The 11 Steps Of Crisis Communications
By Jonathan Bernstein
Crisis: An unstable or crucial time or state of affairs whose outcome will make a decisive difference for better or worse (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary).
Every organization is vulnerable to crises. The days of playing ostrich are gone. You can play, but your stakeholders will not be understanding or forgiving because they've watched what happened
with Bridgestone-Firestone, Bill Clinton, Arthur Anderson, Enron,
Worldcom, 9-11, The Asian Tsunami Disaster and - even as I write
this - Hurricane Katrina.
If you don't prepare, you WILL take more damage. And when I look
at existing "crisis management" plans when conducting a "crisis
document audit," what I often find is a failure to address the many communications issues related to crisis/disaster response. Organizations do not understand that, without adequate
communications:
¤ Operational response will break down.
¤ Stakeholders (internal and external) will not know what is
happening and quickly be confused, angry, and negatively
reactive.
¤ The organization will be perceived as inept, at best, and
criminally negligent, at worst.
The basic steps of effective crisis communications are not
difficult, but they require advance work in order to minimize
damage. The slower the response, the more damage is incurred. So
if you're serious about crisis preparedness and response, read and
implement these 11 steps of crisis communications, the first eight
of which can and should be undertaken before any crisis occurs.
Here are The 11 Steps of Crisis Communications:
1. Identify Your Crisis Communications Team
A small team of senior executives should be identified to serve
as your company's Crisis Communications Team. Ideally, the team
will be led by the company CEO, with the firm's top public
relations executive and legal counsel as his or her chief
advisers. If your in-house PR executive does not have sufficient
crisis communications expertise, he or she may choose to retain
an agency or independent consultant with that specialty. Other
team members should be the heads of major company divisions, to
include finance, personnel and operations.
Let me say a word about legal counsel. Sometimes, during a
crisis, a natural conflict arises between the recommendations of
the company's legal counsel on the one hand, and those of the
public relations counsel on the other. While it may be legally
prudent not to say anything, this kind of reaction can land the
company in public relations "hot water" that is potentially, as
damaging, or even more damaging, than any financial or legal
ramification. Fortunately, more and more legal advisors are
becoming aware of this fact and are working in close cooperation
with public relations counsel. The importance of this
understanding cannot be underestimated. Arthur Anderson lost
its case and went out of business due to the judgment rendered
by the court of public opinion, not the judgment of a court of
law.
2. Identify Spokespersons
Within each team, there should be individuals who are the only
ones authorized to speak for the company in times of crisis. The
CEO should be one of those spokespersons, but not necessarily
the primary spokesperson. The fact is that some chief executives
are brilliant business people but not very effective in-person
communicators. The decision about who should speak is made
after a crisis breaks - but the pool of potential spokespersons
should be identified and trained in advance.
Not only are spokespersons needed for media communications, but
for all types and forms of communications, internal and external,
including on-camera, at a public meeting, at employee meetings,
etc. You really don't want to be making decisions about so many
different types of spokespersons while "under fire."
3. Spokesperson Training
Two typical quotes from well-intentioned company executives
summarize the reason why your spokespersons should receive
professional training in how to speak to the media:
¤ "I talked to that nice reporter for over an hour and
he didn't use the most important news about my
organization."
¤ "I've done a lot of public speaking. I won't have any
trouble at that public hearing."
Regarding the first example, there are a good number of Mike
Wallace's "60 Minutes" victims who thought they knew how to talk
to the press. In the second case, most executives who have
attended a hostile public hearing have gone home wishing they
had been wearing a pair of Depends.
All stakeholders - internal and external - are just as capable of
misunderstanding or misinterpreting information about your
organization as the media, and it's your responsibility to
minimize the chance of that happening.
In one example of such confusion, a completely healthy, well-
managed $2 billion company's stock price dropped almost 25
percent in one day because Dow Jones reported that a prominent
securities firm had made a "sell" recommendation which it later
denied ever making. The damage, of course, was already done.
Spokesperson training teaches you to be prepared, to be ready
to respond in a way that optimizes the response of all
stakeholders.
4. Establish Communications Protocols
Initial crisis-related news can be received at any level of a
company. A janitor may be the first to know there is a problem,
or someone in personnel, or notification could be in the form of
a midnight phone call from an out-of-town executive. Who should
be notified, and where do you reach them?
An emergency communications "tree" should be established and
distributed to all company employees, telling them precisely
what to do and who to call if there appears to be a potential
for or an actual crisis. In addition to appropriate supervisors,
at least one member of the Crisis Communications Team, plus an
alternate member, should include their cellphone, office and home
phone numbers on the emergency contact list.
Some companies prefer not to use the term "crisis," thinking that
this may cause panic. Frankly, using "potentially embarrassing
situations" or similar phrases doesn't fool anyone. Particularly
if you prepare in advance, your employees will learn that
"crisis" doesn't even necessarily mean "bad news," but simply
"very important to our company, act quickly."
5. Identify and Know Your Stakeholders
Who are the stakeholders that matter to your organization?
Most organizations, for example, care about their employees,
customers, prospects, suppliers and the media. Private investors
may be involved. Publicly held companies have to comply with
Securities and Exchange Commission and stock exchange
Information requirements. You may answer to local, state or federal
regulatory agencies.
