How to Deal With a Crisis
(Photo Credit: Courtnie Lewis)
This week's podcast I spoke with Thom Fladung. Thom is the managing partner of Hennes Communications, a PR agency exclusively focused on crisis communications:
Here are some of my takeaways from the episode:
Always Tell the Truth
Company XYZ is hacked. The CEO, John Smith, receives an email from their CIO, Melissa Smith detailing the hack. It was bound to happen. Mike and Melissa already received multiple warnings about how their network was weak. Some executives might try to sweep this under the rug. Not tell their employees, customers and the media they were hacked. That's a mistake.
The truth is one of the few weapons you have in a crisis. The moment you lie, you lose all credibility. Who would trust a company that lies during a crisis? I wouldn't. It's important to rip off the bandaid and share as much pertinent information about the crisis as quickly as possible.
The Internet Amplifies a Crisis
On August 18th, 2020, a local news station in Kansas published a photo that claimed clothing that included phrases such as "MAGA" wasn't allowed at Goodyear while clothing that included phrases such as "BLM" was. It went viral. President Trump called for Goodyear to be cancelled and for their government contracts to be revoked.
The problem was the photo wasn't created by Goodyear corporate. Instead a rogue employee created and presented it. Goodyear's CEO and corporate communication team issued a response. It didn't matter. The damage was done. Goodyear was dragged into the spotlight and into a battle with the Trump administration.
Unfortunately, this happens a lot. Social media allows fake news to spread like wild fire. Reputations are built and lost on social. Your team needs to have a response ready for social media before the crisis even occurs.
Preparing for a Crisis
The founder of Hennes Communication likes to say, "Use peacetime wisely." Many companies would do well to remember this. You can't react to a crisis while it happens. You need to be ready to react the moment it happens. But how do you react to an unknown crisis?
Start with a vulnerability audit. Bring all the senior leaders into a room and have a conversation. The most important question is asking, "What keeps you up at night?" What do the executives worry about? A vulnerability audit is good for three reasons:
Buy-in from senior leadership
Discovering unknown issues
Rank the most likely crisis
Once an audit is conducted, you can prepare responses and plans that are approved by senior leadership and the legal team. So instead of having to respond on the fly, you can tailor an existing statement to fit the crisis at hand.
Why Companies Don't Prepare Before a Crisis Hits?
It's hard to put an ROI on crisis comms. How do you justify paying thousands of dollars preparing for a hypothetical? The moment a crisis strikes, you never question spending money on a crisis again. But it should have never gotten to that point. Reputation is a companies largest uninsured asset.
When COVID hit, many companies had business continuity plans to keep operating, but very few had communication plans to tell their customers and employees about their business shift. There's an irony in that the first thing people read is what the company is sending over email and social media. The customer doesn't care if the CEO is using a VPN to log in to their computer. They just want to know if their service or product will be disrupted.
A crisis can hit your company at any time. As long as you tell the truth, control the narrative and have some excellent advisors (like Hennes Communications) you'll be able to weather the storm.