Three key questions for your comms teams in a crisis
Well, we have had a few months off from writing blogs, but thought it was time to get back on the case, as we have a lot to say. Ironically, given our radio silence, this blog is about communication.
As many of our followers know, we run around 6 - 7 exercises per month, so we see crisis teams from a variety of organisations. One theme that seems to emerge regularly is the difficulty in getting clear messages agreed and issued in the early stages of a crisis. Overcoming this difficulty really comes down to the ability to answer three key questions.
Can we issue an early ‘Holding Statement’?
“Of course we can” I hear you say. But is that statement agreed, signed-off and ready to go? So often we see crisis teams wanting to play around with statements and have the last say. This delays what should be a simple statement (which might be “We are aware of a problem and are looking into it”). To be a true pre-prepared statement it needs to be able to be issued in a heartbeat.
How much investigation are we going to do before we issue a statement?
The temptation is to wait until you have a clear picture of what has happened before saying anything. But in a cyber attack, for example, it might be days, weeks or months before you know the full picture. Your holding statement can only hold for so long. Once you have a good idea of the impact on your customers then you should be telling them (and your own people) what has happened and what the next steps are.
Do you have the mechanism to publish those statements if your main comms channels are down?
If you don’t have access to public-facing applications, including your website and possibly your email system, then you will need a contingency. Plan your contingency now. And test it.
One approach several of our clients have is to set really clear ‘aspirations’ for communicating in a crisis. For example the first aspiration might be “we will issue a holding statement within 15 minutes of detecting a serious problem”. The second aspiration might be “we will issue a substantive stament within one hour of the start of the crisis”. It may not be possible, but such aspirations will keep you honest.