Transcript
[00:00:05.480] - Imogen
Hello and welcome to Dear Comms, the coffee break podcast where we tackle your biggest corporate comms challenges. I'm Imogen.
[00:00:13.020] - Amanda
And I'm Amanda. We're here to give you practical, no-nonsense advice so you can focus on the things that really drive influence, engagement, and impact.
[00:00:24.080] - Imogen
Well, welcome back to our series on crisis management. Last time we talked to you a little bit about that preparation stage. So, building the right culture in your organization, assessing risk, and getting your crisis team in place. We're now going to move on to the eye of the storm. Stakes are high, time is short, pressure is on, and you're in a crisis.
[00:00:49.240] - Amanda
But are you? Firstly, I think it's useful to explore the basics. Is it a crisis, or is it merely an issue?
[00:00:56.710] - Imogen
That's right. I mean, no matter what it feels like at the time, And it always feels worse than it probably is. But not everything that goes wrong in the business is a crisis. Some things are just issues. And telling the difference between the two, so knowing whether it's an issue or whether it's a crisis, really matters because it has a real impact on the approach that you take.
[00:01:19.480] - Amanda
Yeah, 100%. An issue is generally something you can manage internally with time, context, and calm. An issue is when the majority of your commercial operations can continue as normal. You know, thankfully there's been no injury, illness, or worse. An issue generally stays internal. It's unlikely to make it into the public domain. So we're talking, you know, quality issues, something's gone wrong in your supply chain, you're assessing the impact and things you can do to mitigate that. Issue. Um, could be internal policies. You might have, um, introduced a new working from home policy and everybody's, uh, up in arms about it. Or it could be a piece of changing legislation that the business is needing to prepare for. I do caveat that any of these issues could become crisis, of course. Um, at the end of the day, um, if you have any potential element of public concern, then you're edging that way.
[00:02:25.740] - Imogen
A crisis is a new sense of urgency, it's very high stakes, and as you say, it's usually public, it's usually external. When we are looking at, you know, is it a crisis, is it an issue, there are a couple of filters that you can use. So, you know, is it time sensitive? Does it require an immediate, response? Does it threaten trust in the organization or the people? So, has it caused your business to stop or be significantly impacted? And thirdly, is it publicly visible? Is it likely to cause concern externally with key stakeholders, your customers, society as a whole? If it's just one or two out of those, those three, it might still sit in that issue box. But as you say, if things are mishandled, it can escalate quickly. If the answer is yes to all three, so time-sensitive, trust-threatening, publicly visible, then you are in a crisis.
[00:03:31.870] - Amanda
Can't stress enough the importance of issues monitoring to really stop those slow burns turning into that crisis or a wildfire. If it's on your radar early enough, you can often avoid activating a crisis team altogether.
[00:03:46.380] - Imogen
Yeah, you can put in place a matrix. You know how much I like a matrix to assess the situation. But a matrix can help your teams understand what the level of priority might be and therefore their next steps. So, if you map out the different areas of concern, so it could be people, business impact, consumer impact, et cetera, and then the different things that might happen at different levels of issue or crisis.
[00:04:15.650] - Amanda
[Speaker:KATIE_KIRKBRAND] Yeah, so for example, if we look at consumer impact, if there is none, it's probably just an issue. If there's a short-term impact, you've probably got a Level 1 crisis. And if it's long-term impact with threat to the business and your license to operate, then it's going to escalate up pretty quickly.
[00:04:33.850] - Imogen
Yeah, so develop a matrix depending on your business, depending on your consumers, depending on your employees, and give it to your team so that they can then use it to understand how to escalate. Can this incident be managed locally, for example, or is it something that your crisis management team needs to get involved with? But let's say, Amanda, let's say we are in a crisis, we know it, What do we do now?
[00:05:04.540] - Amanda
Yeah, in the first hour, you've got a couple of key tasks. I think first, you need to mobilize people to get the facts together. You know, there's always a lot of uncertainty at the beginning of a crisis situation.
[00:05:16.970] - Imogen
Yeah, you won't— and you won't be able to find out everything immediately. But in that first hour, I reckon you've got to know, you know, what's happened, when, where, who, and what's being done to resolve it.
[00:05:32.070] - Amanda
Yeah, and if there are any gaps in information, you need to know about it and fill them as quickly as possible. I think next up, activate your crisis management team. Certainly the core of your team, it might not be the extended team.
[00:05:45.790] - Imogen
So that core, if you remember when we spoke about it last time, was your leader, so that'd be a CEO or senior management, that would be your comms person, And that would be that kind of Chief of Staff role who organizes that management team. That would be your core, do you think?
[00:06:03.700] - Amanda
Yeah, absolutely. And getting those 3 people together, rather than waiting for the extended team, will make a difference because you can already start thinking about what your next steps are. And I would advise that that's within 60 to 90 minutes if you are somebody within the business identifying a crisis. And of course, it's important that your crisis management team team is fully aware of its roles and responsibilities before the crisis happens.
[00:06:33.480] - Imogen
Yeah, because titles don't always reflect the responsibility they'll have, right?
