Communicators’ Corner

What is the mission of Unified Command? Simple to define, right?  Or is it as simple as ‘go home’?

Here’s how USDA describes the purpose of Unified Command:

“Unified Command is a team effort process, allowing all agencies with geographical or functional responsibility for an incident, to assign an Incident Commander to a Unified Command organization. The Unified Command then establishes a common set of incident objectives and strategies that all can subscribe to. This is accomplished without losing or giving up agency authority, responsibility or accountability. Unified Command represents an important element in increasing the effectiveness of multi-jurisdictional or multi-agency incidents. As incidents become more complex and involve more agencies, the need for Unified Command is increased.”

How about Incident Command itself?

Here’s what FEMA says: “The Incident Command System (ICS) is a management system designed to enable effective and efficient domestic incident management by integrating a combination of facilities, equipment, personnel, procedures, and communications operating within a common organizational structure. ICS is normally structured to facilitate activities in five major functional areas: command, operations, planning, logistics, Intelligence & Investigations, finance and administration. It is a fundamental form of management, with the purpose of enabling incident managers to identify the key concerns associated with the incident—often under urgent conditions—without sacrificing attention to any component of the command system.”

Go home!

So, the mission of Unified Command is to ‘establish a common set of incident objectives and strategies’, or is it ‘to enable effective and efficient domestic incident management’?

So much for simplicity!  Here’s a shorter mission statement: Go home!

Every response structure or system is designed to accomplish the same goals with differing levels of involvement, expenditure and outcome. Each response has its own response objectives, but they generally fall around the same key points:

• Protect people – safety of public and responders is always paramount
• Stop the incident! No matter what happened, stop it!
• Secure the assets – whether boats, buildings or bridges
• Protect wildlife and environment – no matter what spilled, released, burned or erupted, keep it away from animals and plants
• Restore damages – whether things or beings, make them whole!
• And then, go home.

Any response that escalates to Unified Command is expensive in damage, impact, time and cost. Virtually all responses are ‘extra duty’, not part of our normal schedules or to-do lists. All responders put their ‘day jobs’ on hold, and their lives on hold. So ‘go home’ is actually a valid and valuable objective.

‘Go home’ focuses the ‘response mind’ on maximizing both effort and impact for the greatest (and quickest) good. It ensures the Unified Command mantra of ‘the best people making the best decisions for the best outcome’.

What it does NOT do is assure impacted stakeholders.

Unified Command participants say; ‘We want to go home!’ Impacted stakeholders say; ‘We ARE home! Our lives have been turned upside down, we’ve incurred harm! We need help!”

For stakeholders, the Unified Command decision of ‘over’ is most definitely NOT ‘over’. In many cases, the conclusion of response efforts is only the beginning of recovery efforts.

The conundrum is that Unified Command works best when focused on the short term, while stakeholder relations works best when focused on the long term. Hence the challenge for the JIC and all communicators: How do we practice long-term thinking in a short-term environment? Short-term focus leads to good response actions, but bad communication actions.

From the very start of a response to the end of all activities, how does a communicator craft an effective communication process?

First, stakeholder communication is only effective if it meets stakeholder information needs. Providing information about response actions may meet the expectations of responders, but it only begins to meet the needs of affected stakeholders.

Stakeholders need much more information than response facts. Let’s look at the following issues that surround this basic truth:

Responder expectations and why they are wrong

First, response leaders expect communicators to share information about response actions. Whether internal to a single response organization or at the Unified Command table, people responsible for directing response efforts want to be sure their actions are accurately portrayed to a watching world. They pore over facts to ensure accuracy. They wrestle with changing numbers and worry about inaccuracy. They check grammar and look for typos. They remove subjective information in favor of objective facts.

And they completely miss the point: Responders know facts, but they don’t know feelings. Effective response communication isn’t just factual, it is emotional. Only communicators major in this point. Responders strip the soul out of communication because they don’t recognize the need for it. When dealing with an affected public, facts are an important element of effective communication, but so is honesty, empathy and sympathy. Responders need to turn loose of their hold on the communication product, and trust the communicators to do what we do best.

Approval processes and why they are wrong

Every communicator deals with an approval process of some type, typically one that is longer and more draconian than it should be. Typically, one communicator submits their product to multiple approvers for review. Pre-Unified Command, content goes to Legal, HR, Investor Relations and/or Corporate leaders for review and revision. Each holds veto power over every word, thought or fact. The same holds with Unified Command, where one individual, the PIO, brings JIC product to the Unified Command table, where every member holds the same veto power.

