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!

Time to Review Your Crisis Communication?

| December 19, 2019
Picture of decaying railroad bridge

Are you sure you’re ready for effective stakeholder communication in a crisis? We all think we have policies, plans, people and a platform at the ready for crisis use, but how ready are they?

Does your bridge to recovery look like this one? You may be in worse shape than you think. Have you conducted a recent review of your crisis communication process? Are you confident that your organization has the following elements ready for use?

Policies: Do your crisis communication policies reflect current communication realities? Are they ready to help you communicate quickly and comprehensively?

Plans: Are your communication plans up to date? Do they reflect current operating practices, and do they guide communicators to make good decisions and maintain high quality content flow?

People: Are your communicators ready to perform in the chaotic initial hours of a response, then segue to manage an extended and complex response communication process? Are they trained and tested in the specific dynamics of your industry, organization and market?

Platform: Exactly how are you going to deliver information to stakeholders and capture concerns from stakeholders? Do you have a tested platform ready for use at any time?

Time for a Review? When did you last conduct a crisis communication review?

Your Crisis Communication process is the bridge to protecting your reputation, your hope of rebuilding after an incident and the bulwark against the costs and complexity of managing public outrage or disappointment. When a crisis can cost 30% of an organization’s value, is your crisis communication process ready to restore that value?

Contact me to learn more about the benefits of a Crisis Communication Review for your organization.

Best Laid Schemes

| June 13, 2019

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,
Gang aft a-gley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy.“
Robert Burns

Robert Burns was right, clear back in the 1700’s. No matter how well we plan, our plans often go awry. Unfortunately, the result far too often is grief and pain. Time and tides conspire against us, and we need to be ready to deal with both.

A history lesson from two continents.

Some of us have been fortunate enough to spend time enjoying Puget Sound in the Pacific northwest. Amid the islands and waters, three abandoned forts stand as relics from another age. All three share the same history:

In the late 1890’s the entrance to Puget Sound was considered so strategically important that three forts were designed and built to protect it: Fort Worden, Fort Casey and Fort Flagler. The forts were built as state-of-the-art installations, including large guns on retracting carriages, allowing reloading to be performed safely behind massive concrete emplacements. In addition to the rifled guns, mortar installations were built into the hills supporting the forts, again located on wheelable carriages to allow loading under protection of the installations before rolling out into the open to fire at any attaching forces.

The plan was that the three forts, with their guns protected from any sea attack, would render Puget Sound impregnable to attack. In 1901 the guns were put in place and the forts assumed ‘active’ status. Puget Sound was safe, supposedly.

In 1903, only two years later, the airplane was invented. Rapid development of aircraft led to almost immediate decommissioning of the three forts, and during World War I their armament was hauled away for other uses. Three forts, decades in planning and construction, rendered obsolete and unusable within a few short years.

Across the Atlantic, the same type of ‘impregnable’ defenses were being built in France. For almost a decade starting in 1929, France constructed a line of defenses along its borders with Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Luxembourg. This ‘Maginot Line‘, based on lessons learned from World War I, was designed to force invading armies to attack where the French army could easily defend itself. Construction of this secure line of defense was completed in 1938.

Two years later, Germany invaded France. In the same way that the French had based their defensive strategy on lessons learned from World War I, the Germans had learned new offensive strategies. Using new weapons and tactics, Germany simply went around and over the Maginot line, conquering France and neighboring countries in six weeks.

In both cases, emerging technology and strategies rendered state-of-the-art plans useless. In both cases, ‘disruptive technology’ of aircraft proved fatal to established plans. ‘Blitzkrieg’ tactics rapidly overcame slow and traditional defenses. It took less than a decade for warfare to change, less than a decade to render once-current strategy and technology useless.

What about us?

What does this have to do with us? What does it have to do with our planning? Likely obvious, but here are a few points:

  • Change comes rapidly, and is often unforeseen
    Designers of American and French defenses planned as well as they could. They simply couldn’t conceive of new technology and tactics that were coming. We all comment on how fast change is occurring today. If it was fast enough to disrupt even in the early 1900’s, how much faster will change disrupt our plans today?
  • Technology changes everything
     Who would imagine that a wood and cloth airplane could put a 125-ton gun out of commission? Who would think that an army could advance so rapidly that defenses couldn’t react? Motor vehicles and aircraft changed warfare in less than a decade. Today’s technology is even more intrusive, and more rapidly intrusive.
  • Strategy changes with technology
     France built an impregnable line of defense. Germany used new technology to develop new strategies of warfare. The result? France surrendered to Germany even while much of the Maginot Line was intact, manned by troops ready to fight.
  • Tactics must adapt
     American forts were immediately useless against attackers. Attacking ships could stand off miles out of range while aircraft rendered American guns useless. Of course this didn’t happen; America has been blessed with the isolation of oceans. But the capability turned the forts into training facilities. The capability of aircraft to defeat sea power was later tested and proven by US forces in World War II.

