Communicators’ Corner

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.’

Interested in more information?  Contact me!

Communication professionals must participate in an effective risk assessment.

It’s not all about operational risks any more. While we’re ready and waiting for these operational incidents to occur, we’re waiting longer and longer. Processes, regulations and technology have combined to make physical operations safer than ever before. The real risk of significant operational incidents is dropping. While we should celebrate this lower risk environment, we have to live with the reality that today’s operational incidents always lead to greater and greater communication challenges. Even while the probability of an incident occurring is reduced, the need for effective preparedness increases commensurately.

We’ve also seen the rise of a new risk: The virtual incident, where physical harm is replaced by emotional or social harm. The emergence of social media and the accompanying instant coverage and instant outrage changes everything. Outrage is clicks away in every industry, and this concept of a communication crisis leading to an operational challenge is the new norm.

Where is the risk?

Your organization may be at greater risk of a reputation-challenging incident from the communication sphere than it is from the operational sphere. This has a massive impact on traditional risk assessment. The person or people charged with identifying business risks may not be aware of, or versed in, the very real threat of a business risk brought about entirely by external influences. The gates may stand and pipelines or track remain intact. The ship may sail and the aircraft take off. Everybody may be safe and uninjured and fumes may stay in the scrubbers. Everything may be safe and secure, and yet a crisis can erupt at any time over…feelings or assumptions.

In this new reality, communication professionals must be involved in any effective risk assessment. Today’s risk environment is changing and only communicators can be expected to be able to identify these new, asymmetrical threats. It is likely that a review of your organization’s current risk assessment and action plans will reveal a dearth of attention to this new and real risk of reputation-challenging external threats.

The unique risk in natural disaster responses

Of course, even when our operations are becoming safe, we’re also facing increased possibilities of natural disasters, as it seems the horsemen of the apocalypse are upon us at all times: fire, flood, famine, plague, earthquakes and volcanoes. Natural disaster response entails a unique form of response communication because people don’t spend time trying to decide whose fault it is; it’s pretty clear that it is nobody’s fault. This frees operational response plans up from much concern about public approbation or scrutiny.

But in any such response, stakeholder expectations quickly emerge: Why is it taking so long? Why are you ignoring me? Why are you not doing what I think you should do? Why aren’t you here yet?

Overwhelmed municipalities, damaged businesses, savaged transportation systems and overwhelmed utilities are suddenly under higher scrutiny. This scrutiny is not from regulators or responders, but from individual citizens coalescing into a mass of discontent. Individual assumptions and expectations merge, special interests stir the soup, politicians add seasoning and before you know it the rock soup of response becomes the stewing mess of failure. Organizations, already trying desperately to respond, find themselves distracted by unreasonable demands, challenges and protests. None of this is due to a failure of the response; all is due to the amorphous, coalescing opinion that ‘things must be done better’.

Communicators needed!

This toxic soup of expectations is immensely challenging to an operational response because ‘normal’ responder actions are completely ineffective in alleviating these new stakeholder expectations. Only communicators can identify the emerging risk, the key issues and messages needed to preserve the response right to operate, as well as the language needed to assure impacted stakeholders and their handlers that progress is in fact being made at a reasonable pace. Ignore effective communications in this environment and risk the loss of your right to operate. Not because you have actually done anything wrong, but because your stakeholders have decided you have.

Warning!

If you represent a response or regulatory agency instead of a private organization, don’t assume that you are safe, wrapped in robes of righteousness. Response and regulatory entities are at great risk from an outraged public. If you work for a public entity, you work for the public.

When you work for a private organization, you work for owners or shareholders. There is great potential public censure for a private organization in the form bad reputation, reduced market share, decreased stock value and challenging permitting environment, but the public can’t directly put a company out of business.

Years after the Deepwater Horizon incident, BP is doing very well, thank you. Meanwhile, the offshore drilling regulatory agency, Minerals Management Service (MMS) has been disbanded, it’s $310 million budget and 1,600+ employees scattered to the winds by political and public outrage in October 2011.

What to do?

How do you address these issues proactively? What can you do to prepare for them or to prevent them?

Be sure to identify stakeholder-driven risk in planning

Request an opportunity to provide input into risk identification so you can identify the types of stakeholder-driven issues your organization’s operations are susceptible to. Provide criteria for quickly identifying the emergence of a stakeholder issue.

