Probably not.
Despite our best intentions, our response communication competency often atrophies due to disuse and lack of awareness. Why? Because most organizations are safely and effectively managed. Day-to-day competitive pressure, regulations and industry standards effectively reduce the probability of accidents to the point where many communicators can expect to finish their career without having to respond to an actual crisis.
Response communication can seem an esoteric discipline, known or seen to only a select few people within an organization for the vast majority of the time. Why should more people be aware of it when it isn’t ‘real’ very often? The problem with this approach is that when response communications is really needed, it is REALLY NEEDED! In the worst of times this esoteric discipline suddenly must be rapidly deployed and widely used. And you’re not ready to do this.
How do I know you’re not ready?
I’ve seen organizations and individuals practice response communication in exercises and I’ve seen them perform in actual events. You’re not ready.
Here’s what is going to happen in an incident. You will get ‘the call’, scribble down a few notes and promise an initial statement within, say, 30 minutes (this is too long, but it’s what you’re trained for). Next, you will open a folder that contains your statement templates. And you’ll freeze; too many blanks, old information, dated language, wrong contact information, outdated pictures, bad maps, old graphics – any or all of these will confront you. You will try to take the few facts you have and determine which of the possible statements will fit best. And time ticks by…
Next, you’ll try to get your revised statement approved, but the people to approve it will have changed, the content will be too different, each person will suggest revisions to your wording, facts will change even as you’re editing, and about the time you get approval someone will suggest you start over with the latest information. And time ticks by…
If you manage to avoid this approval/update loop and actually get permission to post and distribute, you’ll try to find the list of people it should go to only to find outdated contact information for key recipients, or to discover that many people are no longer in the same position. You’ll suddenly realize that your community and media stakeholder lists are out of date and you’ll try to merge the ones you know are correct with your own email contacts. After another 30 minutes you’ll have the most serviceable list you can create under pressure, and you’ll either distribute the statement then or send the statement and list of contacts back up the approval chain, where it will wait for frantic people to notice, review, revise and return (good luck!). And time ticks by…
By now, you’re hopelessly past your original (already too late) deadline.
Some of you are cringing right now, because you’ve been in this loop in previous exercises or events. You know that this loop of bad templates, changing facts, moving approval targets and constant revisions can literally stop response communications. And you know the impact this has on reputation and trust.
At best, you might send your first release out without final approval, and immediately get a phone call from a superior asking why they didn’t get to look it over again, or a call from someone wanting to know why they got it, or a call telling you the information was outdated, hence wrong – and you’d better correct it right now! This is the moment you realize its going to be a long day.
All of this is as preventable as it is predictable. It is also regrettable, because this is what happens AFTER you’ve prepared, practiced, exercised and ‘lessons-learned’. Why?
Because when we measure readiness, we don’t use the right yardsticks. We don’t practice like we’ll play. We err on the side of safety, status and self-esteem when we prepare:
- No one wants to be too demanding
- Nobody wants to be too hard on their peers when they practice
- Nobody wants to fail, or cause someone else to feel like they failed.
We end up assuming competence instead of testing to failure. But actual events are the RESULT of failure. They occur because someone did something wrong, they incur high demand on participants, and they incite judgment. We need to be more demanding on ourselves when we practice so we’re ready to perform at the level we need to.
If you haven’t been in an actual incident, or carefully reviewed and implemented improvement plans drawn from actual incidents, by definition you are not ready. If you haven’t taken a hard look at communicators’ response communication performance in an actual event and exercised a disciplined lessons-learned and retraining process, you aren’t ready.
You need to be better prepared for effective response communication
Here are some questions you can ask to determine your readiness:
What is the risk?
Do you know the risks your organization’s operations incur on a daily basis? Do you know what is going to go wrong? Where do you get this? Ask your Business Continuity people, your planners or your insurance adjuster. If you can’t find some form of risk assessment, you’ve got a bigger problem!
What is the impact?
When one of your risks comes true, who is going to feel it? Do you know who and what will be impacted when something goes wrong? This should be a part of any quality risk assessment, but it will need fine-tuning through your communication filters. Risk assessment sometimes stops at your fence line, as operators tend to stop at security. You need to bring your sensitivities to this table.
Who are the affected stakeholders?
If you know who is going to be impacted, do you know how they are going to react? Different stakeholders will react differently to your incident, affected both by proximity and by priority. Have you gone beyond a stakeholder list to map their likely concerns? Is your risk map current? Would you trust your personal reputation to it?
What is the initial statement?
If your initial statement template consists of more than one paragraph with 3 key facts, you won’t have it ready in time. Does it contain only the most critical information, with a promise for immediate updates? Do you have additional key messages prepared? Are they defensive, apologetic, obtuse or extensively long? Do you have follow-up statements templates prepared that incorporate key messaging? Would you use your statement templates to tell your mother what happened?
Is my initial statement current?
When did you create the statement templates? Are they current? Will you have to edit them for accuracy before you can use them? Most statement templates are dated. We tend create them, approve them and then forget them. If your statement templates are more than a year old, they should be updated. NOW.
What is my response communication strategy?
Incidents don’t just have a starting point; they have a beginning, middle and end. Then they have anniversaries. As you plan your response communications, you need to plan past the initial response. The sooner you can provide a strategy for the duration, the sooner your approval process and resource availability will improve.
Am I ready?
What was the last time you practiced under pressure? Attending exercises doesn’t qualify. Unless you’ve participated in an unannounced high-demand exercise, you haven’t been adequately tested. Do you have a practice regime that regularly subjects yourself and your approval chain to real-time response communication demands?
If you aren’t regularly selecting a known risk, applying an impact scale and identifying affected stakeholders, pulling up a statement template and editing it to address the selected risk, running it through the approval process and distributing it to a test list of key individuals – you aren’t ready for response communication.
Here’s the ultimate test for response communication
If the worst possible event occurred, would you be able to tell your family what they needed to protect their safety and your reputation? How long would it take? What if they were at risk?
Personalize your preparedness; picture the most important person in your life being impacted, then decide if your communication process is fast enough to help them.