One common lesson from all this: Even while we need to be ready for responses today, we need to remember that our tools and tactics may be ineffective tomorrow.

What do we do now?

What actions can we take to be sure we’re keeping current?

  • When was your crisis communication plan last reviewed?
    It should have the date right on the front of it. I’ve seen plans last updated a decade ago. Plans should be reviewed annually and updated as frequently as needed. If forts could become worthless within two years in 1903, how much time do we have today?
  • What new technologies are impacting communications?
    What is new today, and how will it affect you tomorrow? What would the capability of Blitzkrieg do to defense plans? What do emerging communication platforms do to your message management?
  • What strategies are changing communication?
    Organizations are monitored and attacked differently today. Crises aren’t all caused by operational events today. Many organizations suffer more damage from issues, activism or victim advocacy than they do from accidents. Like the Maginot Line, we can be ready for the wrong war, and completely equipped when it comes. Are you ready for ‘asymmetrical warfare’ where the threat is dispersed but potent?
  • What’s changing culturally?
    This isn’t the Eisenhower years when businesses were noble and progress was good. Old advertisements featuring conspicuous consumption aren’t driving buying decisions any more. Actions and words considered good and noble a decade ago are seen is insensitive or pandering today. We can’t get away with ‘trust us’ any more.

The bottom line

If your crisis communication plan is a decade old, it desperately needs review and certainly needs extensive revision. If your organization’s leadership aren’t focusing forward on emerging trends, breaking issues and cultural changes, they need awakening. If your strategies and tactics look like they did in 2010, you’re in trouble.

It’s time to find your Plan, brush it off and look it over. While you’re at it, your organization’s physical response plans likely need the same look-over. They most likely reflect Maginot thinking as well.

If you want to talk about this more, contact me.

I can help you evaluate your current Plan readiness, conduct a formal Plan review or offer strategy suggestions to awaken your leadership to the danger they’re in. Who knows, it might even save money, even a reputation or two!

Know Your REAL Enemy

| May 9, 2019

Don’t make shelling personal.

Last post, we spent some time looking at likely candidates for the sobriquet ‘enemy’, only to determine that they are not, in fact our enemy. I ended the post with an encouragement to soldier past the hurdles in communication by recognizing each one as an opportunity instead of an enemy.

If media, activists, trolls, naysayers and a polarized society aren’t our enemies, who are?

Our enemies aren’t people, or circumstances. They’re not objects or coincidences. They’re not bad luck or fate. They’re our own attitudes and actions. In all areas of our lives, we’re better served when we recognize that we are usually the authors of our own misfortune. Circumstances we face may not be attributable to us, but our attitudes, responses and reactions always are. And these attitudes, responses and reactions get us into trouble. Our most pernicious foe is ourselves.

Consider the following foes

Here are some examples of our propensity to cause ourselves trouble or heartache in a response.

