A powerful tool
Effective risk assessment is critical for effective crisis communication planning. You need to know what could happen in order to identify affected stakeholders, map their concerns, prepare messaging and plan an ongoing response communication plan.
The good news is that one should be available to you; risk assessments are what planners do! Risk assessments are used at multiple layers within an organization and have typically been readily socialized among decision makers. A good risk assessment gives a communicator solid ground to plan from.
You can use a good risk assessment to engage with decision makers regarding communication issues. Identified risks become ‘safe places’ for leadership to think about communication priorities. They may wonder what you are talking about, misunderstand or fear it, but they can always return to their ‘known’; that this could actually happen. Use the risk assessment to arm yourself with relevant information that helps people understand communication.
Risks with risk assessments
With these considerable benefits, it may seem curmudgeonly to mention risks in risk assessments, but there are some risk assessment risks that a communicator needs to consider, and to be ready to point out. The purpose in reviewing these possible issues is to ensure an accurate and usable risk assessment.
Tunnel vision
Risk assessment can often become a deep, focused look at your organization’s operations. Of course there are plenty of risks to spot in any organization’s operations, from the obvious ‘something blows up’ to ‘someone gets mad’. Then there’s the ‘risk of the day’ as well; everyone rushes to be sure they’ve identified and planned against a bombing, or a ransomware attack – whatever was just reported in the media. Again, this is a good practice for risk planners.
But planners often lack the sensitivities of communicators. A communicator’s day-to-day vision is outward, not inward. You have much knowledge and awareness to contribute to effective risk assessment. Here are some examples of external threats often unseen by planners but obvious to communicators:
- Boycotts brought about by damaged relations with specific interest groups.
- Lawsuits brought about by perceived neglect, greed or injustice
- Threats against staff off-facility
- Investor protests at annual meetings
- Sit-ins or gate crashing; public disobedience to protest alleged injustice
- Libel or slander in available social media forums
- Initiatives or demands for negative legislation that impacts right to operate
All of these have one thing in common; they aren’t ‘operational’ issues with a physical cause. They are ‘non-operational’ issues, brought about by subjective impact. Yet they can have the same effect on operations, reputation and profitability.
Guess who knows the most about these risks? You do. You need to strongly advocate for your review your organization’s risk assessment so you can properly weigh the sensitivities and outrage factors only a trained communication professional can provide
Rigidity
Risk assessments can be black and white. By definition they focus on quantifiable occurrences and their multiples; explosion(s), leak(s) of xx amount, catastrophic failure(s). They can suffer from a ‘tyranny of the critical’ in recommended actions or focus. Of course some risks are clearly primary, and response plans should be structured around them. But many risks may be ranked as lower in potential or damage than they should be, resulting in lower attention.
It is possible to develop a reasonably accurate risk analysis for many physical events. It is more difficult to provide the same accuracy in events a communicator deals with. It’s easy to determine the replacement or repair cost of a gate damaged in a truck accident. It’s harder to predict the trash cleanup costs incurred by a protests and demonstrations, even though the cost from the protests and associated disruption may be much higher than the truck accident.
Rigid processes may result in an inordinate focus on obvious ‘hard’ risks and neglect of less obvious ‘soft’ risks. As a communicator, you may have a better understanding of the ‘soft’ risks that may need more attention. You may also be the only participant in a risk assessment process that can provide an accurate impact assessment on externally originated events. The risk assessment process needs to be flexible enough to allow inclusion of these ‘soft’ analytics for full effectiveness.
If risk assessments don’t include the ‘soft targets’, organizational commitment to amelioration of these events may be lacking. Resources follow risks, so it is important to include all possible events in the assessment. You need to be sure this can happen.
Duplication
Risk assessments can be duplicative. They may include a long list of potential perils and provide the same recommendations for each one, instead of defining common impacts of multiple events and planning to deal with the same impact even if the cause is different. For example, there may be multiple reasons to evacuate a facility, but the impact and process may be identical for most or all events. Granular repetition of planned actions for multiple possible risks can result in a confusing array of recommended actions when in fact the actions should be the same.
Why does this matter to a communicator? Because you will have to explain the actions taken, the purpose and the outcome of each action to a waiting public. Multiple options and multiplied action steps can lead to delay or confusion in the actual response, and delays always multiply difficulty.
Possible risks should be clearly identified, impacts should be clustered with corresponding response plans, and this concise, response focused assessment should be shared with communicators to identify additional risks resulting from the initial event and physical response. This is challenging enough when actions are shared, but can be very difficult if response plans are unnecessarily granular. After all, there are only so many initial statements you can have ready, and they need to reflect not only an initial incident leading to a response, but an explanation of response actions. With shared response actions, the initial statement can have a single blank for the incident, and specific language for the response actions.
Do what you can to ensure the risk assessment is as concise and universal as possible so you can know what will happen and be prepared to communicate quickly. Don’t let a risk assessment get bogged down in the details unless you plan on late and slow communication.
To summarize…
Avoid tunnel vision in crisis planning by participating in the risk assessment process. Lend your expertise to the task of generating a genuine risk map for your organization to prepare against. Strongly advocate for your right to review your organization’s risk assessment so you can properly weigh the sensitivities and outrage factors only a trained communication professional can provide
You may also be the only participant in a risk assessment process that can provide an accurate impact assessment on externally originated events. The risk assessment process needs to be flexible enough to allow inclusion of these ‘soft’ analytics for full effectiveness. If risk assessments don’t include the ‘soft targets’, organizational commitment to amelioration of these events will be lacking. Resources follow risks, so it is important to include all possible events in the assessment. You need to be sure this can happen.
Do what you can to ensure the risk assessment is as concise and universal as possible so you can know what will happen and be prepared to communicate quickly. Don’t let a risk assessment get bogged down in the details unless you plan on late and slow communication.
The synergy resulting from external-facing communicators working closely with competent planners can yield high quality, thorough and effective risk assessment that protect your organization’s capability in a crisis. Offer your expertise!