In the digital age, public relations disasters can strike at any time. No brand is immune from a negative social media post that is gaining traction or an unfavorable news story, and when an incident like this occurs, it’s imperative to act quickly and decisively to save lives and reputations.

When a PR crisis erupts, the first hours and the first steps are critical. What you do during this period can determine how quickly your organization recovers – or if it recovers.

Activate Crisis Team and Command Center: In this day and age, all organizations should have a crisis communications plan and a crisis team in place. Immediately assemble the team to verify the facts, options and priorities. The actions taken in the first 48 hours of a public relations crisis can set the outcome. Assemble a communications team to determine the messages and channels to quickly reach customers, shareholders and employees. Any public response must be in alignment with the culture and values of the company. Then, stay on top of the situation and monitor social networks inside and outside the company.

Analyze The Potential Impact Of The Situation: It’s important to understand the situation, analyzing how big or small the disaster truly is based on reach, then evaluating brand impact to guide decision-making. It’s important to look at all angles and then proceed with a more strategic plan that includes details, targets, and spends and communication delivery.

Crisis communications is not the platform to tell your entire story. Keep the plan simple and keep the message simple. Train the crisis team regularly.

Key Messages for Key Stakeholders: Understand the problem, who is affected, and the potential impact. This will tell you a lot about who you need to communicate with and what you can share with them. Create a list of bulleted talking points for the crisis team. Refine those talking points for key audience segments as necessary and update the key messages as the situation evolves. Public safety is always your first concern and the first message in such situations;

Who Needs To Hear What: The information needs among stakeholder groups are not the same. This is an area where crisis planning pays dividends because you now have separate lists and channels for each stakeholder group. Now you can target key audiences with critical, customized information. Teams must determine the right level spokesperson for the issue and ensure their crisis plan is working and provide an accurate flow of information to the right people.

Make Yourself Visible and Available: It may be hard to believe in the midst of a crisis, but recovery is possible. Make sure you are visible and that the world sees you are actively engaged and communicating. No matter how distasteful the facts of the situation may be, tell the truth. If you don’t have an answer, admit it and get the answer. 

Truthful and timely communications can restore trust and credibility.

Audit and Adjust Communications Plan: What worked and what didn’t. What resources and systems will help avert and minimize crises in the future. Does the team need more media training.

Review Policies and Procedures That Could Have Prevented or Minimized The Crisis: Crisis aversion is always the best form of crisis management. What changes can minimize crises in the future.

Build New Alliances: Before, during and after crises, reach out to potential allies who can help prevent or minimize crises in the future. Share your vision, concerns and areas of potential collaboration.

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

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No business likes to enter crisis mode. As a leader, you may not know how to respond to tough questions and negative media coverage. You can add insult to injury by making misstep after misstep in your actions and statements. You may overspeak and provide a comment that just seems to rub your customers the wrong way. No matter what you do, it isn’t working, and it just gets worse with each move. Handling crisis correctly can save lives, reputations and shareholder value.

Crisis aversion is the most important element of crisis management. Organizations owe it to themselves, stakeholders and stockholders to anticipate worst case scenarios and avoid them. Of course, aversion and planning only go so far. So don’t lose sight of your compass and conscience when you enter unchartered territory–also known as crisis communications.

Below, members of Forbes Coaches Council provide some lessons learned from handling a crisis incorrectly and how you can avoid making the same mistakes:

1. Listen To Your Team: A crisis is usually considered handled incorrectly when a leader goes rogue and does their own thing without consulting their team. A leader who doesn’t listen to their team will always be blamed when they don’t consult others first. By listening to input and experiences of others on the team, joint decisions can be made and the company will be much more likely to rally around the CEO.

2. Take Responsibility And Apologize: We see, time and time again, CEOs who excuse, equivocate, or give halfhearted and completely insensitive apologies. The primary thing you should do as a CEO is take responsibility and make a full apology, which includes what you will do to make amends for what has happened and what you will do differently in the future. Be honest, be vulnerable, and don’t be afraid to show emotion.

3. Tell The Truth: Transparency is key when dealing with a crisis. So many CEO try to hide the mistakes that they or the company have made for fear of losing profit. But when the truth comes out, they lose much more than profits, they lose reputation and brand equity.

People want to buy from companies that they trust and believe in. Profit and brand values go up when transparency is real.

4. Reflect And Practice: There is no shortage of examples of CEOs who have made mistakes when handling a crisis. Company leaders can learn from this by reflecting on the ones that could impact them, then think about how they would have handled the situation differently. They should also anticipate the “hurricanes on their horizon” then ensure the proper process to handle a crisis is in place in the event it ever surfaces.

5. Create A Diverse Crisis Response Team: When responding to a crisis, it is important for an organization to see the issue from different perspectives before responding. Employing a diverse crisis response team will ensure that your message is not tone deaf to the issue or the community affected by the incident.

6. Discuss, Correct, Move Forward: A wise company leader will know that mistakes are inevitable — the only thing they can do is make sure that big decisions have been discussed among the experts in the company and that decisions have not been taken autocratically. If the entire group makes a wrong decision, it will be a lesson learned. Take corrective action and move on. You have nothing then else but to live and learn.

7. Be Accountable: Trust comes from meeting expectations. When executives ask, “What should we do?” they create a self-referential frame and become self-protective, doing and saying things that make them feel less bad. Instead, they should ask, “What would reasonable people appropriately expect a responsible company to do when facing this kind of situation?” Doing what reasonable people appropriately expect causes trust to remain or to increase.