  • Complacency: The most unfortunate hindrance to our success is our own complacency. We know what could happen in our market, operations or infrastructure. It’s no mystery that every human activity incurs risk. Yet we don’t plan or prepare for it. We avoid taking on the important task of preparation and planning. Something more important always comes up, we rationalize. But what really happens is that we defer, delay and minimize. We accede to the urgent and postpone the important.
  • Resistance: This is the inertia we all face to bad news. We don’t want to hear it. We feel flat-footed, and our responses are delayed. Yes, this is natural. Surprises do this to us. Most drivers can steer away from a potential crash slightly faster than they can avoid it by bringing their vehicle to a stop. But most drivers don’t. By the time their brains remind them what to do, it’s too late; they’ve lost precious seconds, and the opportunity to minimize the situation. So you hear the bad news of an incident, accident or issue and your first response is… no response. Our untrained response to unwelcome data is to freeze. People don’t step out of the way, we don’t swerve to the other lane, we don’t duck. In a response, seconds and minutes go by before we respond.
  • Delay: Introducing resistance’s cousin. Delay is inherent on our daily activities. We pace ourselves, practice good time management techniques, wait for elevators, meetings, phone calls, emails, traffic lights, dinner. We don’t want to be ‘that guy’ who is always rushing, always pushy, frenetic. We don’t want to be Patricia. So in the comfort of our speed-governed world we craft policies and plans that reinforce delay. Our time targets are way off, far too slow. We build multi-layered procedures and approval processes. We institutionalize slowness.
  • Blame: The hardest thing to do when something goes wrong is to accept that it just might be your fault. This is true in virtually every setting. We all have an aversion to accepting blame for anything. It marks us as deficient, less than adequate. We bleat about vulnerability, but we’re all Fonzie at heart. I know from personal experience how hard it is to face people when the organization you’re involved with is blamed for something. Add a corporate aversion to any admission of legal fault to our natural hesitancy to face up to a situation and communication efforts can freeze up. This is ironic since every other element of a response is designed and encouraged to go full speed ahead. In the absence of rapid empathy with stakeholders affected by the incident, we hunker down in defensiveness and lose their trust.
  • Minimizing: As with life itself, we all tend to minimize any bad occurrence. We somehow think that we can kind of sneak up on how bad something really is. Part of this is our own wishful thinking, part is an unwillingness to accept the full impact, part is an attempt to minimize blame. Some of it is simple ignorance; we really don’t know how bad it is. But the bottom line is that when we under report or minimize the impact of our incident to the public, we lose credibility. As credibility flies out the window it takes trust with it, and our communication challenge gets worse and worse. Who cares if you’re sharing accurate information if they don’t trust you?
  • Fatigue: It’s true, fatigue makes cowards of us all. We leap into action filled with commitment and energy. We initially prevail and see success. But our enemy keeps coming, and like a boxer we realize that while we’re landing some good punches, our arms are getting tired. There’s a basic truth when packing to respond to an incident; always take more shirts than you think you’ll need. Any significant response is going to take longer than you think. A major response may go on for months. You will experience fatigue, and your capabilities will wane. In the worst case, you’ll run out of people before you run out of response.
  • Short-term thinking: Any significant response is going to take longer than you think. You will need more shirts than you think. Incidents and their responses aren’t static; they grow and shrink, settle down and flare up. Even when the physical response is over, stakeholder communication isn’t. If you don’t plan for long-term response communication, you run the risk of losing your organization’s voice and reputation. I’ve seen opportunities to cement good relationships with stakeholder squandered by short-term communication planning. Any response is a huge investment, so why do we squander it by leaving the field early?

What can we do to defeat these enemies?

What practical steps can we take to neutralize them?

