While serving as Associate Director of my local United Way I had opportunity to work with a master of change management. In his tenure as Executive Director, he not only strengthened the structure and management of the agency, but he also poured his wisdom into many of our member agencies and he freely shared it with me. One of his constant reminders as we watched and waited for change in our member agencies was; ‘Any organization with any strength takes three years to change.’ His emphasis was on planning, patience and perseverance. He knew from experience with both individuals and organizations that change comes more slowly than we want.
Change comes more slowly than we want
So it is with crisis communication and response. As communicators we must be very focused on response communication strategies. At the same time, the swirling dynamics of change are impacting the very nature and structure of crisis response as much as they are impacting our communications environment.
Those of us ‘of a certain age’ remember the days when response communication objectives read like a media calendar: Press conferences at 5:00pm. Press releases scheduled for 7:00 and 11:00 am, at 6:00pm and maybe at 9:00pm. Photo ops. Early phone interviews for ‘drive time’ listeners. Editorial staff meetings for ‘background’. Exclusive interviews, ‘off-the-record’ conversations.
Ah, nostalgia. Today we work in a different operations theater for response communication. News doesn’t wait for 6:00pm. News isn’t even 24/7, it is 86,400/7 (seconds, not hours). Press Releases have become News Releases, themselves a relic of past times. Photo pools are provided via drones and cellphones. Telephone interviews are cell phone videos and podcasts. Editorial staff… isn’t. Off-the record isn’t. Exclusive interviews… aren’t.
Today’s news media is a constant, fragmented, immediate, pervasive and unregulated beast, feeding increasingly impatient and distracted stakeholders with smaller and smaller bites of information. ‘Fair and balanced’ is an anachronism, as no modern media outlet has time to be concerned with fairness or balance. Bias feeds bias, special interests feed followers, and the end consumer expects more and more information, faster and faster. You know you’re in a different world when premise, evidence and conclusion all have to fit into 142 characters. Thoughtful and explanatory content has been replaced with ‘news haiku’ of shorter and shorter bits of information.
Videos of security guards dragging a passenger off a plane are posted before they get to the aircraft’s exit door. Images of frightened shoppers are online before police arrive at a mall under siege. Videos of arrests are shared before the suspects’ rights are read. Everyone, always, tweets, Instagrams, posts, shares and chats.
Because of this real time onslaught of content, our news-consumer expectations are escalated. We live in a world where we all expect to know what’s happening NOW. We continually click on our favorite news sites, in case something just happened somewhere. We subscribe to local emergency news feeds to get information immediately. We still want it all, but we also want it immediately.
Change for better or for worse?
We know this, because we live with these dynamics every day. We can bemoan our brave new world if we want. We can reminisce about the good old days when professional media asked politely, investigated carefully, reviewed releases with their subjects and even chose not to cover selected private peccadillos. But those days are gone, for better or worse.
And who’s to say it’s for worse? There are certainly new challenges, but there are equal opportunities. News is more available than ever before. Secrets have been dragged out of darkness and exposed to light. Corruption is uncovered. Abuse is exposed. Unfairness is highlighted. It’s not always a fair process, it is seldom balanced, but it is the new world we live in.
This new world brings more opportunity than ever before
Winston Churchill once stated; “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” That was then. Today a lie gets around the world several times before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
But just as misinformation is spread at the speed of light (not the speed of thought – thought is too slow), truth can be shared as quickly. Today, the truth can catch up! After all, we all have access to the ubiquitous self-publishing platforms of the day. The Facebooks, Twitters, Instagrams and others are as available to the communicator as they are to the activist, advocate, adherent, add your name here….
The challenge isn’t the technology, it is the process. Electrons move at the same pace for everybody, light only has one speed. The issue is the process, not the platform: Do our methods work?
Why have this conversation here, as we settle into consideration of actual response communication? It is true every day, not just during a crisis. Absolutely, but a crisis magnifies these dynamics and it magnifies them against a very traditional structure.
