It's difficult to recall a time characterized by such a rapid succession of crises as the past 18 months. There has been virtually no respite between the September 11 attacks,
the war on terrorism, Wall Street scandals, the War in Iraq, health scares, and the woes of a faltering economy.
For communicators, reflection, analysis, and learning are vital for an ever-improving crisis management discipline. These are in shorter and more precious supply. If there's
any good that comes from a crisis situation, and the pain it brings to an organization, it's the learning that could mitigate or avoid the next one. It's honing the sense of déja
vu.
The questions now being asked of NASA in the wake of the Columbia disaster illustrate just how important this sense of organizational déja vu can be. Congressional committees
seem determined to halt funding for more human space travel until NASA shows it has learned key lessons about safety.
The independent panel investigating the incident will issue its complete findings later this summer - but early indications are that attitudes at NASA will receive harsh
scrutiny.
One of the key turning points in a crisis situation actually occurs after the crisis is over. This is when communicators and their colleagues must lead an organization through
three critical steps in the crisis management process:
#1 A complete assembly of the facts, and a timetable of what happened when.
#2 An unvarnished after-action analysis, complete with what went wrong and what should be done better next time.
#3 Modifications to existing crisis plans, and further training, based on this analysis.
If you're a decision-maker in a crisis situation, you'll need to act at all times with the complete knowledge that your actions will be reviewed not once but twice: first, by
voracious media that will probe what you are doing in real time and second, by internal or external reviewers who will conduct a more intense, perhaps painful, probe.
Every crisis has a precedent. When the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere on February 1, killing all seven crew members aboard, it not
only stoked the embers of this country's long-running sense of crisis, it created an eerie sense of déja vu, as it was the second time a space shuttle exploded in full view of a
worldwide television audience; the second time legitimate questions were aired about whether NASA can put the brakes on a high-profile project when issues of safety arise; and it
was the second time tragedy called into question the pursuit of manned space flight, even the future of NASA itself.
Much of the PR community gave NASA high marks for its handling of the media in the aftermath of the Columbia disaster. The agency displayed an eagerness to respond to the
hundreds of questions and to show that it was going to be a very different NASA than that which seemed to stonewall and duck after Challenger.
NASA not only broke with past precedent, it did everything it could to keep the Columbia story front and center:
- It began broadcasts of frequent updates within an hour of initial reports of a problem on Feb. 1.
- NASA established a pace of twice-daily press briefings.
- Top managers were front and center, not just spokespersons.
- NASA paired virtually every technical and operational message with communications directed at the emotional needs of affected families - the families of the astronauts who
feared the worst, and the NASA "family" that was expected to perform despite gut-wrenching news.
But we'll miss the point if the lesson of the Columbia crisis is "be honest when dealing with the press." That's a given. The most remarkable thing about the management of the
Columbia crisis is that NASA convened the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (http://www.caib.us) immediately. It was instructed to develop recommendations in the interest of avoiding another similar disaster, and to
immediately release its findings to the public when complete. From the start, NASA began managing the Columbia crisis anticipating the Rule of Two - if you repeat a crisis,
scrutiny will be more than twice as intense as the last time.
From the outset, Harold Gehman, chairman of the accident board, indicated that while finding the cause of the accident would be the panel's most immediate priority, the
examination of NASA itself would draw the most attention. Shuttle director Ron Dittemore, a competent, and reassuring voice for NASA throughout the Columbia crisis, told USAToday
on May 7 that his focus "...is not on what coulda-shoulda happened. My focus is on lessons learned."
For crisis managers, the critical objective is preparing for and managing the intense, grueling examination that is bound to take place once the heat of press scrutiny has
subsided (or, in this case, pushed off the front page by an even bigger story in Iraq). How will you answer the questions "What did you know, when did you know it, and what did
you do about it?"
NASA anticipated these questions and began a process of answering them immediately. NASA still has a huge problem on its hands. Its budget will certainly be hurt in the
foreseeable future, and manned space flight itself may continue to come under fire. Nonetheless, instantly convening a far-reaching third-party investigation was a case study in
crisis management by the Rule of Two.
Recommended Reads
A lot of important resources on crisis management get overlooked because they don't have the word "crisis" in their titles. Here are two that are very insightful:
- "The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do to Make Them Right," by Dietrich Dorner. Dorner is a German psychologist. This book argues that the actions
leading up to crises and disasters must be understood systematically, not piece by piece. Very appropriate in the aftermath of the Columbia disaster. - "Peep Show: Media and Politics in an Age of Scandal," by Larry J. Sabato, Mark Stencel and S. Robert Lichter." Why have our media become so enamored with scandal? If you're
trying to get senior management to understand what the media really looks for in a crisis, this book is an important read.
Larry Kamer, president of Kamer Consulting Group LLC, can be reached at 510.644.3500; [email protected]