Stay Cool in a Crisis
By Sadie McCrary

It is a typical Monday morning. You park your car in the garage and walk toward your building. As you approach the entrance you notice a group of 20 or 30 angry people, carrying signs. Suddenly, your cell phone rings. It's a local news station asking for an interview. You've got a crisis on your hands.

This scenario is textbook to public relations practitioners. But there are lessons to be learned here for both PR pros and clients alike. Believe it or not, according to a study by the Institute of Crisis Management, 86 percent of all crises are predictable. Quite simply, most crisis situations, from an employee strike to a hurricane, provide warning before they happen. Thus, it is possible for an organization to plan for crisis situations. In fact, it is imperative for the sake of your company's image that you plan for them.

Have a Plan? 

The first step of crisis planning is simple: Always imagine — and prepare for — the worst. Put together a panel with representatives of your company's different departments for the sole purpose of exploring your organization's weaknesses. Remember, anything that could go wrong, might. Have a brainstorming session with management. Management often knows the organization's weaknesses better than others. Put together a dossier of your panel's findings and use it to draft crisis response strategies. Often times, you will find that this dossier provides the background information for suggested policy changes and addendums that could actually prevent not just a communications crisis, but a full-scale disaster.

A perfect example of this is the recent tragedy in the Sago Mine. After the explosion occurred, the trapped miners did have access to the oxygen tanks they needed to stay alive. However, the lack of efficient means of communication severely hampered their rescuers. As a result, the miners ran out of oxygen before rescuers could reach them. Had their rescuers had a means to communicate with the trapped miners, more lives could have been saved. Thus, Sago became an unfortunate result of failing to plan and prepare for a crisis situation. Hypothetically, the entire situation could have been different had the mine acted according to a prepared crisis plan, a plan that could have been initiated by PR practitioners.

What more is at stake?

An organization must take into account the impact the crisis will have on its various stakeholders in order to anticipate possible chain reactions the crisis might cause. Using the mine example, rumors abounded that the miners had been found alive, and, in fact, these rumors were corroborated by members of the mine's executive team. When these rumors were discovered untrue, the subsequent reactions by the miners' family members had a dramatic impact on perceptions of Sago Mine management and its parent company, the International Coal Group.

A company's first reaction should be to obstruct the flow of information only long enough to ensure its accuracy. After all, officials at Sago Mine could have avoided a lot of heartbreak had they said nothing at all about the conditions of the miners before they were absolutely sure of their fate. To quote Lockheed Martin President Norman R. Augustine summing up his own experience with crisis communications, "Tell the truth and tell it fast."

When you shut off the flow of information for too long, you are opening the door to rumor and innuendo — it's as simple as that. Conversely, when your organization releases information quickly through appropriate channels, you can control the message to the minutest detail, and this is usually something you can decide when you draft a crisis communications plan. Gather detailed information about your employees, your company's business operations, safety standards, etc. Then organize the information you can disclose in advance and discuss each detail with your company's legal council. Most importantly, make sure your spokespeople know where the information is and how to access it. Your crisis plan does no good if you cannot use it.

Implementation: It's happened; what do I do?

The most important thing to remember in a crisis is to stay cool. You have a plan. You are prepared. Assemble your crisis team — this group should have been chosen in the crisis planning stage. This team should consist of key executives, company council and your public relations team. Use the crisis team to assemble the necessary information and to put your crisis plan into action. Designate one spokesperson to serve as a key contact for stakeholders and the media. Then draft a response release.

Your company must have control over the information at the onset of a crisis. Keep that control on your side. Decide how you are going to respond and do it quickly. Develop the talking points. You want your message heard above all else. This is precisely the reason you have public relations practitioners on your crisis management team — use them.

Remember also, that the most credible source often gets the most attention from the media. You need to make sure your company's spokesperson is that source. Conduct information sessions with the media. Provide enough opportunities for the media to get the story. Your job is to educate as well as to inform. The more the people know, the less likely they are to spread rumor or to speculate.

Breathe a sigh of relief.

E-mail the author: Sadie McCrary

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