Crisis Communication Management: Are You the Architect, Firefighter or Repairer Crisis Manager?
“Crisis? What are you talking about? We are too small to go through any crisis other than financial. And to get through that we need money, not communication crisis management”
If you are a communication professional with a few years of experience you have probably heard this line a lot. The mentality that only established large size companies can be hit by a crisis and therefore they are the only ones that need a communication crisis management strategy and resources to implement it, is quite common. The word “crisis” seems like such a scary concept, something that happens to other companies not to the one we are managing or working for. If it does happen, we will manage it on the spot and move on. And, anyway, what does the communication department have to do with that? Do they have the solutions for any type of crisis?
Firstly any company, of any size and with any kind of history or expertise can go through a crisis at any moment: if we needed more evidence, the COVID-19 pandemic has proven that to all of us. Secondly any entity that deals with customers has a reputation to defend and a crisis is a significant threat to the reputation of the company. Injuries or deaths will result in financial and reputation loss while reputations have a financial impact on organizations.
This is where the role of the communication department, which provides clarity and direction for the employees, stakeholders, partners and media is crucial. Clear, consistent communication is vital to successfully maintain business continuity and recover from crisis.
Managing a crisis is obviously not an easy job, especially when you are very aware of the fact that failure can result in serious harm to stakeholders, losses for an organization, or end its very existence. You need communication crisis management knowledge, an efficient strategy, a competent team and good management skills. The manager of the communication crisis team, the person who stirs the boat, can significantly influence the evolution and outcome of the crisis with his or her management style and foresight.
This being said what type of communication crisis manager do you think you are? Do you like to do a lot of research and plan ahead, thinking that this would reduce the enormous amount of pressure put on the company and the crisis management team by the crisis? Are you the type who reacts and makes decisions quickly and this strategy has always proved successful to you? Or are you more focused on the healing process and recovery stage of the crisis?
Every crisis has three main stages: the pre-crisis (or planning) stage, the response (or crisis) stage and the recovery stage. Depending on the phase that you feel most comfortable or most excited to manage, you could fit into one of the three profiles: architect, firefighter or repairer.
The “Architect”
When you think about planning, you probably think about architects as well. A significant part of their job revolves around planning. Communicators that are in this category usually have a crisis communication plan that they can refer to when a crisis occurs. Proactively identifying potential crisis scenarios, putting together a crisis management team with clear roles and communication responsibilities and training them to efficiently respond to crisis situations, seeking to reduce known risks that could lead to a crisis and conducting exercises to test the crisis management plan and crisis management team are very important actions that significantly impact the way in which an organization navigates a crisis. It does not matter if you cannot forsee all the potential crisis scenarios, nobody can. It does not matter if the members of your crisis management team are not experts in crisis management, as long as you provide training to them and teach them how to efficiently work together. Communicators who have a plan are ahead of the crisis. As Dale Carnegie said: “An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing”.
The fundamentals of the planning stage:
1. Imagine the worse-case scenarios and divide them into categories such as “technological”, “financial”, “personnel”, “natural disaster”, “organizational”. You will need to draft different plans for each category. Organize brainstorming sessions with different departments to identify potential crisis situations.
2. When you draft the plans take into account all the potential audiences that you will have to communicate with and also the global impact of the crisis. Nowadays news circulate at the speed of light and a crisis situation can, at any moment, become international.
3. Designate crisis management teams, which should include members of the communication team, but also members of different departments of the company, depending on the type of crisis. All these teams should absolutely include members of the legal department which will review and pre-approve the messages during the crisis. Provide training sessions to the team, which will enable them to quickly and efficiently respond to crisis situations.
4. Designate a spokesperson and train him or her to be able to answer the most uncomfortable questions asked by the journalists. This person could be part of the top management team or it could be part of the communications team. The important thing is that he or she knows how to control emotions and impulses, understands that getting into an argument with a journalist could be damaging for the organizations and has the necessary skills and information to quickly come up with answers to unexpected questions, that have not been included in the Q&A list, in a way that puts the organization in a positive light. While holding a speech in the public, the spokesperson should have strong eye contact, limited language disfluencies and avoid distracting nervous gestures such as fidgeting or pacing. He or she should also wear the right outfit and look relaxed and open to interactions and questions. The spokesperson should always have absolutely all the information related to the crisis and its evolution.