Identify response risk in natural disasters

Help prevent the self-righteousness people assume when ‘it’s not our fault’. Your stakeholders will never measure your success by whether you met your own objectives; they will measure it by whether you’ve met theirs. Define issues you know will emerge in this type of response and prepare to address each one. Identify what issues are most likely to impact actual operations and share them with planners. As an example, the demand for pet rescues after Hurricane Katrina forced an operational decision to dedicate helicopter space and payload to pets instead of people. Since this decision changed the rate of rescues for operations, operational planning and resource allocation were directly impacted by the emergent public concern.

Plan to communicate with non-traditional stakeholders

Plan how you will communicate to engage with non-traditional stakeholders; the individuals, or advocacy groups made up of mobilized individuals, who often drive public outrage after an event. Traditional stakeholders – Media, elected officials and agencies – can be completely aware of your response activities and fully approving of them, but their approval will change when any of their own constituent’s priorities change. Their constituents will always include the individuals and advocacy groups who are critical of your activities, so failure to reach any of these new stakeholders will jeopardize you relationship with all your current stakeholders. Outrage is contagious!

Your strategy to prevent this is to engage directly with any concerned individuals, to provide information that settles their personal feathers. You must engage directly with them; ‘normal’ engagement through traditional channels won’t impact their opinions. Keep track of individuals and advocacy groups, and include them in communication opportunities. Don’t cede their opinions to someone else!

Interested in more information?  Contact me!

Take actions to ensure that you are really ready to communicate effectively.

It’s time to take actions to ensure that you are really ready to communicate effectively. The recommendations I offer below, for greater and more focused preparation, are formed by actual experience. Each will be expanded on in future posts, but these are actions that you can take right now.

Of course you can do this later. Nothing is going to happen right now, right? Consider the definition of an accident: “An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.” When is ‘unexpectedly’? When is ‘unintentionally’? Maybe ‘now’ should mean ‘now.

The hard truth is that when we think we’re really ready, we’re not.

This is the time to realize that crisis preparedness is more than thinking about performing risk assessment and stakeholder mapping, planning to prepare statement templates, approval processes or distribution lists, or reviewing policies. It’s time to take action.

Mark Twain has frequently been credited for Charles Dudley Warner’s phrase: “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

There is a big difference between thinking and doing. Instead of worrying about unpreparedness, you need to become prepared. If you don’t take concrete steps to enhance your preparedness, all you really know is that you be neither ready to communicate in a crisis, nor allowed to communicate effectively.

What do you need to do to be really ready?

Polish your policies

Make sure your organization’s policies support rapid communication:

• Protect your position of being the source of initial information for stakeholders who are important to your organization.
• Incorporate permission to utilize the information from initial regulatory reporting as key facts for your initial statement.
• Ensure you can use reporting organizations as key non-media contacts for your initial statement.
• Formalize the process of utilizing HR to disseminate updates to employees within your organization.
• Codify use of Government Relations contacts or processes for distribution to elected officials.
• Institutionalize use of a short top media list.

Socialize your policies

Communicate all policy changes and planned actions with all key decision makers. Remind them of the primacy of stakeholder communications to preserve your organization’s reputation – and likely their personal reputations.. Share your commitment to regular review and testing. Build a schedule of tests based on your risk assessment, starting with the most critical risks.

Practice against your policies – the mini-drill

You don’t need to wait for a formal response exercise to test your communication preparedness. Instead, conduct mini-drills on a regular basis. For each mini-drill:

• Select a likely scenario from your risk assessment.
• Use your statement templates to create an initial release.
• Send it to a list of internal contacts, would-be approvers, HR, Legal and/or Government Relations. Any person who would hold approval rights in an actual response.
• Add language indicating that this DRAFT statement would be immediately distributed in an actual event.
• Follow up to actually get ‘approval’ from each person, so they become aware of the actual approval workflow.
• Prepare a stakeholder map for the selected scenario, including key concerns and questions.
• Formulate three key messages to address the identified concerns and three inquiry responses for the identified questions.
• Identify information needed for your second release.

After your mini-drill, evaluate what happened

• Was the template adequate for use in your selected scenario, or does it need editing? If so, edit it now.
• Did you receive a quick response from your approvers? Did they recognize the urgency and response appropriately? Did you have to make edits to your release? Do you have to work on the approval process? If so, do it now.
• Were you able to quickly create a stakeholder map and write key messages and inquiry answers? If so, save the inquiry answers for later use.

Congratulations, you just increased your capability to be really ready to communicate in an actual response!