6. Decide on Communications Methods
For each stakeholder group, you need to have, in advance,
complete emailing, snail-mailing, fax and phone number lists to
accommodate rapid communication in time of crisis. And you need
to know what type of information each stakeholder group is
seeking, as well as the best way to reach each of your contacts.
Another thing to consider is whether you have an automated
system established to ensure rapid communication with those
stakeholders. You should also think about backup communications
options such as toll-free numbers for emergency call-ins or
special Web sites that can be activated in times of crisis to
keep various stakeholders informed and/or to conduct online
incident management.
Consider these factors in advance and rapid communication during
crises will be relatively easy.
7. Anticipate Crises
If you're being proactive and preparing for crises, gather your
Crisis Communications Team for long brainstorming sessions on
all the potential crises which can occur at your organization.
There are at least two immediate benefits to this exercise:
¤ You may realize that some of the situations are preventable by
simply modifying existing methods of operation.
¤ You can begin to think about possible responses, about best
case/worst case scenarios, etc. Better now than when under the
pressure of an actual crisis.
In some cases, of course, you know that a crisis will occur
because you're planning to create it -- e.g., to lay off employees,
or to make a major acquisition. Then, you can proceed with steps
9-11 below, even before the crisis occurs.
There is a more formal method of gathering this information that
I call a "vulnerability audit," about which information is
available at my Web site, www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com.
8. Develop Holding Statements
While full message development must await the outbreak of an
actual crisis, "holding statements" - messages designed for use
immediately after a crisis breaks - can be developed in advance
to be used for a wide variety of scenarios to which the
organization is perceived to be vulnerable, based on the
assessment you conducted in Step 7 of this process. An example
of holding statements by a hotel chain with properties hit by a
natural disaster - before the company headquarters has any hard
factual information - might be:
"We have implemented our crisis response plan, which places the
highest priority on the health and safety of our guests and
staff."
"Our hearts and minds are with those who are in harm's way, and
we hope that they well."
"We will be supplying additional information when it is
available and posting it on our Web site."
The organization's Crisis Communications Team should regularly
review holding statements to determine if they require revision
and/or whether statements for other scenarios should be
developed.
9. Assess the Crisis Situation
Reacting without adequate information is a classic "shoot first
and ask questions afterwards" situation in which you could be
the primary victim. But if you've done all of the above first,
it's a "simple" matter of having the Crisis Communications Team
on the receiving end of information coming in from your
communications "tree," ensuring that the right type of
information is being provided so that you can proceed with
determining the appropriate response.
Assessing the crisis situation is, therefore, the first crisis
communications step you can't take in advance. But if you
haven't prepared in advance, your reaction will be delayed by
the time it takes your in-house staff or quickly-hired
consultants to run through steps 1 to 8. Furthermore, a hastily
created crisis communications strategy and team are never as
efficient as those planned and rehearsed in advance.
10. Identify Key Messages
With holding statements available as a starting point, the
Crisis Communications Team must continue developing the crisis-
specific messages required for any given situation. The team
already knows, categorically, what type of information its
stakeholders are looking for. What should those stakeholders
know about *this* crisis? Keep it simple -- have no more than
three main messages for all stakeholders and, as necessary, some
audience-specific messages for individual groups of stakeholders.
11. Riding Out the Storm
No matter what the nature of a crisis...no matter whether it's
good news or bad...no matter how carefully you've prepared and
responded...some of your stakeholders are not going to react the
way you want them to. This can be immensely frustrating. What do
you do?
¤ Take a deep breath.
¤ Take an objective look at the reaction(s) in question. Is it
your fault, or their unique interpretation?
¤ Decide if another communication to those stakeholders is
likely to change their impression for the better.
¤ Decide if another communication to those stakeholders could
make the situation worse.
¤ If, after considering these factors, you think it's still
worth more communication, then take your best shot!
Final Thoughts…
When a healthy organization's CEO or CFO looks at the cost of
preparing a crisis communications plan, either a heavy investment
of in-house time or retention of an outside professional for a
substantial fee, it is tempting for them to fantasize "it can't
happen to me" or "if it happens to me, we can handle it relatively
easily."
Hopefully, that type of ostrich-playing is rapidly becoming a
thing of the past. Yet I know that thousands of organizations hit
by Hurricane Katrina will have, when all is said and done,
suffered far more damage than would have occurred with a fully
developed crisis communications plan in place. This has also been
painfully true for scores of clients I have served over the past 23
years. Even the best crisis management professional is playing
catch up - with more damage occurring all the time - when the
organization has no crisis communications infrastructure already
in place.
I would like to believe that organizations worldwide are finally
"getting it" about crisis preparedness, whether we're talking
about crisis communications, disaster response or business
continuity. Certainly client demand for advance preparation has
increased dramatically in the past several years, at least for my
consultancy. But I fear that there is, in fact, little change in
what I have said in the past, that 95 percent of American
organizations remain either completely unprepared or significantly
under-prepared for crises. And my colleagues overseas report little better, and sometimes worse statistics.
Choose to be part of the prepared minority. Your stakeholders will
appreciate it!
Jonathan L. Bernstein, President/CEO of Bernstein Communications, Inc. His 20 years experience in the design and conduct of public relations and strategic communications programs, with particular expertise in what is commonly called "Crisis Management," but which Bernstein Communications breaks down into "Crisis Response," "Issues Management" and “Litigation Consulting”. His clients are from every industry including real estate giants such as the Lyle Anderson Companies, Del Webb Corporation and WCI Communities.
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