Tradition vs. change
Incident Command and Unified Command structures and processes have not kept up with the evolution of communication, and a communicator needs to be aware of this dynamic to succeed. If you want to communicate effectively in the response environment you will need to proactively address multiple issues caused by this ‘process gap’. Here are some of them:
Restrictive procedures
Response actions occur in a command/control environment. Procedures are written and procedures are followed, regardless of current applicability. Most exercises conducted in this environment still specify communication procedures such as holding a press conference, and in answering a few inquiries. Press conferences are typically measured as “Y/N” that they occurred, and inquiries are rated the same way, as “Y/N” that they were answered. No subjective evaluations are conducted, only binary measurements for success. Responders will not readily allow communicators to change this measurable in drills, let alone in a response.
Restrictive staffing
Staffing preference is granted by agency origin or agency size. An incident commander instinctively expects their own staff to support them, and position staffing follows this, often without regard for currency or competence. Unified Command’s ‘Most Qualified Individual’ (MQI) canon is replaced with personal preference.
Rigid plans
Any variation from existing (often outdated) plans requires sign-off from the top. Plans and objectives come from the top, so changes have to go to the top. This leads to rigidity and delay.
Repression of information
Information is power, and must be protected rather than shared. It is common for response structures to restrict information flow to a ‘need-to-know’ basis that never includes the affected public.
Restricted access
Decisions and decision makers must be sheltered from the public eye. Their deliberations are too complex and arcane for public understanding. The knowledge and expertise in the room is considered to be above the comprehension of the ‘average Joe’. This is based on a correct assumption that people in the room know far more about the elements and dynamics of the response. The flaw in this reasoning is failure to understand the public’s right to know and the danger of misinformation.
Restricted release of information
Public information should be controlled for the good of the response. Locations of assets, responders, equipment and even the incident itself must be kept away from the public, either to keep them from alarm or to prevent possible interference, or for ‘safety’.
Secrecy
Future plans are secret, since they may change or cause public concern. Facts should be guarded and shared only if they are immutable. We can’t be changing information that we share!
How to change
Communicators must prepare well for effective response communication, persistently pushing for the thinking and changes needed to succeed with response communication:
Address restrictive procedures
Stress the importance of changing expectations to meet communication requirements. Prepare a response communication plan that outlines specific objectives and procedures. Trade assurance of performance (for Command) for greater freedom to publish (for you).
Prevent restrictive staffing
Practice ‘MQI’. Take your training courses! Get certified. This gives you ‘street cred’ to suggest changes. Stake out the position most critical for your organization’s reputation for yourself.
Overcome rigid plans
Prepare a response communication plan as quickly as possible. Get approval from Command, and enforce it.
Counter repression of information
Remind Command that there are no secrets in any physical response. If anything is being done, it is being observed.
Eliminate restricted access
Remind Command that their only exclusive information is ‘why’. Remind them that affected stakeholders will trust them more when they know why they are doing what they are. The ‘why’ gives reassurance and reinforces the competency of the response.
Ensure full release of information
Remind Command that not sharing information will be interpreted as hiding information. Hiding information will be interpreted as lying. Lack of trust will lead to dependence on other (less reliable) sources and will expose the public to misinformation, leading to misunderstanding, wrong behavior and risk or interference with response activities. All of this is completely avoidable.
Eliminate secrecy
Facts are facts, and plans are based on known information. Information is fungible and will lose its value and utility rapidly in a response. Remind Command that today’s facts are only useful today; tomorrow’s facts will supplant them. People understand that information changes, they don’t understand why it isn’t shared.
Change takes time
Remember that it takes time to change, so real change must occur over a period of time while you persistently implement new thinking through planning and exercises. You may not get it all in place before ‘the big one’, so you need to be ready to push for what change you can during the actual event.
Don’t give up! Keep pushing for what you know the response needs. It will be challenging, but you owe it to the very people resisting it. They don’t understand the peril they put themselves in by resisting effective stakeholder communication. You also owe it to affected stakeholders. They need good information for peace of mind, understanding what is happening and knowing what they should do. Practice planning, patience and perseverance.
The worst Command can do is ‘fire’ you – you might be pushed out of your role if you push too hard, but there are other places you can impact effective response communication too. As one country singer put it; ‘I’d rather be sorry for something I’ve done, than for something that I didn’t do.’