5. Establish an open internal communication system. When the information is available internally for all the members of the team the likelihood of rumor spread and information leakage is much lower.
6. Collect and keep together in a place that is easy to access, documents that can help you find quickly the correct information for potential media statements: detailed descriptions of products and services; labour security manuals; a list of addresses and phone numbers of all the company’s offices and departments; detailed descriptions of all the production units including pictures; biographies of all the employees and detailed information about the key top management members; emergency information such as the address of the nearest hospital and quickest access routes, police and firefighter contact numbers. The list is much longer than that. It includes absolutely all the documents that describe in detail the history, operations, policies, employees of a company, as well as the potential audiences. It is just as important to periodically update these documents, which is not an easy task, but if you do not do it, they are useless.
7. Draft Q & A (Questions & Answers) lists for each type of crisis and ask the other departments to help you reply to the questions and come up with additional potential questions. You will never be able to predict all the potential questions and you do not need to. You will simply update them as you go along.
8. Start a crisis management log where you will document all the actions of the crisis management team: all the meetings, drafted messages, decisions made, the media’s reactions and the competition’s reactions if necessary. When the crisis is over revisiting this document will help you draft the lessons learned, will be a valuable source of information for future similar types of crisis and in case the crisis is ever audited and your ability to mage it efficiently is questioned, it will show that the team took all the necessary actions to “put down the fire”.
A Crisis Management Plan is not a step-by-step guide to how to manage a crisis, but it does help you save a lot of time during a crisis by pre-assigning tasks, pre-collecting information, and it serves as a reference source.
Make sure that you give as much attention to the implementation stage as well. Perfectionism and focusing too much on planning details could be the weaknesses of an “Architect” type Communicator, because they might delay your reactions.
The “Firefighter”
If you are the “Firefighter” type you feel more motivated by acting and making decisions quickly, rather than by planning. You take your energy from reacting and get things in motion right away. You enjoy more the second stage of the crisis, the response. The role of strategic communication during this phase is to provide timely, credible information that keeps stakeholders informed. The Firefighter type of communicator can be very efficient in unpredictable crisis situations. The chances are he does not have a crisis communication plan, but if he does, it is probably a brief, not a detailed one. You will figure everything on the spot.
The fundamentals of the response stage:
1. Find out as much information as you can about the situation: What happened? When and where did it happen? Who was involved? Where there any victims and what happened to them? What are the damages? Who is investigating the situation? Who are the people that you can contact to get the information you need about the evolution of the crisis?
2. Start monitoring and continue to do so throughout the whole process. Monitor all the online and offline communication channels and record all the articles, posts and comments related to the crisis.
3. Meet up with the crisis management team or, if you do not have one, create one on the spot. Map the situation, revisit the crisis management plan (if you have one) to make sure everybody knows what they have to do or decide on the spot if necessary. Brainstorm for solutions and adjust the response strategy accordingly.
4. Brief the top management team about the situation, your crisis communicationstrategy and periodically update them.
5. Revisit the Q&A list, or if you do not have one, create it as quick as possible, discuss it with all the departments involved and approve it with the legal department. One Q&A list is not enough. You need different lists for different audiences. Do not panic if you get questions that are not in the Q&A list. Do the necessary research, draft the answers on the spot and approve them with the legal department before sending them. Nobody expects you to have all the answers to all the questions and send them in 3 minutes. Journalists, customers and stakeholder realize that this is a process that might take some time. Focus on drafting the correct answer, rather than sending it quickly. Quick is good, but correct is better.
6. Draft the messages: press releases, statements, speeches and run them through the legal department. Make sure they are authentic, transparent and consistent. Organizations that do that are more likely to gain trust, maintain their brand perception and retain loyal customers, employees and partners. Be quick, accurate and consistent!
7. Use empathy in your messaging, especially if you are dealing with a crisis in which victims are involved. Show the audiences that you care about the people affected by the crisis and that you will provide support to their families. But do not just say it, act upon it. Organizations that put people first are more likely to recover quicker and have their reputation restored.
8. Eliminate the “no comment” phrase from your vocabulary and from all the messages. It creates suspicion about the role of your organization in the crisis, it might make people think that you are hiding something, because you are guilty. Try to identify most of the uncomfortable questions and find an acceptable answer that does not affect the reputation of your company. If the question takes you by surprise just say something like “we do not have the full information at the moment, but we will get back to you as soon as we do”.
