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Continuing our three part series on Communication – Episode #34 of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast is focused on what happens after the “BOOM!”… or in other words, we’re going to focus on crisis communications.
In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk candidly about crisis communications. Topics discussed include crisis communications planning, holding statements, developing key messages, managing social media, and more!
Episode Transcript
| Jen Otremba: | Hi, we’re back. Managing Uncertainty podcast. Today, this is actually part two of the communication series we talked about last week. Today we are going to talk a little bit about crisis communication. What happens in a crisis, and why do you need to communicate, and for how long, and for when and to who, and all of that. Crisis communication. Let’s talk about that.
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| Bryan Strawser: | When we’re talking about crisis communication, we’re really talking about kind of the left and right of the boom. As we’ve said before, the boom is the bad thing. To the left boom which is before the boom, you’re thinking about how do you prepare for the boom. Then the boom happens and everything after that is right of boom. You’re reacting. You’re responding. And then you’re into short and long-term recovery. Communication differs as you kind of move throughout this.
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| Jen Otremba: | I think let’s start with the before the boom. The planning process.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Wait, you want to plan?
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| Jen Otremba: | Yes.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Oh my gosh.
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| Jen Otremba: | Yes. You know, I do like to plan.
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| Bryan Strawser: | I think there are planners here. One of the biggest challenges we see when we talk about crisis communications with clients and with others is that I can’t count high enough to count the number of times that we’ve sat down with a corporate communications team or a PR and social media team, and said, “Tell us about your crisis communications planning.” And they say, “We don’t plan for crises because every situation is different, and you can’t build messaging for that.
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| Jen Otremba: | While I’ll agree that every situation is different, and you should understand that going in. There’s the need to be a little bit nimble. You still need to have a plan. Some kind of templates or something created beforehand, because let me tell you when the boom happens-
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| Bryan Strawser: | There is no time to figure this out.
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| Jen Otremba: | And as you’re editing through it, it is so easy to make a mistake during the boom. Having those holding statements can definitely set you up for success when that happens.
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| Bryan Strawser: | What we’re talking about here is that we believe you should take the handful situations that you think you [inaudible 00:02:22] highest risk for is a place to start. Just like we encourage folks to build specific plans to deal with those situations, and what we would also encourage you to build communications plans for those particular situations. You can leave large gaping blanks in those plans in the messaging on how you’re going to fill in details as you learn them in the event because it is true the events are going to be different.
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| But, the holding statement for an active shooter that you’re going to use on the initial press appearance is not any different today than it’s going to be three days from now when you have the event. It’s probably going to be word for word exactly the same.
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| Jen Otremba: | Right. Exactly. I think it’s important to know that during the boom, you’re not going to have all the information right away. That holding statement like you said is not going to change much depending on what day it happens because you’re not going to have all the information. It’s going to be fairly simple.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Correct. We can talk about what a specific holding statement looks like in a minute, but I think part of what you have to plan for it helps you in the moment of the boom is gosh there’s probably 10, 12, 15 things that I need to know about an active shooter’s situation. And so what I’m going to do in my planning phase is I’m going to write these questions down, so that when it happens I can open up my plan and go, “Okay, so we have an active shooter. There’s 10 things I need to know. Here’s what they are.”
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| And those questions might be what is it? What specifically has happened? Who is or was a suspect? Are people hurt? Have people been killed? Are the police on site? Which police agency is it? Do we know who their public information officer is? And you kind of see how the questions would build from there in terms of understanding what it is that we need to do.
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| Jen Otremba: | I think Bryan you can speak to this even when you have an event that happens, you’re going to have people calling you looking for information. You need to be prepared to respond if that’s to media or whomever. Whatever that looks like. You need to be prepared to either give them a holding statement. Provide them directions as to who to actually call because you’re probably not the right person they should be talking to. All of those things are really important to plan through, so that it’s not a shock when it happens.
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| Bryan Strawser: | When we’re talking about a holding statement what we’re talking about is a brief statement that it kind of does a couple of things. It allows them to know that you are indeed aware and responding to the incident. It allows you to get at least a little bit of messaging out as a part of this. It is better than a no comment because no comment always comes across as callous or that you’re hiding something. Like in an active shooter situation since this is what we’ve started talking about. An appropriate holding statement might be, “Right now our focus is on our team.” And you should include customers or others that might be impacted based on your business.