  • Complacency: Remember a basic economic theory; the price of any object is determined by the supply of, and demand for, that object. When an incident occurs, you will have enormous demands on your capabilities, expressed as a function of time. But you’ll have less time available. This combination, of high demand and low availability, makes your time a precious asset; important and urgent are one and you’ll wish you had used more time to prepare. Prepare, now! Don’t deny known data – incidents do occur. Don’t defer known activities. You know what you need to do to be ready. Do it now. The cost of complacency is high; the cost of unpreparedness is extreme. Plan!
  • Resistance: If you want to learn to use your steering wheel correctly, you sign up for a defensive driving course where you learn how to steer around obstacles. If you want to respond quickly in an issue, incident or crisis, make sure your planning and preparation includes the element of immediacy. Identify possible triggers and practice your response to them. Test for speed and quickness. How quickly do you begin to respond, how fast do you get going?
  • Delay: If procedures take too long, simplify them. If approvals build in delays, lighten them. Build speed in. Lotus Cars’ Colin Chapman was famous for his design esthetic; ‘”Simplify and add lightness”. A good model for crisis communication! Less known was his supporting truth statement; “Adding power makes you faster on the straights; subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere”. Subtract the weight of conscious or unconsciousness resistance everywhere you can.
  • Blame: Legal fault is a huge issue with any organization, justifiably. Remember that acknowledging an incident has occurred is not the same as admitting fault. Say you’re sorry. Saying you’re sorry for the impact isn’t admitting fault, it’s empathizing with the affected stakeholders. Even in obvious circumstances, fault is allocated after thorough investigation long after the initial response is over, sometimes years later. In the meantime all the amazing, sometimes heroic, efforts of responders are shrouded in poor communication. Communicate quickly. Share all you can while constantly reminding stakeholders that you’re doing so regardless of final fault. Don’t give up the reputation of the response in an effort to protect your own organization’s. Remember that affected stakeholders need a source of truth to make their own response decisions. Don’t lose the opportunity to gain their trust and acceptance. Finally, remember that good engagement with affected stakeholders is one of your only hopes if fault is ultimately assigned to you. After fault come penalties, when your care and attention to affected stakeholders becomes an asset.
  • Minimizing: Ask responders two questions; ‘How bad is it now?’ and ‘How bad will it be?’ Communicate on the basis of their answers. The US Coast Guard enforces a ‘worst-case’ determination to any spill that can’t be accurately measured. While this can seem extreme, nobody is upset when reported spill amounts go down instead of up. Same with other impacts. Better to reduce reported impact than increase it. We all cite Aesop’s ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf,‘ to justify under-reporting, but we forget that the shepherd boy had done so multiple times, and we only get to do it once. Minimizing an incident affects other response decisions, so just don’t do it.
  • Fatigue: Pack extra shirts. Plan for the long term. Create a response communication plan that includes a realistic timeline (from your Planning Section). Make sure you identify how many people you need to meet Plan objectives. Assign your communicators effectively. Put your people in the right places. Request more resources, from the very beginning. Don’t wait until your team is exhausted before securing replacements. Stagger your team’s involvement so you never have to replace all of them at once. Don’t be a hero and work non-stop. Take breaks. Schedule shifts that allow down time AND sleep time.
  • Short-term thinking: Remember that the incident isn’t over until the affected stakeholders think it is. Responders want to go home, and they will as quickly as possible. Affected stakeholders ARE home, and they expect to keep hearing from you until they aren’t interested. Of course this affects your response communication plan. Keep your focus on stakeholders. Encourage your organization to maintain a local presence until you determine stakeholder interest has waned. Don’t throw away a reputation for caring by leaving too early.

Now here’s a question for each of us

Where else in our lives do these dynamics work to our detriment? Is there someone we need to go to and make amends for how our attitudes, responses or reactions have caused harm? The process of acknowledging, apologizing and making amends is an intimate, personal application of good practice in a crisis: acknowledge, apologize, make amends and rebuild your relationship.

Interested in more information? Contact me!

My mission is to help clients communicate better in a crisis, both in preparation and in performance. If this post raises questions about your crisis communication capacity, let me help.

Know Your Enemy

| May 1, 2019

“You just have to learn that shelling isn’t personal….”

More than a decade ago I was having a conversation with a grizzled veteran of oil exploration and production in Africa. We were discussing unusual safety risks when he mentioned his company’s experience with storing of crude oil in tank farms. They were operating in a country with significant rebel activity, and they realized that land-based storage was just at too great of a risk from guerrilla attacks . The decision was made to build an offshore storage platform, which was completed in short order and put to immediate use.

Unfortunately, while this platform minimized the threat of rebels storming the facility, it soon became apparent that it had been built within artillery range of the mainland. The risk of guerrilla attack on land was replaced with the reality of occasional shelling as the rebels attempted to impinge on the flow of oil, and revenue, for the government in power.

Of course I had to ask him how it made him feel when he was aboard the facility while it was under a shelling attack. His laconic reply was simple; “They weren’t very accurate, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.” Then he added an instantly classic phrase to this crisis communicator; “You just have to learn that shelling isn’t personal. They’re not trying to actually hit YOU.”

You’re pretty tough when you consider artillery shells to be a minor disruption!

Why has this phrase stuck in my mind for so long? First, even Chuck Norris isn’t that tough! Mostly, because as a communicator, it’s easy to take stakeholder reactions personally. When something bad has happened and a bunch of people are upset, you get reactions from them that can feel a lot like artillery fire. It’s easy to become disheartened, worn down, overwhelmed or even simply afraid. Your response communication efforts can dwindle to defensiveness instead of taking advantage of all the new interaction opportunities provided by your upset, irate and concerned stakeholders.

You have to remember that shelling isn’t personal. It may feel personal, especially if a round lands close by to you. But they’re not actually aiming at you. They’re aiming at the organization, at the response, at ‘them’. Chances are, if you sat down for lunch with one of these people, it’s likely you could have a relatively normal conversation. You might even leave as friends.