In any setting, the result of this is delay, obfuscation or elimination of key messages. Subjective statements are summarily excised. Facts are revised or questioned, grammar and context are vandalized. The all too typical process returns a marked up, dumbed down, stripped out tossed salad of word to the JIC or the communicator for revision and resubmission. None of this should happen; this process does violence to timeliness and effectiveness of communication products.

How to make them right

Reverse the process. Give professional communicators full sway over the product. Trust their professionalism to generate effective, well-written and accurate material. To ensure accuracy, put a fact-checker next to the communicator or in the JIC. Their job is to screen the facts for accuracy. Let the communicators decide what needs to be said, what key nuggets to pull out of the avalanche of facts available. Instead of one communicator subjecting their work to multiple reviewers put one fact checker in with multiple communicators. This fact-checker can work with information gathering, to sign off on all information coming to the communicator or JIC.

What should Command do with communication products?

Listen to them! Read them! The communicators’/PIO’s role is to inform Command of public sensitivities and risks that need to be considered. The communicator/PIO is the communication expert at the command table. Communicators need to seize this role, and responders need to give it to them. Responders, don’t edit out what communicators have put in. Instead, ask them why it is important so you understand the response impact better!

Why all this talk about communicators’ roles? Because until this is settled, communicators can’t bring long-term stakeholder acceptance to short-term response actions. Once it is settled, communicators can begin to deliver better information for better understanding, to both responders and stakeholders. They can use strategies that ensure long-term understanding and acceptance of short-term response activities.

When does long-term thinking sync with short term thinking?

Immediately. Let’s look again at typical response objectives, and list some long-term concerns next to each short-term objective.

And the list goes on. And on. Who knows these concerns? Communicators do.

Communicators know that the simple, straightforward response statement; ‘We’re doing everything we can to stop this incident right now’, and the facts associated with the statement (that responders think prove their commitment) don’t answer stakeholders’ heart concerns. In addition to hearing about boats, boom and bodies, they need to hear; ‘We know how important this it to people who live here. We live here too, and we are working as fast as we can. We will do everything we can to stop it, as quickly as possible. Use emotional statements to connect with emotion, use facts to connect with logic. Neglecting one injures the other. Communicators know this. It’s our passion, to be heard and understood.

Planning ahead: the ‘why’

Once we’ve built heart into initial communications, we need to go to work on what we know is coming. It is very common to focus on key initial facts and actions at first, as communication has to catch up with response plans and actions. But very quickly communicators need to segue into more important matters. Yes, there are more important things to do than share facts. Facts are answers or proof to ‘what’. More important is ‘why’ and ‘what’s coming?’.

Facts demonstrate response actions, but response actions are selected for specific reasons. These reasons are the ‘why’. Here are some samples:

Seem like a lot of work? It is extra work to create the ‘why’ statements, while the ‘what’ is easier to find. But here’s a secret: Facts always change, so the ‘what’ always changes. The ‘why’ doesn’t change, so it can be used again and again to support the ever-changing ‘what’.

‘Why’ is also recyclable: Each ‘why’ statement can be used to meet later stakeholder concerns.

What about the facts?

What about the facts themselves? How do I keep them flowing?

• Develop a facts flow that doesn’t require ongoing approval. Use your fact-checker to verify response actions for incorporation into a standing Response Facts sheet.
• Select the key measurements you know stakeholders need for assurance of activity; boats, boom, bodies, birds – any information that becomes measurable evidence of progress and actions.
• Establish protocols for verification and use; typically, information is factual if it is associated directly with a response activity. If boom is being deployed, the number of feet deployed is a fact. If oiled birds have been reported and a team is responding, the report is a fact. If an injury has been reported, it is a fact. Each fact should have a corresponding action that renders the fact to be true.
• Publish facts as they ebb and flow. Remember and reinforce the universal response truth: All facts change with time and absolute truth will only be known long after the response is over. Use the best facts available and change them when they change. Remind everyone that facts are fungible.

Plan for the future

While most response facts reflect the past, some impact the future.

• Reports of oiled birds will result in oiled birds and all the concern and attention they bring.
• Spill trajectories showing oil is coming ashore usually result in oil coming ashore and the attendant stakeholder concerns.

