Crisis comms in the digital age poses some special challenges for communicators, and these three words can serve as nice waypoints as you navigate your organization through major or minor crises.
Honesty
This seems basic and easy. Which means it is deceptively so. The stress of a crisis makes people do dumb things. Like lie. People also have a natural tendency to want to focus on good news or to try and create happy endings.
("49 of 50 plants didn't blow up today!")
To achieve the "good news," people are likely to minimize facts or omit critical pieces of information that an audience (your key stakeholders) needs to fairly assess the severity of the crisis and accurately judge your organization's performance. Let everyone on your team know that your integrity is the most valuable commodity you have in a crisis and it must not be compromised. Good or bad, facts are what they are. Teach your people to communicate facts clearly and play it straight. You positively influence your audience with your response to the facts.
Speed
Crisis communications in the digital age means that your crisis can be beamed around the world before your company's notification procedures get word to you that there's a problem. Since being first with the news is largely impossible because of technology, you should consider speed in a different way than just getting your first release out in an hour.
There are two keys to speed: identification and reaction. Have your team tuned into the pulse of what's happening outside the company. Your team needs real-time monitoring and the savvy to understand that a company crisis doesn't happen in a vacuum. The dynamics of a crisis can change based on external events. Once identified, empower your team to make the tactical decisions required to communicate events as they unfold. This is important. Empowered to deal with events as they unfold, not as the CEO or VP of Comms wish them to be.Images
People believe what they see over what they hear. You can have great talking points and a great spokesperson destroyed because the words are out of sync with the images coming from the scene. Another great reason for an external focus during a crisis is that the first images of a crisis will likely not come from inside the organization.
I encourage people I counsel to approach images two ways. First, allow traditional media access as broadly as possible. Second, use internal resources to get images that you can publish to your own social media feeds and websites. These images can do a world of good when the crisis occurs in remote locations or they can supplement external media coverage.Three words: honesty, speed and images can focus your entire crisis communications effort, but it's just one way to organize your response. James Donnelly of Ketchum PR tells his clients to keep "credibility, focus and imagination" top of mind during a crisis.
"Remove credibility, you have a spin doctor. Remove imagination, you're fighting fires you could have prevented. Remove focus, you have great ideas but nothing gets done," he said.
Most importantly, do what works for you, your team and your company.
What are your crisis communications mantras?
Bill Salvin