One of the most dangerous threats a business might face is an unexpected crisis. Whether it’s a notorious PR train wreck, a safety concern or a data breach, negative publicity can destroy a reputation, erode brand trust and threaten the life of a company. Mitigating the impact of a crisis is hardly damage control – it’s about planning ahead to identify possible trouble, preparing a comprehensive game plan and being ready to lead when the chips are down.
A proactive approach to crisis management starts with anticipation. By conducting a risk assessment to identify current and potential vulnerabilities and capabilities, a business can set up and communicate a contingency plan to respond to everything from product recall to data breach to hurricane to social media blunder. The more threatened that you foresee yourself to be, the greater your incentive to prepare.
Because the crisis, once it happens, needs to be met with speed and decisiveness. What is said or done in the first few hours can literally be a matter of life and death. The business should make sure it initiates a crisis management team of stakeholders from across the department before the crisis. Make sure they have a communications plan and they have the authority to act quickly. Assess as much information as you can to understand exactly what has happened to you.
Openness and candour play important parts in good crisis responses. Firms should not remain silent or provide incorrect information. They should be transparent about what is going on, issue an apology if warranted – and update frequently when necessary in the course of the progress of the crisis.
Rebuilding reputational damage is rarely straightforward or easy. Companies often have to redesign products to prevent further customer injuries, pay claims, provide refunds, verify proper repair work, and monitor public reaction.
Finally, it is important to learn from the crisis, other than the immediate effort to solve it: a post-crisis review is helpful to better prepare for a future occurrence. But also, you can read what was done badly, or well.
Cautious crisis management that anticipates and invests in resilience, builds responses prior to a crisis impacting a brand, and demonstrates that leadership during adversity can be far more effective than the ad hoc approach we see today.
In the end, crisis management is a skill to be constantly honed and improved, and every short-term test that serves as a projection of a company’s future resilience is worth undergoing. With sufficient investment in training, contingency planning and culture change, any company that gets ‘lectured to’, ‘mentioned’ or ‘dissed’ can be restored to even better form than before.
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