Effective communicators note the key facts that lead to future communication needs and prepare for them. Very quickly in a response, communicators should identify these ‘hot buttons’ as key issues and track them diligently. Don’t settle for ‘what is’ from information gatherers, require them to always ask ‘what’s coming?’ If the Wildlife branch says there are no impacted birds, ask them if there are reports of impacted birds, or if they’re planning on opening rehab centers. If the Environment section is planning booming strategies, ask them where and when. Is dispersant use being planned? Has a permit been submitted? Are they being staged somewhere?

As soon as any ‘hot button’ issue is touched by response plans, communicators need to prepare for it. This is not just preparing materials, it is informing Command of needed ‘lead time’ to prepare stakeholders for the eventuality. The time to talk about bird rehabilitation centers is before oiled birds are reported. The time to talk about shoreline protection strategies is before they’re implemented. Want to see trouble? Start using dispersants or burning oil before you tell stakeholders you’re going to!

This rule applies to more response action than a responder may think.

• In one response involving a spill of bunker fuel during refueling, responders decided to move the involved vessel without informing the public. Unfortunately, viewers from the shore didn’t know the ship was being moved for decon, they thought it was leaving the ‘scene of the crime’.
• In the same response, communicators had to override Command’s resistance to conducting a media briefing on a beach. Communicators knew the public needed to see the negligible impact on the beach instead of looking at a white board.

Advise and Consent:

Note the critical ingredient for success: Communicators who know what the real issues are, and have a plan to address them. This goes back to the communicator’s role with Command: To advise. Don’t let good response decisions be wasted by bad communications.

Only effective communications balances the competing demands of ‘I want to go home’ with ‘I don’t want you to go home’.  Be prepared to lead Unified Command through a graceful departure!

Questions? Did you see ideas in this post that you’ve never heard of before? Contact me!

Comments?  Leave them below.

Where do you fit in the Joint Information Center?

You’ve taken all the NIMS training for PIOs. You know Unified Command, you know the Joint Information Center (JIC). You’ve even taken Liaison Officer courses to be sure you’re aware of all the public communication channels that will be used by Unified Command. Your certificates are on your wall, and you keep them digitally on your laptop to be sure you can demonstrate your qualifications.

And you’re a pretty good communicator too! You’ve honed your skills to be good at your profession.

Congratulations, you’re ready to bring your knowledge, skills and experience to bear in the JIC. Based on a moderate-sized JIC, you may be ready to step into any of 15 + JIC positions.

But which position? Where do you fit best? Where will your unique set of skills and experience help response communications the most?

Consider the MQI Doctrine:

In Unified Command, the Most Qualified Individual Doctrine (MQI) should be followed: Each Unified Command position should be held by the most qualified and experienced individual available. The purpose for this is clear: The mission of Unified Command will be best met when the best people occupy each position.

In the National Response Team Publication: ‘UC Technical Assistance Document‘ the following statement reinforces the MQI concept: “Agency capabilities and resources, including agency personnel trained and available to fill key ICS positions, such as Command, Command Staff, and General Staff positions, should be identified.”

Translated, this means that each position within Unified Command should be filled with the most qualified and experienced individual.

Does MQI always rule?

No. I’ve covered this topic in another post: ‘What if Unified Command Doesn’t Work?’. Past practice, policy and politics can impact MQI, usually negatively.

• Past practice: Incident Commanders, themselves often selected for non-MQI reasons, often expect ‘their’ PIO to serve as the response PIO. They’re used to the working relationship, are confident of their PIO’s capability and are comfortable with their judgement. This can be beneficial, but it can also bite the response’s backside. Past practice isn’t an accurate determinant of performance.
• Policy: Some State or regional Area Contingency plans may specify which organizations can supply a PIO, often restricted from the Responsible Party. These considerations are usually practical; the State agency charged with response actions doesn’t want the added public opprobrium associated with the Responsible Party. So they require Agency staff to serve as PIO, relegating the Responsible Party to a less public position. Again, this arrangement can be beneficial when the named PIO is capable ands qualified, but sometimes the result is a lack of leadership that would have been available from the more experienced person from the RP.
• Politics: Some responses ‘go political’ from the very beginning; a powerful political voice takes over the response and forces appointment of their favorite, selected individuals in leadership positions. In today’s instant-news environment, this can seem a reasonable response to protect the reputation of the political denizens. It virtually always results with the leadership role not being filled as well as it would be via MQI. It also almost guarantees that some response decisions will be made for political reasons, reflecting neither best practices nor scientifically based logic. The end result is a lower quality response, often loss of trust: Unified Command’s mission is broken from the start.

