Crisis Management

Joep Cornellison (2008)

'A point of great difficulty or danger to an organisation possibly threatening its existence and continuity that requires decisive change'

Kathleen Fearn-Banks (2011)

'A crisis is a major occurence with a potentially negative outcome affecting the organization, company, or industry, as well as its publics, products, services, or good name. A crisis interrupts normal business transactions and can sometimes threaten the existence of an organisation'

• Cobra = Sudden
• Python = Slow-burning

• Reputation
• Employee morale
• Political backlash
• Customer backlash
• Legal action
• Market confidence
• Management distraction
• All = Loss of money

• Enhanced reputation
  • Heroes are born
  • Change is accelerated
  • Latent problems are faced
  • Early warning systems developed
  • New competitive edges appear
  • All = enhanced reputation

• Staying calm
• Keeping a variety of publics informed - the better your systems are the easier this will be
• Getting the head of the organisation to face the media
• Having a clear message that is communicated by the whole organisation
• Providing information quickly yet keeping it accurate
  • Particularly with the speed of online communications and social media

• Detection
• Prevention/Preparation
• Containment
• Recovery
• Learning

• Set up systems that help you anticipate crises
  • What might you do?
• Learn from crises of other organisations in your industry
• Crisis audit
  • Identify various threats. Consider the probability of different crises happening and also the likely severity of different crises

• Prevention
  • On-going PR programmes with key stakeholder groups that foster two-way communications
  • Corporate social responsiblity
• Preparation
  • Produce crisis communications plan
    • System for fast communications laid out
    • Key audiences, messages and statements specified
    • Crisis team names and contact details
    • Legal, technical, PR representatives and headed by CEO
    • Set up communication cahnnels that you may need to use in an emergency that you do not already have access to
    • Crisis simulation and training

• Execute plans for crisis communications, plans - every crisis unique so use plans as a guide
• If situation different from that anticipated, quickly refine or develop the plan
• Your message will convey the strategy of your organisation to the crisis
  • Apologetic, defensive, explanation
  • Often need to show what action your organisation is taking
• When communicating with the media use the 5C model
  • Concern, clarity, control, confidence, competence

• Getting back to normal
• What are the effects and follow up actions needed?
  • Have stakeholders views changed?

• Evaluate response
• Take actions based on lessons learned about crisis management
  • Were actions before, during and after crisis appropriate?
  • What did we fail to plan?