It’s your issue. It’s yours to own. If others step in, it is because you are not taking ownership. Seek senior external counsel to provide perspective.
- Be open and transparent: Be honest and cooperative. Don’t think you can hide anything. When it becomes public knowledge, and it will, it often becomes more significant than the original incident.
- Live your words: Communicate your actions and action what you communicate.
- Look after yourselves: Resource the incident to allow the team to rest adequately. Remember, this isn’t for everyone. Recognise it early and allow those struggling to step down without any associated guilt.
- Don’t make it worse: You may be unable to fix what’s gone wrong, but it is in your power not to make it worse.
- It’s not a passing squall: An incident can be a long-haul event. You may be managing it for months and years. It can often spark other incidents. Be ready.
- Find your voice: There’s always something to say. Don’t shy away. Be part of the narrative and engage with journalists.
- Be empathetic: See everything through the eyes of those affected. Their perspective is the only one that matters.
Adopting these principles into day-to-day operations will help maintain control, preventing incidents from escalating and a crisis from forming. This is key to business resiliency and spans all areas of the organisation.
The most effective way is to first identify the broadest set of scenarios, remembering that there is virtually no occurrence that can’t be determined ahead of time.
Secondly, prioritise those that have the most significant impact and are most likely to occur. Prioritise these for your planning, but don’t forget to keep reviewing and working through the entire list.
Finally, test your plans and perform regular simulations. Measuring the outcomes of the simulations against these 10 principles will provide an invaluable view of how those most affected stakeholders would perceive your actions and communications. This way, you can address any weaknesses before an actual incident. In addition, they create a safe learning environment and, at the same time, build cohesive teams and operational resiliency.
Let’s recognise incidents are going to occur. These 10 principles will help you stay off the front page for mismanaging the situation, but we should also be realistic that it is sometimes unavoidable. It will at least see you respected for how it was handled.
Mike Evans and Elizabeth Maclean are co-managing directors of Herdwick Communications.