Today’s ‘Citizen Journalist’ and ‘Instant News’ communication environment is a ‘weather maker’ that can easily turn a squall into a tempest, a tempest into a cyclone. There is no time margin when communicating an incident response. Your organization will go from back burner to front pages in minutes. Its time to do something about the weather instead of merely complaining about it.

Polish your policies, socialize them and practice against them! If you don’t do this now when you have the luxury of time and training, when it is time to communicate in an actual response, you can’t and you won’t.

Interested in more information?  Contact me!

Even if you are ready to communicate, it’s likely your organization isn’t.

Let’s assume for a moment that you’re actually prepared to communicate. You have your risk assessment, your stakeholder map and a current distribution list. You’ve maintained updated statement templates and you’ve tested the process regularly.  Is your organization ready for crisis communication as well?

‘The call’ comes, you capture the key facts, you plug them into a statement template and you send it up the ladder for approval. Time is precious but you’re confident you’ll get the green light immediately.

Instead, you get one, more or all of the following responses:

• No response – approvers are too busy to get back to you
• The Legal morass – the dreaded “You’re going to have to run this by legal”
• An interminable approval process – additional layers of approval, these could be corporate, investor relations, legal, or some other newly identified entity
• Statement edits – from everybody, independently
• Additions – “You have to add this (new or note new information) before you send it”

Any and every one of these responses delays communications. None should apply, but often all are applied. You are back into the approval morass, back to delay and possible defeat.

What happened?

Simple really – the stakes went up. Your organization is under stress from an unplanned event. Everybody is surprised, everybody is reacting, and everybody is busy. The possibility of delay and failure has escalated at every level.

I’ve come to understand that organizations usually act like people, because they’re made up of people making decisions for the organization. The greater the immediate risk, the greater the likelihood that policy and practice goes out the window, replaced by very human reactions.

Everybody wants crisis communication output to be perfect. Everybody wants to weigh in, everybody would like someone else to make the final decision, and everybody is afraid they will personally be blamed. All the team building, supportive policies, cooperation and consultative values evaporate. And the process stops at the worst possible time.

And time is precious. Stakes do go up, and delay rapidly ratchets them even higher. But at this very moment when speed is of the essence, the capability for rapid crisis communication is constricted.

In virtually every actual crisis I’ve been a participant in I’ve seen courageous individuals make key decisions that break this vicious cycle of delay, usually at the risk of their own careers. As a communications professional and as a person of integrity, you need to be ready to pull the trigger when nobody else will.  Frightening, yes.  Necessary, likely.

Let’s not stop here; what can you do to provide protection for yourself?

Sanitize your initial statement

Your initial statement should be an action statement, with minimal facts and maximum intent. Acknowledge the event, state your intentions and promise more information. By minimizing facts, you minimize risk of misstatement. Maximizing intent promotes fast approval.

Minimize your initial distribution

Prepare a short list of contacts for your initial distribution. Key media, key elected officials, key agencies and key internal stakeholders.

• Use the list of required response notifications. By regulation your organization is already notifying key response agencies. Use this list to match to key contacts for your initial statement.
• Add the top local media.
• Add key elected officials and known community leadership. Use your government-relations cohorts to identify this list.
• Add an HR contact for additional distribution to corporate leaders. Note: Most crisis planning includes notifications to employees from the operational side. Have HR map this for their distribution, and add their distribution responsibility as a preparedness requirement. DO NOT neglect to plan ongoing, continuous distribution of updates to employees via HR tools. Employees are a greatly neglected stakeholder group throughout a response

Solidify the pre-approval process

Request approval to use key facts, scrubbed templates and distribution lists for the initial statement, based on your receipt of the original call. Leadership must understand that this initial statement will be released as surely as agency notifications are made, and as automatically. Move the approval fight to subsequent releases, not the first one.

Mobilize your leadership

Remind your leadership that establishing immediate initial crisis communication opens the door to ongoing communication. Remind them that fast communication opens doors for additional information sharing. Immediate crisis communication is frightening when we’re under stress, but it is the best action to take. Help doubters to personalize this process: If they have bad news that impacts their families, is it better to share it or hide it? Will their family trust more if they share it or if they hide it? Does bad news get better with age, or worse?

You have minutes to establish your organization as a reliable, trusted provider of response information.  If you don’t succeed, other sources will step in to provide their version of the truth.  Remember that many sources can complete the ‘what+why=truth’ equation – with misstated ‘what’ and misspoken ‘why’. And you will have lost your opportunity to communicate.

Plan now to make sure your organization is ready for crisis communication.

Interested in more information?  Contact me!