The good news: Misapplied MQI isn’t pervasive, and usually doesn’t extend into the JIC structure. Even if you’re restricted from one position you may be manifestly qualified for, there are plenty of other positions where your capabilities can be fully utilized.

How do you practice MQI?

How do you rise to the level you belong in the Joint Information Center (JIC)? You’e already taken the most important step; you’ve learned about all the positions in the JIC. Your ICS courses have given you an overview and understanding of the varied positions needed in an effective JIC. They, with your skills and experience, should be enough to get you placed where you’ll be most valuable. But where?

There is a hierarchy of JIC positions that can help you make a good decision about where to serve. Remember that Unified Command is built on the span-of-control dictum: Regardless of response complexity, the JIC organization chart features at least three levels of leadership you can fit into: PIO, APIO-JIC Manager and APIO-Section Chief. Which level is for you?

• PIO: The Public Information Officer occupies a Command position, so they will spend the bulk of their time with Unified Command, overseeing a two way information flow of facts TO the JIC and product FROM the JIC. This is the dominant responsibility, but not the most important one: Above all else, the PIO should be providing communication counsel to Unified Command. Other Unified Command staff are experts in their field; they know boom, birds and bodies. The PIO is the expert in stakeholder communication; the only person in the room to weigh command decisions in light of public opinion. The PIO’s primary role is to ensure that Unified Command understands the ramifications of their actions on public perception, just as much as the Environmental Unit will inform Unified Command on the safest and best protection strategy.The PIO must be a strategist, able to engage Unified Command in high-level thinking about how to inform an affected public. This ensures that the affected public both supports Unified Command objectives and obeys Unified Command decisions. As an example, the PIO will help Unified Command understand why notifying the public about dispersant use beforehand is a good policy.If the PIO position is held by a sycophant of the Incident Commander, strategy is one of the first things to go. And Unified Command will pay a price for this.If you’re an industry-recognized communication strategist, you may be able to promote or preserve MQI, but practice, politics or policy may simply take the opportunity off the table. Focus on ‘strategist’ if you want this role. Your job will be to influence leadership to make good response decisions.
• APIO-JIC Manager: The JIC Manager is the most critical position in response communications. An effective JIC Manager can actually compensate for an ineffective PIO, by managing the JIC well. This is a tactical position that may shade into strategy if the PIO isn’t doing their job.The JIC Manager plans all response communication, identifies product, sets a schedule, provides quality control and maintains performance. They may influence strategy by building it into the JIC’s Public Information Plan (PIP), by including known stakeholder concerns and weight of each concern into the PIP.If you’ve managed teams, overseen complex projects with tight deadlines, and maintained long term staff commitment and performance in high stress environments, you’re qualified to serve as JIC Manager. You will ensure a focused, output oriented, high performing team of individuals drawn from multiple organizations. This is your spot!How do you demonstrate your qualification beyond training? If you’ve produced a corporate sustainability report or written and implemented a crisis communication plan, you’re probably going to be great at this role. If you’ve overseen complex agency initiatives or managed your agency’s public outreach programs, you’re probably going to be great at this role.My counsel here: If you only have one management superstar, put them in the APIO-JIC manager position. Oh, and most policy restrictions on RP staff to NOT specify APIOs – usually only the PIO. So in the JIC, MQI has a solid shot!
• APIO-Section Chief: In the JIC structure, functional roles are often separated; information production may be separated from dissemination, which may also be separate from information gathering. Inquiry management may be broken out, as may Media management from Community Outreach. While the JIC organization chart will be adjusted to match response communication needs, leadership of each Section will be universally enforced. Unified Command’s span-of-control genesis ensures this.This translates to ‘Section Chiefs Wanted‘. Each Section Chief function has two leadership requirements; knowledge of the specific function, and management capability. If you’ve created content and overseen content creation for your organization, you’ll be a good APIO over Information Production. If you’ve planned and conducted multiple public meetings, you may be a good fit for overseeing Community Outreach.MQI Doctrine can be canonized at the section level, as the JIC Manager reviews capabilities and assigns APIO-Section Chiefs.