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| But, let’s assume that this is a manufacturing plant. “Right now our focus is on our team while law enforcement does our job. We do not have any additional information at this time. We will update you when we do.” That’s enough for an initial holding statement. Remember that you might be contacted by the press before you even know that this is going on. In which case I will encourage you to look at your internal communications processes, but that’s a different story for a different episode.
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| Jen Otremba: | Yes. This other thing to keep in consideration in your planning process also is to whom you’re going to communicate to. We just briefly talked about the media, but I think it’s important to understand you may need to communicate to your employees, your leadership, your executives, your shareholders, all of the people that we sort of talked about in the last podcast episode. And how that’s going to change from different group to different group.
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| Bryan Strawser: | The audience piece is going to be very important here, just as it is when we talk about communication awareness in the last episode. Understanding the different audiences that you will need to communicate with in the middle of a crisis will help you understand how to do it right. For example, you’re going to say things to the media and these things will be very important. They will be criticized. They will be examined. But, if you say them to the public through the media before you have said them to your employees, your board, your executives. You’re asking for a massive amount of trouble.
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| Jen Otremba: | Yeah. A world of hurt.
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| Bryan Strawser: | A world of hurt. Maybe it’s a good way to put it. But, you really have to think through what the sequence is going to look like which again is why we encourage companies to plan doing these things. And have thought through how you’re going to approach it even if you don’t know what the message is going to be for the particular situation. You’ve planned through how you’re going to do that.
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| Jen Otremba: | Right. We talked about an active shooter because I think that’s probably one of the more extreme examples of things that can happen. But, this can be as simple as you have one of your headquarters buildings is flooding and you need to provide some kind of communication to either your employees, your leadership and to the media as to what’s going on. It’s not necessarily always going to be as extreme as an active shooter situation, but it’s very important to have these planned out.
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| Bryan Strawser: | The other challenge to think through in your planning process, and then I think we can talk about the boom, is just how will your communications be vetted and approved before they go out. This is not a situation where you can wait 45 minutes to an hour for somebody to review and vet a message in a fast breaking situation. You need a way to either have pre-approval or to quickly gain approval of the people that need to approve such things in your company based on your processes and culture, so that you can move forward with mitigating the reputation damage to your organization. Speed is of the essence.
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| Jen Otremba: | You do not have time to wait around to be vetted by six different people before it sends, which is why having those previous holding statements can definitely help you in that aspect.
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| Bryan Strawser: | It will buy you some time. A lot of time.
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| Jen Otremba: | Yes. Also, I would recommend having someone edit before you send it out, so that it improves the process. Even though you have a holding statement that’s ready to go, it’s still a good idea to have at least one other person to look at something before you send it out to masses.
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| Bryan Strawser: | So, now you’re in the boom.
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| Jen Otremba: | Before we should talk about the boom. Real quick, let’s talk a little bit about the tools though.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Oh, good point.
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| Jen Otremba: | As we go through this we can review those tools as well. As far as tools for communicating. We talked a little bit about getting a phone call from the media, but how are you communicating to your employees? Are you an email culture? Do you have tools such as Everbridge or things like that where you can get-
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| Bryan Strawser: | [inaudible 00:08:52], some type of mass notifications.
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| Jen Otremba: | Having information to be able to send out, or is your plan to bring everyone together, for instance, with leadership or executives maybe having them in a conference call to give them that information. We’re not going to give them any information until we bring them together and, we’re going to have a call and talk about it. Kind of understanding what tools that you have available to you as you’re in the planning process is very important. Now, the bang.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Now, we’re at the bang. The boom. The bang.
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| Jen Otremba: | The boom.
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| Bryan Strawser: | The things happened. We’re going to stick with the active shooter example I think since we kind of began with that.
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| Jen Otremba: | Sounds good.
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| Bryan Strawser: | But, from a communications standpoint, suddenly you have a number of audiences that you need to communicate to. You have people that might still be executing run, hide, fight or whatever your strategy is. We think of these are your impacted employers. You have your non-impacted employers, which is really everyone else at the organization that isn’t involved in this. But trust me no matter how far away they are, and even if they’ve never met anyone at the location where this is happening, they’re going to care. They’re going to care. You have to think about them as a distinct audience that requires communication. There is your employee base for at large, which is really kind of everybody.
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| There are leaders of both impacted and non-impacted locations. There’s your senior executives. There’s the board if you have a board. And then there’s this where we loosely say is this outside group of influencers and people who both support you, but also have a stake in the game. They have skin in the game with you like institutional investors and others. All of those are different audiences that will need to be communicated with. None of which involve just communicating to the public, which you also will need to do. Very complicated.