I know, today we have the ‘web mob’, just waiting. Like the undead these apparitions arise at the smell of blood and seek out their victims. But their impact is ephemeral, disappearing in the light of informed and comprehensive engagement.

Regardless of the flying shells, you can engage with your stakeholders. Stand up, reach out, share information. Use the framework of response – Incident Command or Unified Command – to build your response communication platform, safe from hand-to-hand combat.

You do have an enemy. It just isn’t people:

  • It’s not ‘the media’. Traditional media remain a valuable message multiplication platform, one that is very effective at mass distribution. Social media can span the globe quickly, but major newscasts reach far more people rapidly and with the same message. Media self-sorts to match your stakeholder groups; national news escalates to national outlets, local news tends to stay local. There are magnifiers of course – deaths, injuries or lurid graphics often make a local story into a national one. But even then, ongoing local interest supports ongoing local coverage.
  • It’s not ‘the activist’. Activists are actually your friends. They are interested, committed and connected. They have the interest to listen to you, usually the ration to consider your message, and the ability to share it, usually as influencers. Many activist organizations encourage their members to contact you in a response, so you feel the full weight of their outrage. What they’re inadvertently doing is giving you a free mailing list of a bunch of concerned, committed citizens who tend toward reasonableness. They may not send you a Christmas card, but they will read what you send them. Actual response experience demonstrates that many opponents can gain an acceptance and appreciation of what is being done to ensure an effective response and recovery.
  • Believe it or not, it’s not ‘trolls’ either. Trolls are foul, frustrating, sometimes fecal individuals who come out of the shadows to bomb a victim with negative, misleading, obscene or cruel comments. These web versions of restroom walls are disgusting to read and unproductive in content or context, a waste of bits and bytes. But by their very nature they’ll never coalesce into an actual threat. They’re shadows of putrescence (I’ve always wanted to use that word in a blog!), as unappealing to each other as they are to themselves. To deal with them constructively; put their little offerings into the same pile and have someone with a strong stomach go through it to find any actual threats. If the threat is there in a text or a pattern of texts, turn it over to law enforcement. Then forget it.
  • It’s not the ‘negative’ either. By definition, your incident has caused actual or perceived harm to a significant group of people. They are upset, and frankly they have a right to be. That doesn’t make them your enemy. They are, in fact, your friends. These are the people who can be engaged with, to foster understanding and acceptance of the response. They will be upset at the incident, but they’re just waiting to hear how they can trust the response. Their negative comments are simply truth. Answer their concerns or attacks honestly and respectfully and you just might gain allies.
  • It’s not ‘todays polarized society’ either. We may disagree on politics, we may disagree on religion. We might disagree on global warming and who the greatest second baseman was. But time and again, the human experience demonstrates they we come together in crisis. We want to know, we want to help and we want to work together in the face of adversity. No blood drive screener asks you what political party you belong to, or what religion you are. People may not agree with the business model of the Responsible Party, the politics of the lead Agency or the efficacy of regulations brought into play, but they will agree with effective response actions and priorities. The schisms may arise in the recovery and investigation process, but right now virtually everybody wants to see you succeed.

There are enemies to an effective response, particularly in the communication sphere.

Your communication foes aren’t people, not even almost-people (sorry, trolls). You will find support from every quarter if you work hard to respond well and to share your story effectively. All effective responses are built around doing the right thing. Are you fearlessly making sure everybody is being told about it? Don’t let fear disrupt your mission; communicate!

Next post, we’ll identify some of the REAL enemies you need to deal with.

Interested in more information? Contact me!

My mission is to help you communicate better in a crisis, both in preparation and in performance. If this post raises questions about your crisis communication capacity, let me help.

Four Weddings and a Funeral

| April 15, 2019

If we’re asked to give a speech at a wedding, not one of us will use the services of a public relations or marketing professional to deliver our speech for us.

Imagine that you’re attending a wedding, a beautiful, impactful time. When the bride’s and groom’s families and friends gather, we all experience a mixture of relationships. Some of us know the bride, some the groom. Some know people on both sides, some know only one individual. But we all know what goes on at a wedding and we all know what to expect. One thing we expect is a lot of words, words from different people. The officiant is there to be sure the legal boxes are checked, usually including some formal presentation featuring an exchange of vows, as well as (often) an homily. The bride and groom have their statements to deliver, their own version of vows. Serious or humorous, the ceremony is planned and conducted in order to deliver the penultimate moment: A declaration of wedded bliss.

