Malcolm Gladwell’s heralded 2008 book, Outliers, explains that in almost every major airline accident at least seven different precursors or signals are sent, completely ignored, or considered and dismissed prior to the catastrophe actually taking place.
On the surface however, most crises are declared to be a “surprise” that catches us completely off guard whether or not we’ve seen and ignored or misinterpreted the signals.
That “surprise” then generates a certain amount of panic or at a minimum, anxiety, that upsets our daily business routines and forces us to refocus our priorities and assume roles we are not always accustomed to performing. This panic goes beyond the company itself and permeates those stakeholders who are concerned about how they may be impacted by your problem: rank and file employees, near neighbors, customers, investors, vendors and government agencies and others.
This panic phase results in a rapid turn of events that can often resemble chaos where many things such as people’s reactions, environmental impacts, impacts on health and safety, traffic and routine operations seem to be out of our control. This chaos is only exacerbated by poor planning and poor training to manage situations that are unforeseen.
Inherent in these early phases is a lack of clear information and the inability to process or share important information in a timely manner. Still, this poor flow of internal information does nothing to stem media (and the stakeholder) demand to know four critical things: 1)what happened, 2) why, 3) how does it impact me, and 4) what are you doing about it?
The next logical phase is often the initial scrutiny and involvement of public and governmental agencies which are assuming their own roles as protectors of the public’s interests. Good crisis planning will take into account the need to work with and communicate with these agencies so that they can be allies and not adversaries in your response.
Phase 6 involves the real impacts of the crisis on your stakeholders rather than the feared impacts of phase two. These can include impacts on health, displacement from homes and places of business, safety, environmental pollution, loss of business continuity and more.
Phase 7 typically takes the form of intense media scrutiny and a thorough public examination of all your company’s past transgressions: other incidents, fines and penalties, past complaints from near neighbors or governmental agencies or environmental groups. During this phase you may expect the rehash of these past incidents and allegations to begin to color how media covers your current crisis.
Unless dealt with head-on, this intense scrutiny can have a debilitating effect on employee morale and customer loyalty, forcing those persons managing the crisis into a siege mentality that puts you in a weak, defensive posture.
Phase 8 involves aggressive damage control and the process of putting the crisis into a proper perspective (something the media often fails to do). Reaching out to key stakeholders and confronting misconceptions and misrepresentations head-on is central to turning the corner and moving your crisis from page 1 to page none.
Finally, phase 9 takes the form of a self-analysis: What went wrong and why? What signals were sent and ignored or misinterpreted? How can we improve our crisis training, planning and readiness? How deep is the reputational damage? And how can we begin the process of repairing our reputation and relationships with key stakeholders and the public?
This final phase may be among the most important of all since reputations are really built on performance and not just PR. Really learning your lessons and looking at the crisis from both the inside out and the outside in (from both your stakeholders’ points of view as well as your own) is key to making sure you’re better prepared and that the element of surprise (phase 1) result in a cascade of other phases which can cripple your operations and damage your business and professional reputations.
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