Jamal Kheiry’s Weblog

When something terrible happens to an organization, there are two equally unfortunate responses they tend to have. One is to say nothing to anybody… not the press, not customers, not suppliers, not even employees

A great example of that is a recent situation with Noble Environmental Power. It was rumored recently that Noble was facing financial troubles and would be unable to continue its projects in New York and Vermont. Nobody from the company was easily reachable at their Vermont office, and when he reached a spokesperson at the company’s Connecticut headquarters, the PR guy promised to send a statement and then didn’t.

The second tendency is for the person contacted by the media to say the first thing that comes to mind. A painful example of this approach was at the Mortgage Bankers of America annual meeting in San Francisco recently, where Cheryl Crispen, the organization’s Senior Vice President of Communications, responded to protesters like this: “It was unfortunate that they chose this venue to protest whatever they chose to protest. We believe in free speech, but we believe there is a right time and place for it.”

In one ill-conceived message, Ms. Crispen basically said she doesn’t know about, or care about, the mortgage crisis, and implied that the folks should protest the Mortgage Bankers Association somewhere other than where the Mortgage Bankers Association happened to be holding its annual convention. And maybe they should pick another day, too.

But it’s only natural that the glare of a media spotlight is going to make people freeze up or say the wrong thing, because it’s a terrible situation to be in. I ran crisis communications for a major global energy company for several years, and it made me acutely aware of how uncomfortable it can be to face media and other stakeholders when something serious happens. But there are steps you can take to protect yourself from saying something you don’t mean, or sending the wrong message by saying nothing at all.

The first step is to know what your organization stands for. This might sound like a soft and squishy way to start something as serious as a crisis communications plan, but it’s the foundation of everything you’re going to say later. So if you’re a ski resort, it might be “a safe, fun experience at reasonable cost” when it comes to customers, and it might be, “a place where you are valued for your contributions, and treated as a respected member of our team” when it comes to employees.

And what about suppliers? What about state inspectors and regulators? And the community in which you operate? Your starting point must include what you mean to these different target audiences, because you want to keep these ideas in mind during a crisis — and even have them written down in front of you — to avoid saying something that not only isn’t consistent with who you are as an organization, but makes you look bad at a critical time. For example, if a kitchen fire shuts down one of your restaurants, the first thing you should talk about is your concern for those who were injured, or how grateful you are that nobody was hurt.

You’d be surprised how often that very human response is forgotten by spokespeople or executives during a crisis, because it’s an unnaturally tense situation and requires unnaturally intense preparation.

After pinning down what you stand for to various target audiences, your crisis communications preparation should include a “vulnerabilities inventory.” This is essentially a list of things that could go wrong with your organization and have the potential to interrupt or diminish your ability to conduct business. So if you’re planning crisis communications for a college, a professor getting a speeding ticket on campus would not be on the list, embarrassing though it may be. But the firing of a professor for selling grades or falsifying research results would definitely make the list, as it could negatively impact your image for years.

Once you have your vulnerabilities inventory, you should use them to come up with scenarios. For a power company, for example, your inventory might include two dozen vulnerabilities. When you categorize them, you might find that they fall into three broad categories: customer outages due to infrastructure problems, employee deaths or injuries, and customer outages due to supply problems.

Once you have your categories, you should put together template statements that address each of the categories. The most important function of the templates is to help you remember the information you need to provide, and how you should provide it. So for the outages due to infrastructure problems, a template statement might look like this:

Joe’s Power Company has dispatched repair crews in response to a [describe event] that took place at its [name the facility] at [time of incident]. The incident resulted in the loss of power to approximately [number of homes or businesses]. “Joe’s Power Company is committed to restoring power as quickly as possible to these customers,” said Joe Powers, CEO. “At this time, it is estimated that power will be restored by [name target date or time].” Joe’s Power Company has set up an info line [include number] for customers to call for a recorded message about the latest estimate for power restoration, and its website also includes a section with continuously updated information. Joe’s Power Company is investigating the cause of this incident, and will provide additional information as it becomes available.”

If, as with most organizations, you have a designated spokesperson, it’s important that he or she be the one providing the information so that your messages aren’t mixed. Reporters will try to get an unofficial spokesperson whenever possible, because it can make the story more exciting.

In our power company example, a reporter might talk to a line worker who estimates the power will be back on in 12 hours. But that line worker might not know that it’s going to be more like 24 hours because of other problems he’s unaware of. Then you have mixed messages coming from your company, which makes you look like you don’t know what’s going on. That’s why it’s important that your employees know to refer media questions to the official spokesperson.

Once you have figured out who the official spokesperson will be, you need to make sure that what he or she says is truly the best information available. Even in small organizations, getting clear updates about a crisis situation can be difficult, so lines of communication need to be worked out well in advance. In large organizations, just working out who should provide the information to the spokesperson can be a daunting task, but it can make the difference between looking foolish or looking competent during a tough time.

It’s also worth considering who will be the one with final approval authority. If the spokesperson isn’t the one who can say what information can or cannot be released, then the approver needs to be committed to reviewing anything that’s going to come out of the spokesperson’s mouth.

In terms of how you get your message out, the tacit assumption is that you will be contacted by news organizations that want to get information from you and publish or broadcast it. However, the age of social media provides the opportunity to take some control of your message. Your organization’s website, executive blogs, YouTube, and social or professional networking sites can provide you platforms to get your messaging out without the media filter. But this approach, along with all other crisis communications, requires lots of advance planning for it to work under fire.

And lastly, all your preparations will be for nothing unless you practice your plan over and over, in both announced and unannounced drills. The first few can be painful if you expect great success, so make sure your mindset is focused on learning from mistakes, rather than picture-perfect execution from the get-go. Crisis communications is one of the most difficult types of PR to do, because nobody likes to face up to the uncomfortable possibilities, but a little investment now can save a lot of pain later.