Crisis! The gravity of the word… One instinctively visualizes images of earthquakes, wildfires, a bridge collapse, war, the “this never happens around here” stuff that you see in your news feed.
Similarly, the term “crisis communications” can have a distance to it... something for other companies, bigger companies, companies that play in a riskier league.
But what really is a crisis?
In simple terms Oxford defines crisis as a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger, and a time when a difficult or important decision must be made.
Suddenly the threshold is lower and the notion of facing something difficult, or even dangerous, seems inevitable. It is no longer if, but when an issue will come out of the blue to test your grit and demand that you make significant decisions under pressure…and it will.
KFC in the UK were impacted by a supply chain issue resulting in the majority of their restaurants running out of chicken. This is a menu with one item, and they didn’t have any.
The always provocative BC Ferries (everyone has an opinion) fired their president, due in part to 173 cancelled sailings in a 28-day period. Less than two years later the number of cancelled sailings more than doubled compared to the year before (a total of 1,163 cancellations) due to crew shortages.
Things are going to happen.
In a 2023 survey by PwC:
96% of global businesses report having been impacted by some sort of crisis over the past two years
91% experienced at least one disruption other than the pandemic
75% suffered serious disruption as a result.
At the same time only one in five businesses have an adequate crisis management program in place.
It’s how you respond.
As they say life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.
Once you’ve accepted that at some point something is going to happen that will be very difficult for your business and its reputation, the only thing left to contemplate is how you will respond.
A slow, clumsy response will magnify the damage.
But a swift, meaningful response could actually show your true brand identity and strengthen your reputation. In a strange way the crisis actually becomes an opportunity for your brand to shine.
Our guiding principles for crisis response are Truth, Transparency and Speed.
Truth is the foundation for trust. Trust between you and your customers, your partners, and your employees. It’s important to understand that your success is due to their support and loyalty. In a crisis be as honest and forthcoming as the situation safely allows. Any attempts to hide the truth will come out later creating a much larger and long-lasting problem.
Transparency is another pillar of trust. It is about being open about what has happened and what you are doing about it. Proactively! Each of your stakeholder groups, especially your employees, will crave transparency. If you ignore it, you risk creating a vacuum for speculation, rumours, and damage to your reputation.
Finally, there is the necessity of speed. Speed is critical. The faster you can respond with truth and transparency, the greater your ability to have some control of the narrative.
On the other hand, if you are slow and inconsistent with info your delay will most certainly be interpreted as arrogance or indifference. At best it will be seen as incompetence.
While BC Ferries has remained virtually non-responsive (certainly not proactive) in the face of their challenges, KFC arguably strengthened their brand with a response that included each of the above, and added humour. It is seen as one of the great responses to a crisis in decades.
Stopping for Gas
Setting yourself up to navigate the road ahead is not as monumental a task as you might think. Here are 5 easy steps
1. Establish your Team. When trouble arises, who does what? Establishing a crisis response team is the first step in being prepared. Create a group with cross functional representation (i.e. executive leadership, a communications team leader, designated spokesperson, partnerships, legal, IT etc.). Define clear roles and responsibilities for each member.
2. Develop Procedures. Create a plan that clarifies your guiding principles in a crisis, outlines how the team will communicate, predetermines meeting locations, preferred communication channels (i.e. WhatsApp, Teams, Slack) and how messages will be developed, approved, and distributed.
3. Conduct an Issues Audit: Every crisis will have unique characteristics, but you can and should prepare for conceivable incidents or issues. List the “What If” problems you might face and how you would handle them. What issues could turn into crises if not handled properly?
4. Prepare Key Responses: Once you have identified these issues, create plans to resolve each situation and communicate with truth, transparency, and speed throughout. Too often companies think they can “message” their way out of a negative issue without taking any meaningful action to resolve it. An effective response involves action and communication.
5. Train and Test: This is where you bring your plan to life and keep it that way. Train each team member for their area of responsibility, and inform the entire staff about how the organization intends to respond in a crisis. Tabletop exercises where you toss out hypothetical situations to practice your response is a great way to keep the plan “alive”.
The bottom line:
Don’t let the magnitude of the word “Crisis” fool you into thinking that you don’t need to be prepared for bad things to happen to your business.
They will. It’s how you respond that counts.
If you are slow, evasive, and ill prepared you will make matters worse.
If you respond with truth, transparency, and speed… a crisis becomes an opportunity for your reputation to be even stronger with your customers, your partners and your employees.
Getting prepared is not as difficult or time consuming as you may think.
You can only drive without stopping for gas for so long.