IN A CRISIS, PREPARATION IS EVERYTHING

Every crisis comes as a surprise, and usually as a shock. It’s unexpected, by definition. The reaction of many organisations is panic or paralysis. ‘This can’t be happening!’ ‘This kind of thing doesn’t happen to a company like ours!’ ‘This has never happened to us before!’

Understandable. The DNA of most organisations is planning and predictability. When a serious problem strikes out of the blue, the normal, well-managed course of events can easily be thrown into turmoil. But this is fatal if we hope to survive a crisis unscathed.

The solution – the only solution- is to expect the unexpected. We must imagine the worst of the worst and put measures in place to enable us to react quickly and professionally. In a crisis, the eyes of the world are on us. There’s no hiding place. We must be crisis-ready.

What does this mean?

We must be prepared to say and do what our stakeholders and the general public expect from us. They want us to show that we are on top of things, that we are facing up to the problem, that we have a plan and that we care about the people who’ve been affected.

In other words, we’ve got to act fast and demonstrate empathy, our human face.

Unfortunately, neither of these behaviours comes naturally to the average organisation. They are not designed to move quickly, and they are more comfortable with corporate, legal language than ordinary speech. But both are essential if we hope to attract the approval and support of our stakeholders when we are in a tricky spot.

We need to be prepared for an event that might never happen, but that might hit us tomorrow. We have the famous ‘golden hour’ to get our initial statement written, approved and issued, ideally by the CEO or chair. Must it be the CEO or chair? Yes. These days, the media and commentators expect nothing else.

None of this is any organisation’s normal way of working, so a crisis means that different rules apply. We need to agree with the CEO how a crisis is recognised and declared, and how the crisis rules, in particular, speed, are brought into operation. He or she must be fully on board because it will be his or her face on the TV screens and social media posts.

There are a few CEOs who can carry this off without practice and rehearsal, such as Sharon White, Nick Vardy, John Timpson, Emma Walmsley, but most can’t, and it’s not fair to expose a CEO to crisis interviews without crisis-specific media training.

Our comms team must be trained and ready to handle a torrent of demands from branded and social media. In a crisis, these are different, high-pressure, often aggressive, sometimes hostile. A crisis can strike at 4 am and continue for days. Have we thought about how to provide 24×7 media enquiry cover?

Few organisations want to think about disasters that can threaten their existence. But if they don’t, they leave themselves dangerously exposed. Is that a risk worth taking?

Adrian Wheeler and Kate Hartley present the PRCA’s two-day Crisis Communications Master-Class on the 29th and 30th January.

Click here.