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| Jen Otremba: | It can be. Yes. Which then we always go back to the planning process, and if you have a plan for this it makes it a lot less complicated. But, understanding the level of detail of who’s getting what information, and how you’re going to get that information across. You may have a notification tool for instance. We mentioned a few earlier. That may be your plan to get it out to all employees. You may set conference calls to have a greater level of detail that you’re going to have to get to certain parties, executives, top leaders. You may have to bring together your crisis team, and have a whole separate level of detail provided to the crisis team.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Correct.
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| Jen Otremba: | You might want to think though those kinds of things in your planning process. But, when it happens, this is all going to happen potentially very, very quickly.
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| Bryan Strawser: | This is going to move in a blink of an eye.
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| Jen Otremba: | It is.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Internal social media channels are also something to consider. If you use Yammer, or the new Facebook at work.
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| Jen Otremba: | Slack
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| Bryan Strawser: | Slack. Maybe your internet has such a thing built in. Maybe you’ve got the social sites and things like that. Whatever it is that you have, that needs to be one of the channels in which you think about communicating because people will turn to that. And if you’re not there, it’s not factored in your communication, definitely you’re going to have a hubbub of activity there.
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| Jen Otremba: | Which is actually a good point because if your plan is to communicate through your internet, but you have all off this people that are around hiding, fighting, and they’re not on the internet. Do you have a back up plan for how you’re communicating to people knowing that they may not be on their computers looking at this right now.
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| Bryan Strawser: | In addition to this there’s some tactical things to do even before you get into the statement mode, but we recommend in a big situation like an active shooter that you send a senior executive who has the gravitas and authority to speak for the leadership to the scene along with appropriate support. That’s probably some [inaudible 00:12:38] folks and perhaps the security expert that can run interference with law enforcement and others that are at the scene. But, there’s no substitute for a senior leader or the local senior leader to be able to interact with the media at the right point in time, which might be now that you’re going to want to have that kind of communication going on.
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| Jen Otremba: | It’s going to be important that you’re able to maintain contact with that leader that you’re sending out there, so that you can provide them timely updates on what’s going on. If your crisis team is able to provide them a timely update via phone, radio, or however that looks like. Just make sure to think through that, so you’re not sending them off and then they don’t have the updated information.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Right. It’s also important that you delegate to someone to co-locate themselves with the PIO from law enforcement since we’re sticking with the active shooter discussion here. That can be a communications person. It can be the spokesperson that you’ve sent there, a senior executive from the company. But, those messages need to be synchronized. If it looks like you’re not on the same page as the police, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble. You will want to coordinate on messaging prior to talking to the press, so that you’re not revealing things that they don’t want revealed. And so that you’re clear on any hand offs or references that you’re going to make during the course of the discussion.
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| But, here’s a decent statement for active shooter. Can we think about this being at the scene. It’s still ongoing, and so you can share some information. “We’re concerned about our team, and we’re doing everything that we can to ensure their safety and well-being. We can confirm that a 911 call was received from our office building, and those on the premises have been instructed to run, hide or fight as per the training that we’ve provided to them. Law enforcement is currently in the building and we’re working closely with them to learn more information and take appropriate action. As this is part of an ongoing criminal investigation, I will have to defer all questions to law enforcement. We will share more information as soon as we can.”
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| You’re expressing the company’s desires to make sure that you’re concerned and you want to know. You’re doing everything you can to make sure people are safe. You’re confirming some information, so you’re giving a story here. What you’re doing and sharing is factual. We’re not speculating. We’re not sharing any names or deaths that might have occurred. Let the police deal with that.
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| You make it clear that this is an ongoing situation, and that you’re not going to answer questions. You’re going to defer to the police. And if you can do this with law enforcement standing by your side, and you can make the first statement and then they can move on and kind of carry the story it’s even better. It re-focuses the questions on them. You do need to be prepared for Q&A, but you did tell them the questions should be directed to law enforcement. In this particular appearance you can just re-direct them back to that.
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| Jen Otremba: | As you’re thinking through the in the moment communication. You have effectively communicated to the media with your holding statement with your leadership, and your crisis teams and your general employee population. Once you’re in this situation and you have gotten a little bit more information. You provide updates as you go and now it’s done. Law enforcement has done their part, and the situation is done and it’s mass chaos, right? Hopefully not. Hopefully because you have prepared for communicating before, during and after. Now, we’re looking at what happens after this is all done. What do you do? Who do you talk to?
