Just the Facts, Ma’am?

Late night callIt’s 2:00 AM, and the event you’ve feared has occurred. Something went bump in the night. The monster under the bed moved. Chains rattled in the hallway. You got ‘the call’. Something terrible has happened, and now you have to brush the cobwebs off your crisis communication plan and begin to communicate with your stakeholders.  In your just-awakened stupor, you scribble the facts you hear on the phone:

  • An accident at the __ facility
  • Some fire, not sure how big.
  • Might be injuries, still checking
  • Not sure about what has been released
  • Regulatory notifications have been made
  • Responders are on-site. Not sure what they’re doing.

That’s it. That’s what you have.  Some facts, some not.

So you leave the bedroom, go downstairs and open up your laptop. You find your crisis communication plan, scroll to the Templates section, and open up your ‘initial statement template’….

..and you stop. You have 3 facts. The statement has 7 blank spaces.

You do know an accident has occurred, that notifications have been made and responders are…responding.

  • You don’t know when this happened.
  • You don’t know exactly what part of the facility has been damaged
  • You don’t know if injuries or fatalities have been reported
  • You don’t know what caused the incident
  • You don’t know what is leaking, or spilled or on fire…
  • You don’t know who is responding

What do you do? More important, what do you say?

It’s not as bad as you think.

You actually have more resources than just your initial notification call. First, let’s discuss the information flow you have with responders, and the information flow you can expect from responders. Then we’ll talk about our other resources (hint: keep a mirror handy)

Singing Pigs

All the ‘hard facts’ we will ever receive will come from the response activity, and they’ll ultimately come from responders themselves. Remember that responders are NOT communicators! Don’t expect them to be communicators. Responders are responders, so their capabilities match the disciplines needed for effective response.

  • They live with facts; they are trained to gather facts and develop the best actions to respond to the facts. They determine response actions based on the facts at hand.
  • They’ve learned to measure quickly, act decisively and always be flexible. They like plans and will follow them, yet they’re adept in leaving plans behind when the facts no longer support them.
  • They are analytical, resourceful and adaptable.
  • They are your friends, and their information is gold.

But they don’t live in our world. They value facts that help them respond. They look for information that is concrete, verified (or verifiable) and actionable. They don’t care about external events. They don’t care about rumors. They aren’t interested in speculating. For them, these things get in the way of decisions and actions.

They have their own information flow. They know what information they need to make decisions and they prioritize it, they hold specific verification requirements because every action they set in place incurs costs. They base decisions on data and they don’t like the data to change because it makes them look wrong. All this has impact on both amount and the timing of information we will receive from them.

We will receive information from responders:

  • When it is verified
  • When actions are completed
  • When events are finalized
  • If it matches their grid of ‘needed information’

We will NOT receive information from them when we need it; we will get it when they have it. These are usually two very different times. It doesn’t do us any good to ask them for more information. They are already tracking every bit of data they need to do their jobs, and that is all the data they’re tracking. Remember the old adage; ‘Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig’. Trying to get responders to hunt down additional information for our use is likely to simultaneously  waste our time and annoy them. Accept what they can provide, and accept that we’ll get it when they’ve got it.

One more step we can take: Ask permission from Command to use any response facts we need, based on the latest reporting on ICS forms. Study an ICS 201 form and an ICS 209 form. Note that there are different versions of forms depending on the type of incident; ask your responders for ‘their’ versions. The topics listed on those forms reflect the facts you can expect from responders. Only the ones listed, and only when your responders actually have the information.

Facts about Timelines and Timeliness

There’s one more issue we will face throughout the response; Our information timeline will always be different from responders’ information timelines. Physical responses grow at a pace dictated by movement of things or people. It takes time to get to the location. It takes time to order response assets. It takes time to mobilize resources. Responders work within this steady, often escalating pace. But they can’t speed it up.

There’s a saying used in web development about mobilizing additional assets. According to Brook’s Law, “It takes 1 woman 9 months to make a baby. But 9 women can’t make a baby in 1 month.” This is as true for incident response as it is for software development. Responses take time, and more resources don’t necessarily mean more speed. Both response results and response facts will flow at their own stately pace.

This doesn’t help us as communicators, because public interest isn’t linear and it isn’t hindered by time and space. It may take 24 hours to bring scores of responders to an incident scene, but it takes only moments for thousands of stakeholders to become concerned about the incident. While the response moves at a given pace, we don’t have the same luxury. Our stakeholders’ interests and concerns will spike instantly, grow steadily and persist indefinitely. How are we going to feed this rapacious beast?

It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane…

Fortunately, we have an ally, our own personal super hero to help us in our time of need. And that person is….us.

  • As trained professionals, we have an amazing capacity that is absolutely critical at such a time as this; you know your stakeholders (right?).
  • Beyond the facts we are able to gather, we have the capability to do what physical responders will never do; we can forecast what people will be concerned about. We know what our stakeholders will want to know. We know what will most upset them, and what would most assure them. And we have much of this information already available to us (right?).
  • Effective stakeholder information includes both facts and purpose; the what and the why. We may not have a lot of facts, but we have enough to know what our stakeholders will think of them. And we know what to say about our stakeholders’ concerns (right?).

As an example: In this mythical incident, we know there is a fire, at a facility, and that responders are… responding. These are the reported facts. We also know the following:

  • Our organization considers safety to be a top priority and takes any accidents very seriously
  • Our organization is committed to investigating any accident to become even safer
  • Our organization is committed to environmental stewardship and will respond aggressively to prevent environmental damage.
  • Our organization is committed to open and timely information sharing
  • Our organization will respond to injuries or fatalities in a very specific way, and information about these is always shared in a very specific way.
  • Our organization has the will and the resources to aggressively respond to any incident
  • Our organization always cooperates fully with response organizations, regulatory agencies and emergency authorities.

These are all examples of the information always available to us. This is because we are experts in evaluating facts to determine underlying stakeholder concerns, then finding/using/developing key statements to address each concern. We know this information now, and we can use it now.

We are the responders able to discern, interpret and address stakeholders’ concerns. We are the responders who can rank one stakeholder concern in relation to all the other stakeholders’ concerns, and we can craft answers to these concerns, along with the facts we do have, into communication products. In many respects, if we have access to ANY facts, we can begin effective stakeholder communication and engagement.

We need to be ready to support the facts we have.

Have you developed the following content that allows you to add information to the facts you have?:

  • A list of stakeholder groups and their concerns?  Do you know what your employees will be most concerned about? How about fence line neighbors? Activist groups? Chambers of Commerce?
  • A list of accreted stakeholder concerns? Concerns from each group combined with all other concerns to develop a full list of important issues
  • A list of key messages to address stakeholder concerns? Statements matched to each concern, customized for specific stakeholder groups if necessary
  • A list of messages for proscribed concerns? Injuries, fatalities, shelter-in-place, evacuations, claims, employment and suggestions are stakeholder concerns that are always dealt with in the same way.  You should have standard messages for these that are ‘evergreen’.
  • A list of external resources available to further ameliorate stakeholder concerns? Sustainability reports, marketing materials, government relations documents, umbrella organizations are all potential resources

This is all work we’ve have been trained to do, and work we’re good at. Every public release we draft in a response will be a mixture of facts and statements of purpose. Responders will give us the facts. The rest is up to us – and we can do it!

Comments?  Leave them here.

Interested in more information?  Contact me!