8. Remember Communication Is Key: When handling a crisis, leaders must communicate. Remember the ABCs of communication: accuracy, barriers and context. The message that is shared must be truthful and provided with only the facts. Leaders must keep in mind the barriers to communication, which include the length of the message and the method by which it is delivered. The context represents the situation in which it is delivered.

9. Build Trust In Advance:Companies often wait until a crisis to take care of fundamentals that should be already established with customers/clients. When I was advertising for a large quick-service restaurant and there was fear of mad cow disease coming from Europe, we preemptively developed a campaign about the quality of the food. So, understand how you can build trust with your customers/clients and start right away.

10. Be Prepared For A Crisis: Leaders take the time to prepare for everything, from acquisitions and mergers to cocktail parties, but one area that sometimes gets overlooked is crisis aversion and management. One of the best ways to prepare for a crisis is to simulate possible crisis scenarios and practice responses until you feel ready. Practice until you are truly ready for that “news camera in your face” moment and others agree that you are ready.

11. Get The Facts Before You Act: In the midst of an organizational crisis, executives make a bad situation worse by speaking out before they know the facts. Although in a crisis everything seems to move at the speed of light and every stakeholder is demanding action to be taken immediately, systematic decision-making is never more important. Executives should acknowledge that the situation is of high priority and give full attention to the collection of the facts.

12. Demonstrate Empathy: A grievous mistake that CEOs make during times of crisis is to express concerns only about maintaining shareholder value. Although the business should be top of mind, the outward expression of caring about one’s business is caring about its employees. A case in point is BP’s CEO who did not immediately empathize with the fallen employees and their families, leaving BP with a tarnished environmental, business and people record.

13. Understand The Power Of Press And Community: You’ve seen the ugliness that can happen after a CEO handles a crisis incorrectly. This type of negative press intensifies the damage already done and can sometimes leave a permanent mark on his/her reputation. One thing CEOs must learn is that even with all the power and influence they possess in their personal careers, the press is very powerful and “turning off” their communities can prove very damaging.

14. Highlight The Crisis: The most important element company leaders can learn from a CEO handling a crisis incorrectly is to treat it as a priority and engage early with leadership from all functional areas within the organization. By highlighting the crisis, you open the door to potential solutions and next steps from all sides. And this level of transparency leads to an increased versus decreased sense of trust.

15. Treat Others Like You Want To Be Treated: A simple leadership principle that brings clarity to every situation is to treat others as you would want to be treated. When a CEO follows this guiding principle, it helps make things clear. In times of difficulty, the leader is called to act with integrity, compassion, and thoughtfulness. When a leader thinks of others, the pathway becomes clear.

One critical factor in crisis communications is the prioritization of actions and messages. First and foremost, assure safety and minimize harm to all forms of life.

Failure to do so will only magnify the crisis. Of course, the first statements also need to address health and safety if there is such a risk. After that, be sure to gather the facts before you move into reputation management mode. It’s OK to buy time by saying that you are gathering the facts and will issue a statement as soon as possible.

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

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The phrase issue management was coined by Howard Chase in April of 1976. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s in his role as a corporate public relations officer, Chase was fascinated with the increasing influence that outside forces exerted on corporations. To respond to these external pressures, CEOs frequently turned for counsel to Chase and other public relations pioneers.

But, the request for advice often came after the damaging lead article, after the punitive legislation was introduced, after the consumer boycott was already organized and the protesters were at the front gate. Chase was convinced that there exists within the company a group of professionals with the network of relationships in place that could alert the organization early on that an issue was brewing. The resulting lead time could enable the company to better respond when trouble hit. Not only that, but often, they could end-run confrontation, even create new markets, by changing products or policies. But, these changes required at least the ear of senior management, and preferably a seat at the management table.

We have always emphasized that this model is not conclusive, but merely a primer for structure and strategy. It will vary according to the specific needs of any user. The primary purpose in our exercise is to demonstrate that a systems approach could apply to the strategic management of issues. The original model for issue management strategy consisted of five steps:

1. Issue identification
2. Issue analysis
3. Issue change strategy options
4. Issue action program, and
5. Evaluation of results

Issue management is based on the interaction among citizens, business, and government. It’s the push and pull relationship that governs the core of our society, which serves as the birthplace of all issues.

Issue Identification consists of three primary steps:

• Consideration of trends in the social, political, technological economic realms;
• Comparison of those trends to your basic organizational goals, in other words, your business plan; and
• Identification of primary issues. Do competitors share the same issues?

Issue Analysis. This step draws on past experience with the issue, as reflected in quantitative and qualitative research on how people feel about the issue, what actions have been taken, how the company is geared for dealing with it, and in general, how the issue can impact the organization.

Issue Change Strategy Options. Each issue requires a carefully determined “stance” or position It may be desirable to let others take the lead, remaining in a reactive mode. Perhaps it is best to “go with the flow” and adapt where necessary. Or, a dynamic, proactive posture may be advisable. This whole step is designed to incorporate an element of strategy into plans and actions.

Issue Action. Chase said too many of his peers were preoccupied with jumping to action without properly addressing the “front end” of an issue. The components of action include setting a goal, objectives, strategies and tactics. Then, one has to organize all resources at hand to achieve targets that are set. We wanted to emphasize that all parts of the organization should be tapped and synchronized. This was a radical approach in 1977.

Evaluation. At times, we said, the issue management cycle begins again, with new players, new results, new attitudes and so on. The dynamic nature of this process is what makes issue management a fascinating profession. The results, in terms of change effected and synergy realized, are very powerful.

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

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