The choice is yours!
If you Google images for crisis communications, often you’ll see images associated with terror, frustration, and impending doom. And we agree fully because if a crisis does come your way and you are not prepared to communicate well, you will feel all of those feelings and more.
“In a crisis, don’t hide behind anything or anybody. They’re going to find you anyway.” - Bear Bryant, former Alabama football coach.
That’s a scary, foreboding quote, but it’s honestly true. If people sense something is up and you become evasive, the tendency will be to dig and dig until the truth is uncovered. This is where a crisis communication strategy can be so effective to help you as a leader know what to do while it feels like the world is caving in.
Our team is currently leading the development of a crisis communications strategy for an organization. A crisis communication strategy is quite simply an internal document which outlines communication guiding principles, protocols, and a series of steps to take in a crisis and what responses should or could be.
Engage First
To build this strategy, first we engaged and involved the staff to understand what kind of crisis scenarios the organization could potentially encounter. Your front-line team is an incredible ally to help identify potential risks and threats, so include them! We also engaged with the Board to find out additional details and thoughts from their governance perspective.
This engagement exercise alone to better understand risks and potential crises helped organizations discover potential gaps in their policies and processes they will be looking at to modify and make stronger. We know they’ll be thankful in the event of a crisis where they can rest assured they have strong policies and systems to count on to ensure things were done to the best of everyone’s ability.
Be Strategic and Keep it Simple
When formulating a crisis communication strategy, there are three key goals from our perspective it should achieve:
1. Everyone knows their role.
2. Communications channels are clearly defined to reach internal and external audiences.
3. Messaging is clear and consistent across all platforms.
A proactive plan can instill confidence when a crisis arises. We speak from experience working with organizations who didn’t have a strategy where we had to build and implement one all while being inundated with media requests, having staff ask questions, and responding reactively instead of proactively. We have also worked with organizations who did have a strategy, one less thing to think about while trying to communicate well! The levels of stress from one unprepared organization to a prepared organization were palpable.
Ultimately, it’s your choice. Plan now, or plan later, but in the words of Bear Bryant, they’re going to find you anyway!
Reach out and let’s talk about what this could look like for your organization.
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