By Myra Borshoff Cook, APR, Fellow PRSA; principal
Deal with problems quickly, using smart communications
A tornado rips off the roof of your distribution center. One of your key employees is arrested for domestic abuse. An angry customer has started a viral campaign to damage your reputation.
What defines a crisis? It’s something that seriously interrupts or shuts down your business or negatively affects your reputation.
Simple or complex, it has the same damaging effect.
Moving quickly and decisively in the first few minutes or hours of a situation can have a significant impact on your ability to minimize the damage. That may involve emergency, fire or police officials. And it most always involves your lawyer. I would argue that an experienced communicator should be part of your core team as early in the process as possible.
Unfortunately, business owners or executives may inadvertently flame the crisis fires by not handling it properly from the start.
For example, if they ignore the crisis, wait until the public finds out or treat the media like the enemy, the situation can become more complicated and problematic in short order. Sometimes, in an effort to explain things, they might use language that no one can understand. Or they may choose to keep the message limited to the issues, ignoring the emotional aspects. These are all very typical responses that can make a difficult situation even tougher.
Conversely, when executives work to keep critical stakeholders informed (don’t forget the employees) and respond to the media, even when they can’t answer every question, the results often can minimize the damage, and in some cases, make things better.
There are never many absolutes, but if executives have been trained to deal with the media and how to use communications tools to reach their audiences with messages and keep them updated, chances are things will be much smoother, even in rocky waters.
More than two decades after its Tylenol-tampering issue, Johnson & Johnson is still the best example of crisis communications done right. It moved quickly and deliberately with actions that boldly communicated its commitment to its customers.
Now, following the accounting scandals that brought down Enron and other major companies, Sarbanes-Oxley requires transparency. Recognizing that you can’t, nor should you, reveal every aspect of your business, take the time to determine what you can say and communicate it proactively. You are always much better off if you’ve been communicating on a regular basis to your constituencies.
Just as you work to get ahead of the curve in your business dealings, your best approach is to prepare yourselves for the crisis – large or small – before it happens. Make sure your operational crisis plan includes a communications plan for internal and external audiences. Develop a fact sheet about your business that can serve as a snapshot when a reporter wants to know about you. Keep your Web site refreshed. Make sure you have sufficient information to reach employees when they are away from work and a system to do that quickly.
Better to have a plan for the crisis and never use it than to add to the problem by not properly communicating. Your choice!
*Please note, this article was published in the Winter 2009 – 2010 issue of Catalyst, a publication by the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce.
Tags: communications, crisis
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