Then the reception begins. There’s food, drink, laughter, dancing, music. And there often is… more talking. This talking is different from the ceremony. In the ceremony, a premise for the state of matrimony was given by the officiant, promises were made by the participants. In many cases, the bride’s father utters a short ‘giving away’ phrase. You could say that the ceremony contains the ‘what’ and the ‘how’: What we’re all doing today, and how it is being done.

Reception speeches are very different. They are the personalized ‘why’. Delivered by different people from different families and different life spaces, they still all boil down to ‘why’. Why we’re happy these people are now together. We may poke fun, we may be serious. We might read a poem or quote a philosopher. We might deliver a comedy routine or fumble our way through a words that sound better on paper than they do coming out of our mouth. Regardless, we all still deliver our personal reasons for being there, why we are happy for the couple and why we think they’ll be great together.

There’s only one chance of getting it right

These speeches are a big deal. Like wedding photos and reception food, there’s only one chance to get it right. There are no wedding do-overs, so when we’re called upon to deliver a speech at a wedding, we want to be sure it’s a good one, and that we’re ready to deliver it.

Some quick Google search figures bear this out:

  • ‘Groom’s speech’ = 1,440,000 results
  • ‘Bride’s speech’ = 3,590,000 results
  • ‘Father of the bride’s speech’ = 53,200,000 results
  • ‘Best man speech’ = 1,040,000,000 results

Conclusions? A lot of grooms take their speech very seriously. Three times more brides do. Fathers of the bride are almost desperate in their desire for help in delivering a perfect speech. Best men are practically frantic in their search for help. While I didn’t look at every one of the cumulative 1.1 billion search results to see what tips or techniques were offered, but I’ll wager you one certain finding:

If we’re asked to give a speech at a wedding, not one of us will use the services of a public relations or marketing professional to deliver our speech for us. The idea of having a stand-in give our wedding speech is as unlikely as a bride or groom having a stand-in. The concept is laughable. We’re on our own.

What about funerals? A Google search for ‘funeral speech’ delivers 137,000,000 results. Of course, a wedding speech is, or at least should be, significantly different from a eulogy! But still, many of us implicitly understand that in either event we have a responsibility to deliver an effective presentation regardless of the stress or emotional duress of the moment.

In both weddings and funerals, we have one chance to make our best impression. So we plan and prepare, step to the microphone and do our best. Life’s most important moments require this of us.

What does this all have to do with crisis communication?

Weddings and funerals impact a specific audience. People closest to the situation are in the room, for better or for worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. What we say at these events is important to them, so we step up and deliver to the best of our ability. We do not shirk, and we seek no substitutes.

When your organization is in a crisis, the event has already impacted a specific number of people. They are interested in hearing what you have to say. They are as ‘in the room’ as a wedding or funeral audience. But they have ALL been negatively impacted by the event. Nobody is happy.

If your organization has impacted people’s lives due to an incident or issue, consider who they want to hear from. They don’t want a stand-in any more than a wedding party wants to hear from a professional speaker. They want to hear truth from someone who matters, and that person is the leader of your organization. When you’re deciding who should speak for your organization, let your default selection be the top person.

Remember, in any of life’s most important moments, we have one chance to make our best impression. So we plan and prepare, step to the microphone and do our best. Life’s important moments require this of us.

So, who should be your company spokesperson in a crisis?

This is an eternal debate, with some siding with a tiered approach in providing access to the top person in an organization. Some advocate for restricted access, saving the top person for the most escalated response. Many encourage use of company spokespersons rather than ‘line’ leadership. Some advocate for immediate top-level involvement and exposure.

Communication professionals tend to advocate for a careful measurement of incident impact to help determine if it’s time to’ bring in the CEO’. We plan on spokesperson escalation to match the incident escalation. We use an internal sliding scale to determine how escalated the incident is. And we miss a key point. We use internal escalation metrics. We measure the impact as dispassionately as possible and we come up with different levels of incident impact, so we can assign different levels of leadership availability.

We miss the point

We don’t get to define our incident’s impact: The people impacted get to do this. And to those impacted by an incident, the incident is already escalated! Affected stakeholders have an on/off switch for impact, not our internal sliding scale. Affected stakeholders will always consider your incident to already be fully escalated.

If you want to make the best impression, you can’t go wrong going to the top. That’s what your stakeholders expect.

Interested in more information?  Contact me!