[Editor’s Note: In this dialogue we look at the initial moments of a crisis, when communicators and companies decide, ‘Are we in a crisis? Should we react? When? How?’ Our dialoguers are TV-reporters-turned-crisis-pros Scott Sayres, Honeywell’s director, global corporate communications, crisis, reputation and issues management, and T.J. Winick, SVP, Solomon, McCown & Cence. A shorter version of their dialogue will run in the June edition of Crisis Insider.]
Crisis Insider: It seems with the speed of digital news, it’s become harder for communicators to handle crises, especially when it comes to the decision whether or not to react. Is it an issue for you?
Scott Sayres: It’s a concern. We want to grasp and be in front of a crisis as quickly as possible. But speed kills. If you’re not factual, not sure what’s going on…then you’re likely to confuse the situation and that’s desperate. So, there’s a balance that has to be struck. You want to move as quickly as possible but you also need the facts so you can craft a response that addresses stakeholder needs and inquiries and you’re putting the right message out.
CI: Do you feel under pressure that every second you don’t have a response out there it could be a problem? If so, is there more pressure now than, say, 10 years ago?
Sayres: I think social media has exacerbated this a little. Social media is much more prevalent than it was 10 years ago, when T.J. and I were in the media. Social media forces you to have hot takes on a lot of things you have to be aware of and be ready to react. That’s the biggest change. And yes, there’s a lot of pressure there. But it doesn’t change your responsibility for dealing with crisis correctly.
CI: T.J., your thoughts on speed and pressure?
T.J. Winick: I think Scott is right on when he says ‘Speed kills.’ You have to use a combination of instincts, skills and facts on the ground.
CI: OK, so the first question you ask when something comes in is, ‘Is it a crisis?’
Winick: Yes. Or ‘Is it an issue?’ Or ‘Is it simmering and could [later] escalate into a full-blown crisis?’ Often, in the echo chamber of an organization it sometimes can be hard to differentiate. Which is why, in our opinion, it’s helpful to have an objective outside third-party [advising you].
And while transparency is one of our guiding principles, another factor is, ‘Will we be notifying hundreds of perhaps thousands of individuals about an incident they otherwise would not know about or maybe not even care about?’ Every organization has to ask itself if it’s escalating crisis with their response. Like the Hippocratic oath, in crisis response our first duty is ‘Do No Harm.’
So that’s why when building crisis plans we try to tier crises according to severity. The top tier crises are the ones that require immediate response. And obviously, the criteria are what you’d expect: matters of life and death, public safety, the likelihood of press to report on the issue or event. So, again, determining the types of crises that demand immediate response and then acting accordingly. But taking a pause, as Scott said, before you actually implement the strategy.
Sayres: T.J.’s right in that you have to determine whether an incident is a crisis. And what the scope of it is. Crises don’t happen in a vacuum. A true professional is preparing for these long before they happen. And understanding what your procedure is going to be. So, what approvals do I need to get? Who do I need to bring in to address this? Is it HR? Is it people? Is it health and safety? Who are the team members I need to connect with to make sure I’m getting information…?
One thing that’s true with my work…Honeywell has 103,000 employees with five different businesses on six continents. So, employees are always my number one concern and my top priority, not only for their safety, but to make sure that they’re getting the information they need. And then there’s a whole slew of stakeholders that follow, of which media may be one.
But there are also government regulators, local officials, shareholders, suppliers, customers. All those stakeholders have to be considered and potentially addressed. That’s where the preparation that T.J. mentioned comes in, preparing for what that’s going to be.
CI: Let’s get to that point. Assume someone calls in from one of the 5 businesses and says, ‘We have a problem here.’ What do you do? Do you have a question form to download that helps you determine whether or not this call is a crisis and whether or not and how to react?
Sayres: This is where our backgrounds as reporters comes into play. We’re very used to asking ‘who, what, where, when and why’ questions. This is exactly what you need to start differentiating a crisis from an incident. You usually have people calling in who are regurgitating a lot of information at one time because they’re immersed in it. They’re not separating the important details from the extraneous ones.
So, you have to use your skill…to get to the core of the issue and ask the pertinent questions: ‘What happened? Who’s suspected? What’s the current situation? What’s our response or resolution to it?’
And then you say, ‘OK, what do I need to do now? Who are the key people I need to contact? Is there a process for this?’
At Honeywell we have a Business Resilience Committee. There’s one per business and one corporate wide, which may or may not need to be activated, depending on the severity of the incident. Do those folks need to be informed and activated? A whole bunch of things would happen [if they are activated], so, [for example], support for the local site. Government affairs would be activated.
