As a crisis manager for many years, I feel like I’ve been through it all. Fires, floods, natural calamities, pandemics, environmental threats, labor issues, safety-related incidents, bad leadership behavior, product recalls, critical supply chain issues, IT-related, accidents in customer events – you name it. And all that occurred in just “one” company where, after handling one-too-many crises, a former colleague and I ended up authoring a global crisis manual.
A crisis, if not properly managed, can severely impact your company, brand, or even personal reputation. Whenever I get to conduct crisis training, I open with a quote from Warren Buffet: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation, and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” This speaks for itself.
Today, crisis is on steroids, thanks to social media that enables bad news to spread like wildfire on the internet. Crisis on social media has become a spectator sport. So, like any armchair coach seeing a crisis unfold, I become an observer, predict what happens next, and turn it into a learning opportunity.
I’ve been monitoring several crises unravel in the news lately – both here and abroad. If your company finds itself in the middle of a media firestorm, here’s a quick checklist you can consider to help you in the event, after and even before a crisis strikes.
1. Form the Crisis Team
Companies tend to form the team only after a crisis has struck. In reality, the crisis team is just one part of a Business Continuity (BC) team that consists of leaders representing all parts of the business including legal, HR/admin, supply chain, customer relations, marketing, sales, retail, IT, product development, etc. This core team ensures that business operations continue despite incidents that have been unforeseen, or predicted. The team can also include external agencies like PR firms, government liaisons, and labor arbiters.
Once part of the team, each member aligns with their roles and responsibilities, and contributes towards the development of the crisis communications or business continuity plan. The overall aim of this plan is to provide guidelines to ensure any crisis likely to attract media coverage is managed in a way that is sensitive to the situation and protects the company’s name.
It would also be good for the crisis team to have a conference room (referred to as the Command Center) in their office where they can meet privately, post relevant information on the wall, sketch out their plans, etc.
2. Prepare a Call Tree
Gather all the contact information of every member of the team so they can be reached 24/7. From here you’ll need to align on a notification strategy, i.e. how each will be reached and when. Today, there are messaging tools (Viber, WhatsApp) that can aid faster response and alignment. Yet, you’ll be surprised how mobile phone calls or text messages are better ways to urgently connect. Bottomline is there is no excuse for any member of this team to be unreachable during a crisis.
3. Do a Risk Analysis
As a team, identify all the potential risks that could negatively impact the business. List out all the possible threats that can harm your reputation and/or create a financial impact in terms of associated recovery costs, loss of revenue and talent, etc. Then prioritize them.
For a manufacturing operation, risks can include a product defect/recall, shortage of raw materials or parts to prevent supply, cessation of work, sexual harassment, death in the facility, solvents leaking into the water supply, etc. IT/connectivity and data privacy issues are high in the list for tech companies.
The COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021) was unprecedented, but I know a number of companies that anticipated the long lockdown and simulated a work-from-home scenario to ensure business continuity.
4. Define the Crisis Levels
Depending on your business, not all crises need to concern everyone in the BC team. If it’s a single customer complaint, that can be best addressed by a smaller team facing the customer. If it’s a minor accident on the factory floor, measures should already be in place to address the injured worker immediately as part of safety protocols in the workplace. However, incidents that tend to impact the brand reputation, financially, and/or business operations will require everyone on deck.
Define the rules of engagement. What is a Non-Crisis situation (e.g. small fire handled by personnel), a Level One emergency (e.g. serious injuries), a Level Two emergency (e.g. strikes, product recall), and a Level Three emergency (e.g. natural disaster, civil disturbance)? Determine who gets notified (and by whom) in each level of the crisis. Usually, the whole team gets notified on Level One emergencies and above.
5. Appoint a Company Spokesperson
I prefer to have a senior leader, preferably media-trained, to represent the company. Unless it is absolutely dire, I discourage having the CEO face the media. Also, in place of someone actually speaking, an official company statement will do.
When facing the media, your spokesperson needs to communicate in the most sensitive and caring way possible. Talk about action steps taken and/or under way. Treat the incident as an opportunity to tell your story (e.g. superior quality, R&D), or demonstrate care for your customers, the community and your employees (e.g. matter under serious investigation, commitment to improve).