How do you decide where you fit?

Here’s a guide, based on one Crisis Communication Plan: JIC Positions and Comparable Skills Needed

REMEMBER that JIC structure is flexible, so Section titles can change.

Leave your ego at the door!

A warning: Serving in a position you’re not really qualified for will eat you up, and it may jeopardize the entire response. Failure to effectively communicate response information to a concerned public can have severe impact on response reputation, your reputation and the safety and security of the public.

Don’t fall into the trap of becoming a legend in your own mind. I’ve seen gifted communicators fail badly in Unified Command because while they may be really good at public speaking, or highly photogenic, or possess a great ‘bedside manner,’ they’re neither strategists nor tacticians. Unified Command is a machine and so is the Joint Information Center. Practice MQI and place gifted people where they’re needed — including yourself.

The response and the affected public will thank you.

Questions? Did you see ideas in this post that you’ve never heard of before? Contact me!

Comments?  Leave them below.

Stakeholder communication and messaging

Effective stakeholder communication is all about saying the right things to the right people. In our everyday world, we do this well. Time and experience teach us the benefit of investing in the people who are strategic to us and as we select these people over time, we get the process down pretty well. Our daily communication works because we know what to say, and we know who to say it to. If we don’t, time and tide set us straight. Plus, we always have the luxury of trying again if we miss our stakeholder communication mark the first time.

Then a crisis occurs, and everything changes. In addition to the need for new messaging due to our new situation, we join a new organization, leaving ‘ Day to Day, Incorporated’ for ‘Incident Command (hopefully) Limited’. We’re thrust into a new operating sphere called the Joint Information Center, with new coworkers and new stakeholders. Our stakeholders and messaging are exponentially more critical to our survival, but we have neither additional time nor extra chances to get both right.

As we step into this new sphere, how can we make the right choices for messaging and stakeholders? It may be helpful to consider a different business model that will help you make the right decisions.

A look at how successful nonprofits manage stakeholder communication and management

If you want to see an organization that maintains a clear understanding of stakeholders and messaging, look at a well-run nonprofit. Thriving nonprofits manage to balance the evolving and competing demands of their stakeholders, and communicate common values, principles, priorities and messages to each one.  In so doing they are actually increasing the value of their gathered stakeholders to the organization as a whole, while simultaneously increasing the value of the organization to each stakeholder.

Consider five stakeholder groups every nonprofit must manage:

• The clients: Every nonprofit has clients of some type. Their needs usually define the organization’s mission. These are the people we’re trying help. They care about our services, availability and effectiveness. They think that their priorities are, or ought to be, the organization’s priorities.
• The donors: The people with resources. These people care about effectiveness and the return on their investment; they willingly give to causes and programs that matter to them. They have an affinity for the Clients, but they aren’t a client. They don’t need the nonprofit for services, but they see the nonprofit as the best way to help the client.
• The board: These people manage the organization. They care about the organization and its effectiveness. They care about costs, and they balance the need and effectiveness of service delivery against cost, budget and available resources. While they care about the Client, they are committed to the organization.
• The workers: These people actually deliver the services.They care about the clients, and they care about themselves. They expect both finances and feelings: they care, and their care is shaped or defined either by their pay, or by their desire to have a personal impact in people’s lives, often both. Workers are paid staff or volunteers. The pay is is different, but a good nonprofit holds the same standards of training, accountability and effectiveness for volunteers as they do for staff.
• The activists: These people are the heralds. They care about the cause, usually more than they care about the clients. They are often advocating for their own benefits instead of the clients’. Their focus can be on purity of mission instead of effectiveness of programs.

Run effectively, nonprofits balance each of these groups’ expectations in a way that meets each group’s needs while also adding a greater mutual benefit from this balance. They effectively balance the strengths and shortcomings of each group and create a dynamic, effective and thriving team.

Non-profit management isn’t easy, and the best practitioners succeed despite limited time, budget and agreement from often competing stakeholders. They simultaneously deliver needed services to clients who appreciate them, extract support from resource holders who buy into the vision, steer overseers to common and effective decisions, direct staff to deliver quality services and assuage the concerns of activists who always expect their personal nirvana.

