These posts are written to encourage thoughtful consideration of the entire range of communication strategy, plans and effectiveness. They’re based on my experiences in actual responses, as well as drills, exercises, tabletops and crisis communication plan reviews.

Feel free to share,  comment or contact me directly.  I value your input!

Policy Without Perspective Can Ruin Your Reputation

| January 10, 2018

Here’s an example of how policy without perspective can ruin your reputation, courtesy of the Vermilion Parish School Board, in Louisiana.  Take your pick of the following headlines:

Watch and read KATC’s full coverage of the Vermilion teacher incident

  • “He did exactly what he was hired to do. He followed the procedures completely.”

Teacher handcuff video leads to death threats, investigation

  • “His job is to make sure we have an orderly meeting,” Fontana said. “He knows what the law is. He knows what our policy is…The officer did exactly what he is supposed to do.”

Teacher handcuffed, arrested after questioning school board about superintendent’s contract

  • School Board President Anthony Fontana said in an interview that the security officer did nothing wrong. “He was just doing his job,” he said.

YouTube carries a video of the incident:

Communicators, providing perspective is our job.

At the end of the day, a local School Board issue became a national issue.  Why?  Because policy was followed to the letter.  What went wrong?  Nobody considered the public repercussions from perfectly enforced policy.

Any policy that touches the public needs to be carefully reviewed to ensure that it accomplishes the desired result.  In this case, the School Board’s policy to keep order at public meetings should have been reviewed to be sure that enforcement wouldn’t sabotage overall Board objectives.

School Boards and their elected/appointed officials depend on public support to accomplish their mission-critical objectives.  They depend a harmonious relationship with dedicated teachers.  They depend on qualified leadership.  In this event, enforcing policy at a meeting has sabotaged all these relationships.

Only communicators can provide perspective

Only communicators are used to living on ‘the outside’.  We deal with stakeholders every day, so we are the ones who can provide perspective.  One of our roles within our organizations is to protect policy makers on ‘the inside’ from the people on ‘the outside’.   But this doesn’t mean that our ‘insiders’ can set policies or procedures that impact the ‘outsiders’ without careful review.  And we are the ones who need to review them, using our ‘outside’ perspective.

In this event, all the negative national attention was the result of a policy to have law enforcement officials remove people from public meetings.  Due to lack of proper perspective in casting the policies, the Vermilion Parish School Board’s local issue about the Superintendent’s compensation has become a negative national story.

  • Tone deaf policy and enforcement has led to death threats and national scrutiny.
  • Media is noting every negative fact of this issue, from apparent sexism to avoidance of media calls.
  • Teachers are outraged.  The Louisiana Association of Educators has denounced the actions.
  • The public who matter to this School Board – local parents and voters – are embarrassed and disturbed
  • A single action in accordance with policy has alienated virtually every stakeholder group

What about policies of your organization?  How do you know what to look for?

  • Any policy that leads to public impact should be carefully examined.
  • Use ‘the outside’ perspective to review proscribed actions.
  • Modify policies or procedures to prevent public outrage.
  • If policies or procedures can’t be changed for safety reasons, be ready to immediately explain and defend them.

What does hindsight suggest in this case?

  • Removing people from public meetings is fraught with consequences – none positive.
  • Pervasive video capability ensures that any physical actions taken will be portrayed in the worst possible light
  • Video is capturing expressions of disapproval or shock from bystanders as well – your incident’s own Greek chorus
  • A trained moderator could have acknowledged concerns and moved on to other petitioners
  • At worst, the meeting could have been adjourned – a local issue but not a national one!

What would YOU do?  Leave a comment below!

This issue is further examined in my post: A brave new world – lessons for communications

Interested in more information?  Contact me!

Don’t Fight the Last War

| January 9, 2018

Don’t look in the wrong direction!

Responders easily look in the wrong direction for planning. They tend to focus on past responses and ask past-tense questions: What happened last time? What could we have done better? As a result, Command strategy is built on best practices, policy and process – but all from past experiences. Truly effective response strategy includes both looking backward, to be sure we’re incorporated lessons from the past, and looking forward to be sure we’re ready for future events.

The danger of looking backward instead of looking forward

A major university narrowly escaped impact from a hurricane that decimated major portions of their city. University leadership determined that the campus was intact and utilities were working, so they announced a resumption of classes only three days after the hurricane.

