Every corporate communications professional has a personal view of what constitutes a crisis. In truth, the vast majority of their definitions are perfectly acceptable when considering extreme situations such as transportation incidents involving casualties or criminal activity resulting in executives sporting handcuffs.
Such incidents typically trigger activation of a specialized communications and operational response teams as well as the implementation of a (hopefully) crisis management plan and a period of high-pressure, high-speed media relations activity. In other words, they’re pretty hard to miss.
With such scenarios in mind, most assume, like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart on the issue of pornography, “I know it when I see it.” The reality is that it’s not that simple. With epic disasters as your sole guide, you might just miss that crisis artfully disguised as a routine nuisance or low-intensity problem. Equally dangerous, you might ignore or misdiagnose a seemingly trivial issue and end up converting it into your own personal epic.
As a general rule, effectively dealing with tough situations requires the ability to field a symmetrical response. Minor, localized issues require one level of response and those with devastating, corporate-wide impact require another. Critically important to getting it right is the recognition that the severity scale is not confined to just two choices, normal and crisis. There are many degrees of severity requiring varied levels of attention and action.
BEWARE OF THE NAIL
Arbitrarily labeling anything beyond the norm of a “crisis” beggars disaster. It breeds a harmful mentality dictating that every atypical incident must be addressed with full crisis response resources. As the old saying goes, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But not every bad word said about a company is a crisis, nor is every bad story cause to adopt a defensive posture.
While defining the continuum from problem to crisis is in many ways an evolving effort, there are some standard signs to which communicators can point. It is important to understand the ways a problem can become a crisis if left unaddressed or how an overreaction can prove crippling. And finally, there are ongoing steps communicators can take to evaluate the potency of an issue.
RECOGNIZING PROBLEMS FOR WHAT THEY ARE
Every organization hits speed bumps that cause concern among customers, employees or stockholders. But not every hiccup will have a lasting impact on share price, reputation or on the organization’s ability to do business. More often than not, such issues will be inconvenient communications challenges and troubling in the short-term, but evince little or no lasting damage.
Some examples of communications problems include:
• Less-than-flattering media coverage that, while discomforting, has little impact on the business or the perceptions and confidence of its core constituencies;
• A handful of upset customers or shareholders opining via message boards or blogs with minimal social influence; and
• Media leaks concerning executive transitions or product developments impacting little more than the announcement timeline.
While situations such as these can be unpleasant, they typically do not require the full-scale response a capable crisis communications team can muster. Experience shows us that heavy-handed reaction to negative media attention often spurs additional negative coverage. Retractions, corrections, letters-to-the editor and threats often do little more than draw additional attention to a situation and make the company appear defensive. News releases, press conferences and CEO statements can give the impression that the problem is spreading and the corporation is in danger. Regardless of whether or not your CEO or client demands that you “fix it now,” taking your lumps on a particular issue or quietly correcting the record is often the wisest course.
CREATING YOUR OWN CRISES
Problems, in general, become crises for one of two reasons: A simmering issue is either ignored or undetected until it reaches full boil; or an overreaction to an otherwise relatively innocuous issue sparks, rather than mitigates, a full-blown crisis.
HP provides a salient example of how overreaction to a problem can turn into a crisis. In 2006, board-level media leaks mutated into an illicit and illegal “pretexting” spy scandal. In order to stem the leaks, the company launched an internal investigation bent on exposing those responsible. But the investigation went too far, as HP’s sleuths illegally obtained phone records of board directors and journalists.
As you would expect, when that story broke, it was exponentially more damaging than the leaky board was in the first place. A media frenzy ensued. In an e-mail obtained by The American Lawyer (and eventually turned over to the U.S. Congress), former HP board member Tom Perkins said he resigned from the board because he thought “the secret spying (which involved a roomful of electronic gear) was a huge overreaction.” The end result was a major management shakeup at HP.
THE EVALUATION TEST
Of course, it’s easier to discern a problem from a crisis postmortem. While PR executives don’t need oracle-like prescience, they do need a process by which they can spot a latent problem before it becomes the reason they don’t sleep for days.
The following are steps communications professionals should take regularly to maintain a watchful eye on their organization’s reputation:
• Talk to organizational leaders to see if the issue at hand is tied to a major corporate initiative or clients. This includes heads of varying business functions, C-suite executives and general counsel. If they are concerned, maybe you should be, too.
• Ask colleagues across all units and functions what they are hearing from clients, customers or other stakeholders about a given issue.
• Determine if the issue has come up before in your organization, and if it has, what the result was, how it was handled and so on.
• Estimate how long the issue will likely persist. If it’s a day or two, it’s more likely a problem. If it’s longer, you might have a crisis. This will depend on the players involved and how many people or functions at the organization are in the mix.
• Analyze the media. Figure out what media narratives will surround the issue. See how the media characterizes the players in previous similar circumstances: Who were the good guys and bad guys?
To be a credible, trusted counselor to whomever you support, it will be necessary to approach issues with a critical eye—are they problems or crises? A sober evaluation is needed before providing a clear recommendation on strategy and tactics. PRN
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This article, written by Matthew Rose, chief client officer at Emanate PR, was excerpted from the PR News ’ Crisis Management Guidebook, Vol. 3. The book is available at www.prnewsonline.com/store/.