And these needs do compete. It’s easy to become unbalanced and nonprofits always have a much lower margin for error:

• Fall short in meeting the needs of your clients and they will complain about your services.
• Turn off donors, who constrict your cash flow, leading to staffing reductions and even lower services.
• Neglect the Board and they can end up fighting fires instead of planning futures, while the value equation for donors disappears.
• Worry your workers by neglecting pay, security or support and they can turn against you, impacting your image with donors and activists or alienating clients with lackluster service.
• Fail the activists by not delivering services or an image they can support and they will turn against you, questioning your mission or methods, often loudly and publicly. They will watch you and measure you, always ready to pounce if they perceive wrong motives, actions or outcome. And they will define each.

Anybody want to manage a nonprofit? The good leaders dance a dance that keeps all their stakeholders satisfied, and they do it by blending the needs of each group with the mission of the organization.

What does this have to do with stakeholder communication in a response?

Effective response communication also has to dance a dance that keeps all stakeholders satisfied by blending the needs of each group with the mission of the organization. Nonprofits manage their stakeholders, communicators manage stakeholder communications. Both endeavors face the same dynamics.

Your organization is the Incident Command. The response is your mission. Your stakeholders are:

• The Clients: These are the people who have been impacted by the incident.
• The Donors: These are the funders of the response, usually the Responsible Party or their insurer, though sometimes a government entity.
• The Board: Incident Command itself, participants working together to provide the maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
• The Workers: These are the people and organizations actually doing the work. This group includes both paid and volunteer people and organizations.
• The Activists: These are people or organizations with causes. Media are activists. Bloggers are activists (and bloggers are media, another subject). Advocacy and special interest groups are activists.

Now for the ‘easy’ part; apply the tactics and strategies of an effective non-profit to the Joint Information Center and you can succeed at moving this conflicting herd of cats to the finish line of success.

Dance the dance like a non-profit!

1. Define the mission: Every successful nonprofit has an ascendant mission that colors the perception of every stakeholder. From Client to Activist, every stakeholder can define the agency mission in common terms. Mission becomes common cause when effectively defined and shared.Turn Unified Command objectives or priorities into a mission statement. Use words of commitment and vision. Instead of saying; “Ensure the safety of responders and the community” say; “The safety and security of every person is important to us. Everything we do is centered on this principle.”
2. Define ‘success‘ for each stakeholder group, and tie each definition to the Mission. For clients, success may be a return to normal life, restoration of something damaged, encouragement to trust and believe. For donors success may be effective use of funds, even more than minimal use of funds.Each stakeholder group will define success differently, but link them together by identifying each with the mission statement: “We will minimize the impact of this incident because we want the community and the environment healed and restored.”Objectives of the response are recast as definitions of success. This allows each stakeholder group to begin to share a common and measurable definition of success. The vision is supported by reality.
3. Dedicate your resources, first to the most greatly shared objectives. Disparate stakeholder groups will likely share some definitions of success, and shared information has greater impact. If activists are clamoring for bird rescue and clients value wildlife, sharing successful rehabilitation will have a positive impact on both groups’ belief in the mission. Products identified in a publication plan should be weighted by their impact: Deal with the most important ones first.
4. Share success across all stakeholder groups. Remind all stakeholders that progress in any area is progress in all areas. Celebrate accomplishments. An insurance company might not care about a rescued bird, but they will be happy that community members are gaining confidence in the response because they see a bird rescued.
5. Ask for more. Encourage every stakeholder to do something to further the mission. Successful nonprofits are always recruiting: bodies, testimonials, funding, volunteers. Encourage each stakeholder group to greater involvement. As community members see their own beach cleaned, ask them to share any other needs they see among their neighbors. As activist groups provide volunteers, ask them to spread the word for more. As media members receive communication content, encourage them to ask more and write more. Engage with negative stakeholders to help them see the overall mission more clearly.
6. Don’t ignore any stakeholder group. It may be more fun to work with volunteers than it is to engage with activists, but success requires both. Don’t consider media inquiries as a chore or to be discouraged. Welcome them and make it clear they are welcome. Thank them for their interest and engage with them. Keep response personnel aware of latest updates and support them with counsel and content.Engage with all stakeholders. Invite each one to the communications table and give them content that not only feeds them but satisfies them. Show bird advocates that you are funding rehabilitation centers and encouraging them to volunteer because part of your mission is to protect, heal and restore wildlife affected wildlife to their natural state. Tying mission to performance is a powerful element in satisfaction.