When the reopening announcement was made, campus communicators were flooded with irate comments protesting the insensitivity of the leaders in expecting students back so quickly. Students’ homes had been destroyed, streets were still flooded, vehicles and busses remained inoperable and many students were still dealing with trauma. Still, the campus reopening decision was announced resulting in great detriment to their reputation as well as poor attendance by returning students.

Why was this decision made? Partly due to a previous major storm, when campus leadership waited more than a week to reopen. In that instance, they were criticized for slow recovery and reopening. In the true spirit of looking backward, lessons learned from the previous storm, along with the university’s resolve to portray stronger leadership, combined to forge a wrong decision.

Past performance is important and learning from past experiences is critically important, but the world moves on. Events themselves are unique, so rote decisions based on past data can be damaging. In this example, communicators had to deal with their university’s self-induced stakeholder relations crisis on the heels of a natural disaster. The natural disaster was unavoidable; the self-induced crisis was completely avoidable.

Looking forward

Communicators are uniquely positioned to influence Command decisions because our core ethos is different. Communicators are always looking forward. In a sense, we’re pseudo-marketers: As marketers create a need for consumption, communicators identify a need for information. Our product is not widgets, but words. We want to identify information needs and respond to them with communication products. We are by profession looking forward, not behind. Our work is always in front of us, always new and always changing.

We are the people in the room who can help focus Command on the importance of NOW to counter the influence of THEN. In the case of the university, the issue should have been on current realities and sensitivity to current conditions, not the rote reflex to prevent what had happened before. The university had been blessed with minor damage, mostly free of the storm impacts.  They even had water and power. But a look up from their past practice and out their windows would have revealed the real, current issues to be addressed before their decision was made. Communicators’ input would have captured this current reality, not the past one.

We need to perform debriefs of past responses, create lessons-learned and apply them to our planning and practice. But our discipline should not be insular. Our plans and strategies should reinforce right thinking as well as right actions. Every event will have its own dynamics and we need to practice the discipline of avoiding fixed strategies in fluid situations. Fortunately this is a trait of communicators. We just need to remember to do it! Every response should start with a real-time reality check: What just happened, who is being affected and what are their current concerns?

Share your knowledge from looking forward

As a communicator, you need to help responders make more informed decisions:

  • Who is being impacted by the event?
  • What concerns will these impacted stakeholders have?

In this incident, students were impacted by the hurricane in every way. Some were flooded out of their homes, some were stranded in flooded neighborhoods, some had to drive through damaged and dangerous areas, some had lost their source of transportation. All had greater issues to deal with than attending class. Parents were concerned for their students. Students were afraid to drive to campus,  trying to dry out their homes, replace lost items, find missing loved ones.

A careful reflection on these external influences would have impacted the school’s reopening decision. In fact, after the fact, the resultant outrage led to additional decisions not to require attendance for the entire week. To repair their self-inflicted issue, they actually ended up allowing the same level of student absence as experienced in the prior storm!

In every response, it will be the communicator’s role to focus the response outward to affected stakeholders, and to make decisions from this proper perspective. Of all the seats at the Command table, the PIO’s is the most externally focused, hence the most sensitive to the real-time, real-people issues facing the stakeholders who hold your reputation in their hands. Don’t expect other responders to see this, in fact expect resistance to your vision. But persevere. You are unique and your perspective is powerful to protect your organization.

How does a communicator share the process of looking forward?

When you’re at the Command table, help Command Staff recognize the current realities that you can identify from your position.  Share the sensitivities you have as a communicator:

  • What are the current physical realities or response actions – What is the stakeholder impact?
  • Who is being impacted by these realities or actions – Who are the stakeholders?
  • What will affected stakeholders be concerned about – What are the issues?
  • Will planned actions placate or provoke our stakeholders?
  • How can we modify our plans for the best outcome?

Responders focus on actions without necessarily regarding their non-operational impact.  You as a communicator will have the greatest, or the only, understanding of non-operational impact. In the case of the university, they were focused on reopening an unaffected campus, not on their already affected students.

Communicators alone keep track of non-response stakeholders. Responders job assignment includes working with other responders, not the people outside the room. You alone have the greatest awareness of event stakeholders (people who are interested in your actions). University responders in the room were focused on physical capacity, not individuals’ fears or emotions. They saw the unaffected buildings but didn’t see the affected people.