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| Bryan Strawser: | We’re sticking with the active shooter communication. Again, I think your audiences come into play. In my mind your most important audiences are going to be what you say to the public. What you say to impacted teams. What you say to teams that were not impacted. And probably the broader recap communication that you tell executives across the organization. Your senior leaders across the organization. I think the hardest conversation you’re going to have is if you’ve had fatalities and you have to communicate to the team.
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| Law enforcement will probably handle communication to the family, but maybe not. We just supported a client a few weeks ago that had an industrial accident fatality and the company made the notification in that particular case. These are things that I think you will have to talk about how do you do this in your organization. We would encourage you if you’ve had impact. If you’ve had people killed or hurt in this kind of a violent incident. The best way to communicate is to get the team together and have their leader or somebody from their leadership team communicate this. It’s an extraordinary difficult conversation. Jen and I have both been there when this has happened, and I’ve done this more than once. But, it should come from the team. It should come from that team’s leader. That’s who they trust. That’s who they want to hear this from. It should not come from some communication leader.
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| Jen Otremba: | I think the fact it comes at all is extremely important. I think instance like that happen and then now what, nobody has heard any kind of recap and there’s nothing more infuriating than not understanding what has happened. What happens where we’re at? Who is infected? Who was affected? Not infected.
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| Bryan Strawser: | We’ll give you a statement to use in this situation as an example, but again you need to make this fit your company’s culture. One example would be, “Today we’ve experienced a terrible tragedy that we cannot begin to understand yet. We’re all grieving deeply for our fellow employee who was a victim of this unthinkable act of violence from this morning. As we all start to process and cope with the experience, I want you to know that we will have grief counselors on site by noon today and through tomorrow for support if needed.
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| I want to acknowledge that this is going to impact everyone a little differently, and I encourage you to take the time that you need to grieve and heal in your own way. More information will be available from HR later today about how we’re going to handle this in the days and weeks ahead. But, for today I welcome you to go home or you can stay here and speak with the grief counselors, or you can sit in the café with your fellow co-workers or go off site as a group if you wish to do that. You will be paid for the entire working day.
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| I’m grateful every day to have all of you on my team and have the opportunity for us to work together, and today I’m especially thankful that all of you are safe and knowing that we will find a way to get through this together.” Again, this needs to be done in the leader’s own words, but it’s important to provide them with some things they can use as a starting point. Most folks would really struggle I think to write something like this without some idea about what it should look like. But, this is just one example of that.
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| Jen Otremba: | And then I think thinking through what this looks like in the long-term and how we’re communicating with people in the long-term. Not just during the after actions sort of review, but also just in general as you’re working through what happened and understanding the details. I think it’s important to communicate that as well.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Yeah. In the coming days I think those after action discussions will really be important certainly in an active shooter situation. For a second I want to know why this happened. There may not ever be an answer to that, I mean we’ve done group counseling sessions in the past. We have had law enforcement come in and talk. Police chiefs, the lead investigator. I mean, sometimes folks just need to hear, “But we don’t know why this happened, but this is what we do know.” At least let them understand what we know and don’t.
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| Sometimes the police are good at explaining that in a way that folks will try and understand. The may have a easier time to understand rather. But, also I think in these situations folks are going to want to know what you’re going to do to protect them. It’s not a bad idea to have, we talked about this before, but have law enforcement or security present for a while to help folks feel okay. But, the communication of that after action process is going to be important. It’s not a bad idea to talk with people who were there, who were witnesses or heard what was going on, and be able to kind of incorporate that into your communications plan.
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| Jen Otremba: | Yeah. As we talk about the after action review process. This process may go on for quite a while, but I think what’s really important or at least in our experience, we’ve seen that it’s important that the population of your organization understands that you are reviewing what you did good, bad in this whole situation and what you’re going to do about it. Your employees may not be happy with how you managed through it, so, therefore it would be behoove of you to give them the opportunity to understand what you did, why you did it, and what you’re doing to make it better in the future.
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| Bryan Strawser: | So to recap kind of that crisis communication part of our series here in part two. Have a plan, draft some statements, leave holes to fill in as you learn the circumstances. Deploy people to the scene where appropriate. Make sure your execs are trained to be able to deal with those situations. Have holding statements available to use, and then craft your statements using your planning templates and your communication vehicles and your interaction with media in order to help get you through this situation. And don’t forget to communicate during the recovery about what you’ve learned and what the company is going to do about it. Best of luck.
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