It seems like a lot of work, but consider this simple concept: If each stakeholder group understands the broad mission of Incident Command and can relate to it because they see their concerns or needs addressed, there will be a building consensus and partnership in the response that will yield the most precious result: recognition and appreciation for work well done in difficult circumstances.

The old communication adage is really true: Do the right thing and make sure people know about it. Engage them at their point of interest, with language meaninful to them, and they just might dance the dance with you.

Stakeholder communication and messaging

Effective stakeholder communication is all about saying the right things to the right people. In our everyday world, we do this well. Time and experience teach us the benefit of investing in the people who are strategic to us and as we select these people over time, we get the process down pretty well. Our daily communication works because we know what to say, and we know who to say it to. If we don’t, time and tide set us straight. Plus, we always have the luxury of trying again if we miss our stakeholder communication mark the first time.

Then a crisis occurs, and everything changes. In addition to the need for new messaging due to our new situation, we join a new organization, leaving ‘ Day to Day, Incorporated’ for ‘Incident Command (hopefully) Limited’. We’re thrust into a new operating sphere called the Joint Information Center, with new coworkers and new stakeholders. Our stakeholders and messaging are exponentially more critical to our survival, but we have neither additional time nor extra chances to get both right.

As we step into this new sphere, how can we make the right choices for messaging and stakeholders? It may be helpful to consider a different business model that will help you make the right decisions.

A look at how successful nonprofits manage stakeholder communication and management

If you want to see an organization that maintains a clear understanding of stakeholders and messaging, look at a well-run nonprofit. Thriving nonprofits manage to balance the evolving and competing demands of their stakeholders, and communicate common values, principles, priorities and messages to each one.  In so doing they are actually increasing the value of their gathered stakeholders to the organization as a whole, while simultaneously increasing the value of the organization to each stakeholder.

Consider five stakeholder groups every nonprofit must manage:

• The clients: Every nonprofit has clients of some type. Their needs usually define the organization’s mission. These are the people we’re trying help. They care about our services, availability and effectiveness. They think that their priorities are, or ought to be, the organization’s priorities.
• The donors: The people with resources. These people care about effectiveness and the return on their investment; they willingly give to causes and programs that matter to them. They have an affinity for the Clients, but they aren’t a client. They don’t need the nonprofit for services, but they see the nonprofit as the best way to help the client.
• The board: These people manage the organization. They care about the organization and its effectiveness. They care about costs, and they balance the need and effectiveness of service delivery against cost, budget and available resources. While they care about the Client, they are committed to the organization.
• The workers: These people actually deliver the services.They care about the clients, and they care about themselves. They expect both finances and feelings: they care, and their care is shaped or defined either by their pay, or by their desire to have a personal impact in people’s lives, often both. Workers are paid staff or volunteers. The pay is is different, but a good nonprofit holds the same standards of training, accountability and effectiveness for volunteers as they do for staff.
• The activists: These people are the heralds. They care about the cause, usually more than they care about the clients. They are often advocating for their own benefits instead of the clients’. Their focus can be on purity of mission instead of effectiveness of programs.

Run effectively, nonprofits balance each of these groups’ expectations in a way that meets each group’s needs while also adding a greater mutual benefit from this balance. They effectively balance the strengths and shortcomings of each group and create a dynamic, effective and thriving team.

Non-profit management isn’t easy, and the best practitioners succeed despite limited time, budget and agreement from often competing stakeholders. They simultaneously deliver needed services to clients who appreciate them, extract support from resource holders who buy into the vision, steer overseers to common and effective decisions, direct staff to deliver quality services and assuage the concerns of activists who always expect their personal nirvana.

And these needs do compete. It’s easy to become unbalanced and nonprofits always have a much lower margin for error:

• Fall short in meeting the needs of your clients and they will complain about your services.
• Turn off donors, who constrict your cash flow, leading to staffing reductions and even lower services.
• Neglect the Board and they can end up fighting fires instead of planning futures, while the value equation for donors disappears.
• Worry your workers by neglecting pay, security or support and they can turn against you, impacting your image with donors and activists or alienating clients with lackluster service.
• Fail the activists by not delivering services or an image they can support and they will turn against you, questioning your mission or methods, often loudly and publicly. They will watch you and measure you, always ready to pounce if they perceive wrong motives, actions or outcome. And they will define each.

Anybody want to manage a nonprofit? The good leaders dance a dance that keeps all their stakeholders satisfied, and they do it by blending the needs of each group with the mission of the organization.