Without knowing stakeholders, responders can’t possibly identify stakeholder concerns.  Communicators deal with issue identification every day, so share your expertise. Every concern on the university responders’ lists had been checked off. They knew campus grounds and buildings were safe – but they weren’t thinking about roads, buses or neighborhoods around the campus

Separated from stakeholder awareness, the best physical response decision can cause more disruption than it prevents. Only communicators can share likely impact or outrage from an operational decision. An understanding of stakeholders (students) realities would likely have led to a longer campus closure, at least more flexibility in attendance requirements.

Looking forward is important

When you’ve fully shared the non-operational impact of Command decisions, highlighted stakeholders and their sensitivities and shared likely conflict or outrage, Command staff can make a better decision about the best action. In this case, instead of being inadvertently tone-deaf, campus leadership could have been seen as sympathetic and compassionate. Strong leadership would have been portrayed with a heart.

Interested in more information?  Contact me!

Relationships from fast-food to Facebook

| December 27, 2017

Managing relationships more effectively

No management degree should be offered without requiring a stint of managing a fast-food restaurant. These workplaces present unique management challenges as they combine low wages, high turnover, part time loyalty and portability. Fast food employees are starting their work career, hoping to move on and up to better work at any moment. They are learning employment skills on the job. Minimum wage is a great leveler, providing equal opportunity at a multitude of venues. With employee turnover rates commonly exceeding 100% per year, employee commitment or loyalty can be measured by Crane fly life spans.

Motivating such an ever shifting flock of employees is a constant challenge. Managers can’t offer more pay, can’t give more hours and can’t provide greater benefits, nor can they dramatically change working conditions. Any mistakes in management usually increase an already astronomical turnover rate, with employees leaving at any time for another equivalent position.

So what tools does a manager have to impact employees in this environment? Only one; they can manage their relationships better. Managers who treat employees like cogs on a gear are constantly replacing the cogs. Managers who are dismissive of employee concerns experience employee mutinies, where an entire shift just doesn’t show up. Managers who won’t listen to employees, relate to their issues or offer affirmation and support end up constantly starting new relationships instead of deepening existing ones.

A good fast food manager quickly learns the negative impact of bad relationship management. Manage your minimum-wage stakeholders without empathy and they’ll leave immediately. Implement policies badly and they’ll leave immediately. Treat them without respect and they’ll leave immediately.

High pay, good benefits and promotion possibilities make it easier to manage people poorly; employees will stay in spite of bad management if they can’t match pay, benefits or promotion potential anywhere else. It’s often said that people will stay at a bad company if they have a good manager, and this is true. It is also true that people often stay at a good company if they have a bad manager, sticking it out until they get to work with someone else.  But they’re not experiencing the relationships they deserve.

Fast food chains could do us all a favor by providing a 3-month internship for every management program graduate; you can make every known management mistake in three months at a fast food restaurant, and amply experience the fallout of poor management decisions along the way.

So what does this have to do with stakeholder communication?

Today’s Facebook-speed communication environment has created a Crane fly relationship management world.  A momentary event can damage or destroy your reputation, yet be replaced in public consciousness before you can mount a defense. Stakeholders are fractured by interests and location, news source and web access. They don’t have to invest in long term relationships with media sources, they can play the field among a multiplicity of equal media opportunities. Every stakeholder acts like a fast-food employee.

You have little to offer them to maintain your relationships. Manage your relationships with them badly and they will leave, taking your reputation with them. Manage it well and they’ll stay, allowing you the opportunity to shape their knowledge, attitudes and experience.

The same qualities that make a fast-food manager successful make a communicator successful:

  • Respect: We are worth more than what we are paid. Managers who understand this will recognize the value of their employees, maximize their strengths and carefully address their concerns. Loyalty’s price tag isn’t measured in pay, it is measured in the value granted to the individual.Communicators, understand the immense value each stakeholder brings, and treat each of them with respect. Thank them for reaching out with their concerns. Acknowledge their special needs. Be considerate of their schedules. Make their job as easy as you can. Earn their loyalty to the response.
  • Information: Minimum-wage earners aren’t mushrooms and shouldn’t be treated as such. Bottom-rung employees have the least impact on practice or policy, and are often relegated to barely-need-to-know status when it comes to decisions that can greatly impact them. Managers who care will take the time to provide the background, considerations and decision process that has led to new policies or practices. They can’t change the outcome, but they can impact acceptance.Communicators, provide all the information you can to help stakeholders understand how decisions are made. Acknowledge the negative consequences to response decisions and explain why they are necessary. Highlight why specific actions are taken – the more difficult they are, the more thoroughly they should be explained. Give your stakeholders the information they need to accept response decisions.
  • Feedback: Today, employees at every level expect to be heard. Lack of hearing is interpreted as lack of respect, or as dishonesty. Good managers keep an open door and are willing to hear criticism without defensiveness. Good listening skills lead to better understanding, and understanding always increases acceptance.Communicators, be sure you have a strong feedback loop. Be sure you are hearing stakeholder concerns, not just listening past them. Identify shared concerns and acknowledge them. Always welcome feedback or criticism. Allow time for stakeholders to process new information, and encourage their responses. Feedback given and heard leads to ownership.
  • Gratitude: A little bit of gratitude goes a long way in any job. A good manager may not be able to offer a shorter shift, better working conditions or more pay, but they can always express appreciation for work well done. With good communication, people implicitly know if they’re getting all that can be given, and a ‘thank you’ always adds value. Employees who feel valued stay longer and work better.Communicators, thank people for being there! In response communication, you are fighting to preserve or enhance your reputation with people who don’t have to be there for you to talk to. Nor do they need to do anything to help you. Yet here they are, in front of you at a news conference or community meeting, on the other end of the phone, or even on the other end of the radio, listening to what you have to say. You can’t make their lot in life easier, and you can’t make up for the mess they’re suffering through. But you can thank them for caring. Stakeholders who feel valued stick around linger.
  • Welcome: Good managers are always looking for the next employee, and they’re finding them through the ones they already have. Every person working in any job knows someone who is looking for work. Good managers draw these names out, and make it clear that good employees are always welcome. These managers are the ones who hire without advertising, land better prospects and build better teams.Communicators, always encourage your stakeholders to share your information with other interested people. Doing so is a sign of respect, of welcome and of gratitude. It tells your stakeholders that they are important to you, and so are their friends. This implicit referral increases the likelihood that your story will be shared and that other key influencers will start showing up at your workplace. You will gain the most motivated stakeholders who are seeking you out because someone they trust and respect has told them about you. And they’re coming with the heightened expectations and motivations you want.

Intangibles’ impact

All these actions are intangibles, none in itself has any weight. But when they are applied in addition to the currency of actions, they multiply the weight of each one. Taking the time to offer your stakeholders the intangibles of respect, information, feedback, gratitude and welcome will multiply your message. You can build better stakeholder relationships! Try it.

While you’re at it

Principles that enhance management of employees and stakeholders can be translated to more important relationships too. How many other arenas could be impacted by applying these? As I write this I’m convicted that I owe these courtesies to everyone important in my life, Shouldn’t we offer the most we can, to those who are the most important to us?

Not a bad New Year’s resolution!

Interested in more information?  Contact me!

A brave new world – lessons for communications

| December 14, 2017

Today’s lesson for tomorrow’s communicators

The world is changing ever faster. I’m old enough to remember waiting for checks to come in the mail. I remember faxing. I remember my first email, and wondering if I’d need a desktop computer for my first job. Yet more change has occurred in the past 5 years than what I experienced in the previous five decades. This change is occurring technologically, operationally and in the culture of communications.

Many organizations are adept at keeping up with, or at least in sight of, technological and operational changes and advancements. We quickly get used to GIS and we implement it on our operational planning. We discover that cell phones capture video, so we use them to film subject matter experts. We learn how to use virtual meeting technology so we use it for virtual press conferences. We’re (barely) managing the physical changes in our response communications tool belt.

But what about cultural changes brought about by same technology? What happens when someone moves our technology cheese? As an example of a communication cultural change, it is likely that your crisis communication plan and accompanying exercise objectives specify that you conduct a press conference. When information can be shared instantly using webcasts, live chats and video/photo libraries, what are you accomplishing with a physical press conference? Will anyone attend it, particularly if you don’t hold it ‘where the action is’? Your organization isn’t keeping up with cultural changes brought about by emergent technologies.

These changes in communication culture directly impact your ability to communicate even if you DO understand how to use modern platforms and technologies. Your risk is that, using new tools and technology, you can say the wrong things to the wrong people faster and more pervasively than ever before.

When communicators change their behavior to broadcast information, they also change stakeholders’ expectations of how to receive it. As an example, the ubiquity of cellphone cameras allows more people to capture images and video, as well as the ability to immediately broadcast it via different platforms, allowing any individual, event or incident to gain instant notoriety. We implicitly understand this. But the same capability changes both the photo takers and photo viewers. The ease of taking and broadcasting images increases the expectation that they will be taken, broadcasted and available to view – quickly. This is the new ‘media culture’ – instantaneous and pervasive imagery.