9. Use all of the available communication channels including the Internet, Intranet, and mass notification systems.
10. Do not forget about informing your employees and keeping them updated about the evolution of the crisis. They are the most credible representatives of your company. People base their perceptions on the way the employees reply to questions. The last think you want to do is misinform them or not inform them at all. This will create anxiety, frustration, depression among them and will reduce their loyalty to the company. Remember that they will speak with their neighbours, friends and acquaintances and you do not want them to send wrong, distorted messages. They should find out about the crisis from internal sources, not from the media.
11. Do not trash the opponents involved in the crisis, even if they publicly trash your organization. Negative statements and accusations brought to the opponents will reflect negatively on the reputation of your organization. React to threats, fake news and accusations, but do it in a dignified manner. This will help your organization a lot in the recovery stage.
Reacting quickly is important, it can significantly reduce the impact of the damage on the organization. But make sure that you have all the correct data before doing that, otherwise the reaction might impact the outcome of the crisis. Also, carefully analyze each situation that appears along the crisis path and decide if it is better to react to it or simply wait and let the spirits cool down. Being over reactive can fuel the flame, rather than put it out. After a while you might realize that you are prolonging the crisis longer than necessary, which could lead to negative consequences on your organization and the crisis management team. Sometimes you might not even realize it and think that this is just the natural progression of the crisis, when in fact the crisis could have ended a long time before.
The “Repairer”
Each crisis is followed by assessment and reputation repairs. This is the recovery stage which will require you to look at the damages left by the crisis, the actions you took during the response stage, honestly sperate those that were successful from those that were not that successful, prepare a recovery plan and implement it. It is basically what a mender does. If this is the stage that you enjoy most, then you are the Repairer type. This means that you have the thoroughness, patience and vision to rebuild or mend the reputation of your organization. This is probably the longest stage of the process and it could prolong indefinitely, so you are a long-distance runner.
The fundamentals of the recovery stage:
1. Keep communicating pro-actively and consistently. This is essential for rebuilding the organization’s reputation. People that have lost their trust in your organization need to learn positive things about your actions and plans.
2. Publicly speak about your share of responsibility to the crisis. Now that the investigation is over and all the facts have been clarified, it is time to talk about the outcome in the public. If your organization was guilty it should admit the guilt, apologize for the negative consequences and talk about the actions taken to reduce the impact of the damages.
3. Determine the cause of the crisis together with the crisis management team and communicate it to the top management team. This draws an alarm sign on what could be wrong inside the organization and what changes could be made. A crisis is also an opportunity for an organization to re-align its communication to its purpose, mission and values and make important changes to its structure and processes, to avoid or better deal with future potential similar situations.
4. Honestly assess the quality and efficiency of the crisis management plan and the performance of the team members and create a list of lessons learned. You will be grateful for this tip when the next crisis kicks in and you will need to refer to this document.
5. Clearly communicate to stakeholders and external audiences the organization’s future development plans. These statements reflect the organization’s commitment to improve and show strategic thinking.
Every Repairer gets satisfaction from both the mending process, but especially from the result. This is a natural human need. We feel content when we have completed a task and achieved something. The crisis recovery process might be a very long one. Do not reduce it because you feel the need to have a task completed. Be patient and thorough with it.
Every crisis challenges the strength of an organization and its ability to maintain its good reputation. The way in which a crisis is managed determines the final outcome and the way in which a company deals with a crisis becomes a part of its reputation. There are three key elements communicators should take into account when managing a crisis: drafting a crisis management plan, building and training a crisis management team and designating and coaching a spokesperson. No matter what type of crisis communication manager you are, if you understand these principles, identify the stage of the crisis you are most comfortable with and make efforts to put a similar amount of passion and effort into the other two stages, you have a good chance to successfully navigate a crisis. By the way, what type do you think you are?
Bibliography:
Cohen, J. R. (1999). Advising clients to apologize. S. California Law Review, 72, 1009-131.
Newsom, Doug; VanSlyke Turk Judy; Kruckeberg Dean (2010). Everything about Public Relations: Crisis and credibility, 433-464
Bouzon, Arlette. Communication in Crisis Situations (2006). Risk and Control, 69-131.
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