What does this have to do with stakeholder communication in a response?

Effective response communication also has to dance a dance that keeps all stakeholders satisfied by blending the needs of each group with the mission of the organization. Nonprofits manage their stakeholders, communicators manage stakeholder communications. Both endeavors face the same dynamics.

Your organization is the Incident Command. The response is your mission. Your stakeholders are:

• The Clients: These are the people who have been impacted by the incident.
• The Donors: These are the funders of the response, usually the Responsible Party or their insurer, though sometimes a government entity.
• The Board: Incident Command itself, participants working together to provide the maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
• The Workers: These are the people and organizations actually doing the work. This group includes both paid and volunteer people and organizations.
• The Activists: These are people or organizations with causes. Media are activists. Bloggers are activists (and bloggers are media, another subject). Advocacy and special interest groups are activists.

Now for the ‘easy’ part; apply the tactics and strategies of an effective non-profit to the Joint Information Center and you can succeed at moving this conflicting herd of cats to the finish line of success.

Dance the dance like a non-profit!

1. Define the mission: Every successful nonprofit has an ascendant mission that colors the perception of every stakeholder. From Client to Activist, every stakeholder can define the agency mission in common terms. Mission becomes common cause when effectively defined and shared.Turn Unified Command objectives or priorities into a mission statement. Use words of commitment and vision. Instead of saying; “Ensure the safety of responders and the community” say; “The safety and security of every person is important to us. Everything we do is centered on this principle.”
2. Define ‘success‘ for each stakeholder group, and tie each definition to the Mission. For clients, success may be a return to normal life, restoration of something damaged, encouragement to trust and believe. For donors success may be effective use of funds, even more than minimal use of funds.Each stakeholder group will define success differently, but link them together by identifying each with the mission statement: “We will minimize the impact of this incident because we want the community and the environment healed and restored.”Objectives of the response are recast as definitions of success. This allows each stakeholder group to begin to share a common and measurable definition of success. The vision is supported by reality.
3. Dedicate your resources, first to the most greatly shared objectives. Disparate stakeholder groups will likely share some definitions of success, and shared information has greater impact. If activists are clamoring for bird rescue and clients value wildlife, sharing successful rehabilitation will have a positive impact on both groups’ belief in the mission. Products identified in a publication plan should be weighted by their impact: Deal with the most important ones first.
4. Share success across all stakeholder groups. Remind all stakeholders that progress in any area is progress in all areas. Celebrate accomplishments. An insurance company might not care about a rescued bird, but they will be happy that community members are gaining confidence in the response because they see a bird rescued.
5. Ask for more. Encourage every stakeholder to do something to further the mission. Successful nonprofits are always recruiting: bodies, testimonials, funding, volunteers. Encourage each stakeholder group to greater involvement. As community members see their own beach cleaned, ask them to share any other needs they see among their neighbors. As activist groups provide volunteers, ask them to spread the word for more. As media members receive communication content, encourage them to ask more and write more. Engage with negative stakeholders to help them see the overall mission more clearly.
6. Don’t ignore any stakeholder group. It may be more fun to work with volunteers than it is to engage with activists, but success requires both. Don’t consider media inquiries as a chore or to be discouraged. Welcome them and make it clear they are welcome. Thank them for their interest and engage with them. Keep response personnel aware of latest updates and support them with counsel and content.Engage with all stakeholders. Invite each one to the communications table and give them content that not only feeds them but satisfies them. Show bird advocates that you are funding rehabilitation centers and encouraging them to volunteer because part of your mission is to protect, heal and restore wildlife affected wildlife to their natural state. Tying mission to performance is a powerful element in satisfaction.

It seems like a lot of work, but consider this simple concept: If each stakeholder group understands the broad mission of Incident Command and can relate to it because they see their concerns or needs addressed, there will be a building consensus and partnership in the response that will yield the most precious result: recognition and appreciation for work well done in difficult circumstances.

The old communication adage is really true: Do the right thing and make sure people know about it. Engage them at their point of interest, with language meaningful to them, and they just might dance the dance with you.

Want to know more about nonprofits’ communication challenges and solutions?  Here are two podcast to hear! Episodes 24 and 25 on the Leading in a Crisis Podcast!

Questions? Did you see ideas in this post that you’ve never heard of before? Contact me!

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