Crisis Communications

If you’re in a crisis now — scroll down for some guidance or ask for help.

Communications will not solve your crisis — but can help you get past it and back to work.

Every leader comes face-to-face with a crisis — an unexpected situation that puts your organization at stake. When — not if — you do, the communications choices you make will have an outsized impact on how the crisis impacts the organization.

Crisis communications are all about navigating limited choices in less-than-ideal circumstances:

  • You need to answer questions but you usually can’t say much

  • You want to be reassuring but you know that you don’t have all the information yet

  • You need to be focused on solutions but if you stop communicating people assume the worst

If you choose to handle it inhouse, scroll down for some tips. If you choose to work with an external thought partner, reach out.

FAQ

  • If a current situation could put your organization at stake, you are in a crisis. A crisis requires an extraordinary response. If you are in a crisis now, take a look at these tips or ask for help.

  • Click here for recommendations or ask for help.

  • Having support from someone who is not involved is always a good idea; communications support can range from hiring a crisis communications agency to simply having a thought partner sit in.

    Ultimately — YOU are the expert. You know your customers better than anyone else. If you do want outside support, ask for help here.

  • It comes down to relationships: you need to work with someone you can be completely honest with and can hear criticism from. Often, existing relationships with employees can make that difficult during the crisis — or difficult to move past afterwards. Crisis communications is really about managing a series of choices — so the best person to work with is someone you can trust to be completely honest with you as you navigate those choices.

If you are in a crisis now…

STOP

Great! Now do this.

Turn off your phone.
For the rest of the day, you’ll communicate using your computer (messaging platforms, video meetings).
You will not pick up any phonecalls.

Clear your day.
This will be the focus of the rest of the day (or until you are blocked).
Delegate the rescheduling to someone else, if possible.

Eat and drink something.‍ ‍
You’re going to need to think clearly and make decisions, and you won’t notice that you forgot to eat, and you won’t notice how that affects your decisions (it does).

Don’t try to do it alone.
You need a thought partner who is not involved: ask for help or bring in someone you already know.

There is no rule book for crisis communications — every situation is different.
But, there is a process to help you navigate the choices before you.

1. Gather your team.

2. Situation analysis.

3. What’s the worst that can happen?

4. Options

5. Tell the truth. Say sorry.

Assemble the stakeholders. Refer them to the first three instructions.

Notify anyone who might need to be responsive at short notice — this list will always include your lawyer. Notify your PR and customer support teams that you are beginning a situation analysis and you will notify them as soon as you have information to share.

This is going to be the hardest part, hands down.

Don’t rush. Be meticulous and question everything. Don’t compile a report of “what happened” because that framing will force assumptions; instead, list “What we know” and “What we don’t know”. An assumption will be your biggest mistake, and knowing what you don’t know is your most valuable defense.

Every crisis response begins with a panicked response to the worst case scenario — but in most cases that scenario doesn’t play out, or isn’t even possible.

Start with the worst case scenario and find its failure points. The sooner you fail out the worst case scenario, the sooner you can move on to what’s more likely, and focus your attention where it will be more effective.

Crisis response is all about options.

You are in a crisis: don’t look for the best option — you might not have any “good” options so that framing will skew your approach. And don’t look for the “right” option — there is no single right option in any crisis. Look for the least bad option. Every option will have pros and cons: be explicit who they are better or worse for, and record your logic; you might need to defend your choice one day.

Spin smells a mile away. You’re better than that. Listen to your gut; be a human.