Honeywell has a Crisis Response/Issues Management Communication Team, which I head. So, my team is trained to do the same thing [ask the questions]…and they know they need to start formulating what our key messages are going to be and what are your talking points? And that gets me to the last point, which is consistency.
After you’ve crafted your messages and everyone–from Legal to HR–has weighed in and approved it, your message needs to be consistent. You can’t tell employees one thing and other stakeholders something else. Your message needs to be so concise and so tight that it can be used for [any group]. The worst thing you can do in a crisis is create confusion or contradictions.
CI: And presumably all this is contained in a document that someone can use during a crisis in case you’re not on site to lead?
Sayres: Yes, we have a crisis communication plan about the different steps and scenarios. It also includes foundational steps and messages they might help. Of course, that doesn’t mean [the plan] is one size fits all. It’s a start and helps you tailor a message [to your needs]. We go through tabletop exercises every year with all the different businesses and try to hone those skills.
CI: T.J., you probably get calls before, during and after a crisis has struck.
Winick: Yes, we get called all along the crisis spectrum, from forward-thinking companies that say, ‘We need to build a plan’…to companies that say, ‘We have a simmering issue that we need to prepare some statements for’ all the way up to ‘I’ve got a reporter on my doorstep. What do I do?’
CI: At the moment the call arrives your first job is?
Winick: Cutting through the clutter…getting to the salient facts. And, as Scott said, determining who needs to know what, when. It’s the foundation of being a good crisis communicator…it’s being and ‘English to English’ translator. Taking a whole lot of information and making it digestible, whether that’s for a TV audience, as we used to do, or a range of stakeholder groups, as we do now.
CI: Scott, is the decision to say, ‘Yes, we have a crisis’ based on checking boxes in your crisis plan–if 5 boxes are checked, it’s a crisis, if only 2 are checked, it’s a situation–or is it a mix of that plan plus your instinct, intuition and experience?
Sayres: It’s an amalgamation of the two. You have to have a [written] plan and preparation, but [deciding if you’re in a crisis] is also very much dependent on your experiences and how well you’ve dealt with situations in the past. So, it’s part art and part science.
CI: T.J., what are the biggest hurdles you find when you walk into the room, virtually or in person?
Winick: Often it can be getting the facts on the ground. We do a lot of work with construction firms. So, in the case of a job site accident, often facts are relayed from a superintendent back to headquarters. There might be just one eye witness. Getting to that person isn’t always easy.
Another hurdle is when multiple parties are involved, say insurance companies and outside law firms, who have to approve statements. And they’re not as experienced in crisis response as the core crisis team. So, sometimes they’ll take all day to produce a statement and we’re trying to produce something within the first 60 minutes.
People have to be aligned, certainly on messaging, and there has to be consistency, as Scott said. You also have to be aligned on what the goal is and the timeline.
CI: Scott, what hurdles do you see to crisis response? Is COVID-19, where your team isn’t together in the office, an issue?
Sayres: No, on COVID...crises don’t happen 9 to 5. So, a lot of times crises occur on the weekend or at 2am. So, you’re [handling it] on the phone anyway. COVID is just something else you need to consider.
T.J.’s right. Having a lot of people in the room [is a hurdle]…everyone wants to have their say.
Another issue is regulation. When I was with an agency, we worked with airlines. And the NTSB had regulations about what we could say [during a crisis]…sometimes you have local, state and federal regulations. All that has to be [considered] when you’re deciding if and how to respond.
There’s another thing. Let’s say your company has a fire in one of its buildings. The first information comes from the fire chief, not your company. That’s why businesses often defer to the fire chief [or other local authorities] because that’s the best source of information.
Winick: And in our case, working with construction firms, what can hold up a response is when our client, the construction firm, has a client, such as a developer. So, in a situation at a construction site, before our client speaks they have to clear it with the developer of the property. Sometimes the developer wants to respond first. In that case trying to get everyone on the same page can be a factor in issuing a quick response.
CI: Other issues, T.J.?
Winick: There’s an issue in that you want to remain calm, but also have a sense of urgency because you know what’s around the corner. There are so many organizations that are only used to pushing out good news. They don’t know the rules of engagement for crisis communication. So, some people know about the urgency and sometimes they don’t.
Another thing we haven’t touched on is that we live in an age of mis and disinformation…so, speed is incredibly important to correct the record even if it’s a relatively small number of posts.
Sayres: There’s a point I want to bring up and that’s the challenge of bringing up and training a new generation of crisis communicators. It’s not something they teach at college much. That’s why it’s hard to find good crisis communicators. It’s not a sexy profession. It’s a challenge, and we have to get more people involved and trained so they can understand the proper questions to ask and how to handle crisis.