Jeffrey R. Caponigro, president and CEO of Caponigro Public Relations Inc., Southfield, Mich., and the author of "The Crisis Counselor," advises that one of the most pragmatic ways of dealing with the ubiquitous issue of crisis management is making sure your company has tested its plan.
In this exclusive interview, Caponigro shares his insight on crisis preparedness. He will be one of the keynote speakers for the PR NEWS "Advanced Crisis Management & Media Relations Two-Day Workshop" in San Francisco Sept. 14 and 15.
PRN: While interviewing a well-known crisis consultant, he told us that he's dealt with companies that didn't even want to call these plans "crisis plans" because they saw it as some kind of admission that the company's operations, products, strategies, systems, etc., were flawed. Have we made strides or are businesses still that naive?
Caponigro: Strides have been made, but still not enough. Some corporations are becoming more progressive. In many cases today, boards of directors are insisting that the companies have crisis plans in place - contingency plans that examine vulnerabilities in a business and ways to prevent them from becoming mismanaged. I don't exactly know what the impetus for that shift has been, but the attention paid toward crisis mismanagement by the media has certainly drawn a lot of attention to the issue. And the litigation that's been publicized about what happens when these events are mismanaged has also woken up companies. On any day, you can open up any business section of any major market paper and find a high percentage of its stories being about corporate crises.
PRN: Do you think it's because customers have more access to board rooms through information vehicles like the Internet - the trend of accessing information without the filter of the press?
Caponigro: That could be part of it, but I think it's also the fact that people are holding corporations more accountable. And on the corporate level, all the various publics that are important to business are putting companies under a microscope. But certainly the dissemination and communication of information being more rapid than it has been in the past is playing a role in that as well.
PRN: What inspired you to write this book?
Caponigro: It's based on understanding the broader description, definition, of what a crisis is. I was holding seminars on crisis management when it dawned on me that crisis today isn't about the high-profile disaster. It's about the everyday mistake that can turn into a crisis, turn into disasters of all kinds for companies of all sizes. Those could be lawsuits, layoffs, discrimination, negative media coverage, technology mistakes.
I thought there wasn't a book on the subject that appealed to the average executive or business owner, and set out to write a book that was easy to understand and a very quick read. I wrote this book in a style that permits the reader to focus on workable chunks, instead of having to read me go on - paragraph after paragraph - about theories and concepts.
PRN: But, truly, crisis management can be a difficult beast and can't be taken on in an obligatory fashion. We can't downplay how serious it is to have good, thought-out crisis management is - you just can't take a cookie-cutter approach...
Caponigro: True, but there are things you can do to make the process more smooth. I have outlined a seven-step process, but I have also been able to identify three key aspects: one is to plan in advance and think things through and the second is to react quickly and confidently. But you can't react swiftly and confidently if you haven't done step number one. Today, there still is that shooting from the hip and sticking your head in the sand, pretending it's not there. The third step is often the one that's overlooked in the long-term: the idea that a company needs to have enough goodwill stored up in advance of a crisis, so that it can get support from its publics. That's a major push of this book - the idea of insulating a business, almost the way you insulate your home from extreme heat or extreme cold, so that you better weather these episodes. Ongoing PR will help you enhance your relationships with your key publics, if for no other reason than to protect your company's reputation in times of a crisis.
About the Seminar
What: "The Advanced Crisis Management & Media Relations Two-Day Workshop
Dates & Place: Sept. 14 & 15; Sir Francis Drake Hotel, San Francisco
Web site: http://www.prnewsonline.com
To register: 888/707-5814
About the Book
What: "The Crisis Counselor"
Publisher: Barker Business Books
Web site:http://www.crisiscounselor.com
Cost: $24.95
Release Date: January 1998
Caponigro's Calls
Best-managed crisis of late - The best-managed crises are the ones that never appear in the media or are reported once and drift away. I was involved in the largest product recall in the history of the automobile industry in 1995 (involving seat belts in 20 million automobiles), and most would be hard-pressed to remember anything about that.
In terms of a major, corporate disaster reported in the media, the ValuJet plane crash in the Everglades seemed to be managed extremely well - particularly due to the horrific nature of that accident, it seemed the company managed the situation as well or better than could have been expected.
Worst-managed crisis situation - The worst-managed crises are the ones that are reported in the media and seem to have a life of their own, which are most often due to a company causing its own crisis (as opposed to the company being "victimized" by someone else causing the crisis). I don't like to criticize companies when I wasn't involved in the situation to know what various options they had before them.
However, it is difficult to disregard the Exxon Valdez oil spill and its aftermath as among the crisis situations that were mismanaged from the outset and didn't get much better in the aftermath.
Other good crisis management books - "When It Hits the Fan" (Gerald Myers); "When You Are the Headline" (Robert Irvine); "Crisis Management" (Steven Fink); and, "Crisis Response" (Jack Gottschalk).