This is the company’s front-liner, so the spokesperson needs to be well-versed on the Do’s and Don’ts of media engagement, know how to take control of any situation, be quotable and show enthusiasm despite the challenges at hand. The quality of the first response is critical.
6. Align on the Messaging
Whether for internal or external audiences, key messages as an official response is perhaps the most important element in any crisis plan. The company statement needs to be made available, visible (put it on your website) and issued only through a “single source of truth” (e.g. the PR manager). Internally, remind all stakeholders to avoid talking to the media or issuing social media posts about the crisis. The employee handbook or code of conduct should be clear on the media policy and penalties for breaking it. That said, do encourage your employees to be proud ambassadors of your product or brand.
I’d also like to emphasize to have all public (and internal) statements go through the legal department. Watch what you say, stick to script, and avoid any off-the-cuff remarks.
If there are anticipated questions, actions, or events (like a mass resignation resulting from an unpopular decision made by the management team), the communications team needs to prepare holding statements and use only “if asked.” That statement may differ, depending on the audience, in terms of content or method of delivery. The bulk of the work actually happens here.
7. Manage Social Media
Conversations around the crisis are fluid and dynamic. Have a team solely dedicated to social media listening, and have them report any trending topics or sentiment – suggest once in the morning and another by day’s end until the crisis blows over.
Expect concerned netizens to rant. Unfortunately, this is difficult to control, and as tempting as it is to delete negative comments on your social media page, don’t. Respond to public inquiries, acknowledge it respectfully, and if available, attach the link to your company statement. Your audience expects genuine, two-way conversations. Show them you care.
Speed, interaction and transparency are critical in how well a crisis is managed on social media.
8. Lead the Conversation
Be proactive in communicating, as opposed to being reactive or worse, keeping quiet (i.e. silence is guilt). Lead the dialogue. This could start with a company statement, then situational updates if needed. In the case of HR-related crises, you can simply state the matter is under investigation and confirm your resolve to address the issue. Nothing more – the lawyer will remind you that employee-employer concerns are private matters.
In addition, counter any bad press with good press. Get your endorsers, allies and loyal customers to work for you. People tend to believe other people talking about your company, brand or product, rather than you doing self-promotion.
9. Conduct Tabletop Exercises
Crisis or not, the BC team needs to meet regularly to assess the situation and anticipate the next moves, like if the crisis can escalate or worsen. Tabletop exercises are of great value in testing critical contingency plans and procedures relating to the safety of employees, as well as protecting the company’s assets. The expected outcomes of these exercises are an assessment of the team’s overall capability in managing incidents, as well as a gap analysis, lessons learned and any process improvements.
Through these simulations, the team can collectively plan for any more actions or statements that may have been overlooked. The “what if” approach to planning is what you would like to promote in these tabletop exercises. Every plan triggers each department to act. A product failure, for instance, can lead to a boycott of your brand, then impact sales, your supply chain, your dealer network, etc.
10. Do the Post Mortem
Once the crisis is declared ‘over’, have the communications team present a summary to the Crisis Team and the Executive Leadership Team. This will be a forum to discuss lessons learned from the event, and a platform for deciding future actions, or even changes to the crisis plan. Keep your plans active and up-to-date. People will come and go, so new members will also need to be brought up to speed.
11. Train the Leadership
Last, but not the least, is to close off any capability gaps with your executive team when it comes to crisis management and communications. Media skills need to be a core competency for senior management. They are, after all, the face of the company or brand. Their decisions as crisis stakeholders can also make or break a company.
In closing, crisis management may be one of those things leaders may deprioritize or put off, until something happens. Being prepared and proactive is something that can be learned the hard way, but it’s better late than never, as they say. That said, it’s best to plan and get organized before a crisis happens.
One last piece of advice to the leadership. The crisis leader has a seat in the table. Make sure you give him/her all the support needed to ensure proper management and business continuity in the event of a crisis.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ron Castro, Managing Editor at The Independent Investor, has been working closely with entrepreneurs as a business consultant for the past several years since retiring from corporate life. His last corporate role was president and managing director at Goodyear for several geographies including the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong and other ASEAN distributor markets.
Prior to that leadership role, Ron was Director of Communications where he was in charge of all brand, product and corporate communications for two Fortune 500 multinational companies in a regional/Asia Pacific capacity that spanned two decades. He was a crisis leader and member of the Global Business Continuity teams of both these organizations.