[00:06:38.530] - Amanda
Absolutely. I worked with a client, a gas and oil client in Kazakhstan, and the leader was an expat, and it was just not the right person to be the face of or leader in that country. It just politically wasn't appropriate. It had to be a local national. So, you need clarity in practice.
[00:06:58.900] - Imogen
I mean, as well as understanding what everyone's doing, what roles and responsibilities we have, I think it's also really important to know who's making decisions. And this goes back to the conversation we had with Nell about decision-making. Because if it's not clear who has the final say, you're going to have a decision paralysis. You know, we've seen it over and over. There are a lot of smart people in a room, under a lot of pressure, but there's no one actually taking the lead on making a decision, so they're just going round and round in circles.
[00:07:30.580] - Amanda
Yeah, you know, crisis team is, is not a committee and doing things by committee. You need a pre-built decision tree, or at the very least an escalation framework. It saves hours. Everybody knows what they're authorized to do, who to involve, and when to move.
[00:07:48.250] - Imogen
So you've got your team in place, you know who's doing what, You probably, within that first hour, also need to pull together some form of a holding statement. Because the awful thing is, is the media is often going to be in touch before you know all the facts yourself. So, you need to have something to tell them, which acknowledges what you do know, but doesn't speculate any further.
[00:08:14.280] - Amanda
[Speaker:KATIE] Yeah, it's a great idea to have some drafts. On the shelf, so you're not starting from scratch. You know the risks in your business, you can probably put together some templates that you can then use and build on. And it's also a good idea to brief your switchboard, reception, security, and let them know how to handle any media or members of the public if they call or arrive on site. And it happens.
[00:08:44.360] - Imogen
It does. We've seen it happen. Okay, so we're now into that second hour of crisis. You will need to hold the first meeting of your crisis management team, and we'd really recommend you create a log of any actions and decisions made.
[00:09:00.670] - Amanda
Absolutely. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but my advice is that that log is created and held by your legal team. It means in certain countries, parts of the document may be deemed confidential and legally privileged. So, top tip, talk to your legal team and see what you need to do to protect yourself and the business with that log.
[00:09:21.610] - Imogen
That log's really also important to remind people of what's been discussed, what things we said we would do, when we said we would do them by, and it just really keeps you on track as you manage that crisis moving forward.
[00:09:35.240] - Amanda
Yeah, and it also helps in terms of the review and learn at the end, why we made that decision, and could we improve the way we did things in the future?
[00:09:45.050] - Imogen
You may also want to think about your social media and planned marketing activities.
[00:09:49.930] - Amanda
Yeah, and you know, of course, when we say the media could come calling, you have to include social media in that these days, in terms of where comments are being made and where things are escalating very quickly. So, we're into the second day. Hopefully you— That went quick. It did, didn't it? Well, it does. That's the whole point, I think. We're into the second day. You should be well into the rhythm of meetings and actions. And this is the point really where you should now have a full set of communications messaging, internal and external. We'll cover this in more detail in our next episode, but you also should have the full gambit of media, social media, coverage tracking on high alert. What questions or concerns are being raised? Are you responding in the right way, if you're responding? And what's brewing?
[00:10:47.740] - Imogen
Yeah, I think one of the things that is most overlooked when you're in that kind of frenetic activity of the first couple of days and everything's going on is that we forget our ongoing evaluation and review that we need to do, as with any communications.
[00:11:03.880] - Amanda
It's the sanity check. Often mid-crisis, there's a temptation to keep spinning the wheel, doing what you're doing, but you should take time to review where you are. What do we know? What needs checking? What's changed? What assumptions are we making? At this stage, really avoids that panic pivot, you know, stops you reacting to rumors instead of facts.
[00:11:27.190] - Imogen
When we're looking at a crisis and when we're dealing with a crisis, this shouldn't be the first time that you've gone through your crisis protocol. Once the crisis happens, you need to be moving into a plan that you trust, moving into something that you've done before. We shouldn't have to improvise under pressure. So have your crisis plan in place, rehearse it, make sure your team, your crisis management team, have it down pat. The best crisis responses aren't reactive and left to chance, they're planned and they're practiced.
[00:12:02.270] - Amanda
Almost boring, to be honest, because you've been through it before and everybody knows what they're doing. I would say to all our comms people out there, you're not just there to write the statement. You're an early warning system, a sense checker, and you're also the story shaper. Make sure that you help the business see risk coming and help them respond with clarity.
[00:12:27.420] - Imogen
And as a closing thought, I think, remember that you are not on your own, or at least you shouldn't be. Crisis response is a team sport. You have strategy, operations, legal, HR. You're all working towards the same objective. You're all working towards the same end. And you need these experts alongside you, and they need you, frankly, if you're going to be successful. If this episode sparked a question or if you have a crisis story to share, we love a good crisis story, do get in touch. We'd love to hear from you.
[00:13:02.430] - Amanda
Yes, and remember, we can't touch everything in an episode. So if you need any insight or advice, yeah, do drop us a note. And don't miss episode 3, where we're digging into how we communicate under pressure. What to say, how to say it, how to avoid sounding like a corporate robot when everything around you is on fire.
[00:13:25.810] - Imogen
So thanks for your time, and we'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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