Have you considered the impact of the cultural changes that technology is forcing on your mission? You need to be ever-ready to identify what today’s lessons are for tomorrow’s communication needs. How do communicators spot and react to the changes that impact their world?

Gotta learn faster!

Spring of 2017 marked the realization by many Americans that airlines really don’t care about them. So it appeared, as cellphone videos of a passenger being forcibly dragged off an airliner became the news of the day. The airline in question was pilloried for its uncaring, greedy corporate policy and procedures that allowed an innocent passenger to be dragged off one of their planes. Images of this event were shared thousands of times, going viral before the airline could respond with any sort of initial statement. The poor communication responses led to further setbacks, and lack of communication sensitivities led to truly disastrous reputation management.

Four observations to this unfortunate incident:

  1. The obvious one: Airline booking policies need to change. What was reasonable before today’s level of real-time data isn’t reasonable any more. Even though contract language with every ticket sold allows airlines to select passengers for removal with no recourse, this isn’t going to work when everybody is a broadcaster. Facebook will accuse, prosecute and sentence you before your legal and communications teams are activated. Stakeholder sensitivities may not be apparent to security guard, but they should be clear to a communicator.
  2. The airline was blamed for actions out of their control. This may be less obvious, but it is event-critical. The airline was not the organization that committed the actions in question, but that didn’t matter one whit. They suffered the blame for others’ actions because their policies were the root cause of that action. In this case, aircraft crew apparently followed procedures perfectly; airport security was called to deal with a recalcitrant passenger, exactly according to policy. Every airline in the world should be asking their communicators to review procedures for this type of action, as well as any other human-touching activity.
  3. The responding airport security personnel followed procedures. Unfortunately, the procedure was never vetted through communicators; certainly not by anyone with any sensitivity to what enforcement actions look and feel like to the person being collared. Law enforcement agencies across the country are dealing with this dichotomy and all the body cameras in the world don’t help explain why physical force is being used. Policies need to include clear descriptions of what actions lead to which reactions. In this case, this airline, and all other airlines, suffered the consequence of poor response planning, preparation and training.
  4. Human nature had enormous impact on this event. This may be the most critical consideration for communicators. Think about it; there were scores of passengers on the aircraft, all who were perfectly content to watch a fellow passenger dragged off the airplane with attendant personal harm. Even as the attack occurred alongside them, not one person stood up to offer to leave instead. Worse than that, several people chose to film the encounter rather than offer their help, and to broadcast it with full self-righteousness. Any individual on the aircraft could have solved the problem by getting up and offering their seat instead. Nobody did. The new ‘media culture’ prevented it. What does this slice of human nature say about the likelihood that your own response efforts will be met with charitable intent?

What can a communicator learn from this event?

  1. Conduct a review of operational response plans to identify implicit communication risks.
  2. Map the likely affected stakeholders, possible outrage and the ability to broadcast it to the world.
  3. Correct operational response plans and prepare appropriate communication products to deal with an issue arising from an operationally perfect action.
  4. Make sure all response parties have the same level of sensitivity to public perception.
  5. Don’t expect any help from the people impacted by your event; human nature is to hunker down, not help out.

This event is an example of how early identification of a changing communication culture can lead to operational changes. Airlines need to require better passenger handling by airport security, overbooking policies can be changed and the process of asking for volunteers could be altered. As an example of this last point, by the time the air crew selected passengers at random for removal, every passenger on the plane had said ‘no’ multiple times: Passengers said ‘no’ to free tickets, paid hotel nights and meals, cash incentives and final pleas for consideration. Every ‘no’ increased the likelihood of security personnel coming on the plane.

You don’t get people to change their behavior under stress by asking them to reverse earlier decisions! As a professional communicator, you can help your organization learn methods to increase understanding and acceptance of your actions at every level, even on a crowded aircraft. Note: Proper attention and learning from this issue demonstrates that communication sensitivity should prompt an operational change. Communication matters!

Can your organization adapt to changing communication culture?

With this newfound focus on passenger mistreatment, several airlines were prominent in the news after this incident for their own customer service mishaps, each one for acting exactly as their operational policies specified. How long does it take to change? As demonstrated above, it can take more time than you have, even if you are looking and learning as you go. In this example, has any airline changed its booking policies since this customer service/reputation debacle?

What about your organization?  Can you rapidly adapt to the changing communication culture?  The cost of not learning can be high.

Interested in more information?  Contact me!

That was then, this is now

| December 4, 2017

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.’

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