The Crisis Management Freeway

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It takes confidence to achieve crisis management success

Crisis management requires not only skill and wits, but also confidence. The following quote, from an Adam Black article, provides a fitting analogy:

Do not try to confront the crisis halfheartedly. Once you have made up your mind, move forward confidently. Experts compare this to getting on a fast moving freeway. Approach slowly enough to take in the situation, then accelerate firmly to enter the traffic flow safely.

The freeway analogy can be taken even further, really. In a breaking crisis, just as when you’re driving up an on-ramp, you have to quickly assess the situation and determine who or what else needs consideration, choose the right move to make, and execute. After you’re in successfully, it’s critical to continue on your course, adjusting for changes big or small, and continue to monitor the other stakeholders (aka drivers, in this case).

Once you’ve reached your destination, or attained your goal, it’s time to slowly move towards the off-ramp, keeping an open eye for stakeholders who may suddenly create a treacherous situation. If you make it without trouble, you can safely get off the freeway, although you’d better keep your eyes open on those surface streets. Screw up down there, and you’re right back on the crisis management freeway!

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

Practice Crisis Management Before #&%@ Happens

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Be prepared before a crisis hits

The worst time to test your crisis plan is in the midst of an actual crisis. Best practices call for anticipating every conceivable crisis that might threaten your organization, assembling your senior line managers and simulating how they respond in real time. We’ve worked with clients in multiple industries to simulate (and evaluate) their teamwork and effectiveness in addressing everything from a product recall and a cyber hacking to a hostage incident, and a CEO kidnapping.

The result? Senior managers now know who’s responsible for what, how best to monitor an unfolding crisis and, critically, how to constantly upgrade their response system after the fact.

This quote, from an Inc. article by Steve Cody, explains perfectly the process of crisis simulation for better preparedness. For anyone who’s ever played sports competitively, imagine running a new play for the first time in the middle of a game. Good for a laugh, but running around bumping into each other isn’t going to get the W. Same goes for crisis management. You’ve got to have pre-assigned roles, and the people in those roles must work smoothly with each other to conquer any problems that arise.

Going a bit further, we would very much recommend that you take crisis simulations beyond the boardroom. Just as with senior management, every plant worker, receptionist, salesperson, etc. needs to be on the ball when it’s time for crisis management.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

Forward Thinking Means Better Crisis Management

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Plan ahead to protect yourself

When we sit down to discuss crisis management with clients, one of the first steps we take is to have them list what they see as their vulnerabilities. From internal problems like disgruntled employees and mechanical breakdowns, to external issues like supply line disruptions or lost shipments, the list of potential crises is significantly longer than most expect. Not only that, but it’s also constantly shifting as your company changes and grows. How, then, do you stay prepared to battle these crises?

The following quote, from an OpenView Labs blog post by David Calusidan, is an excellent piece of advice:

Constantly assess your primary risks

Forward-thinking companies take a strategic approach to crisis communications by continuously assessing the risks associated with their businesses.  The key to this effort is to establish a risk-aware culture and a process whereby employees can funnel their ideas about potential risks through management to an appointed member of the crisis communications team. For each risk, the team should assign responsibility for continuous monitoring and assessment, taking actions to mitigate risk when possible.

Simply put, and extremely effective. By planning (and preparing) for risks before they become reality, removing the old school block in communication between average employee and executive suite to facilitate crisis spotting, and creating clear-cut roles and responsibilities within the crisis team, you create a well-oiled crisis management machine.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

How Heineken Beat a Crisis Management Nightmare

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Fast response, genuine feeling, lead to success

In what can only be described as a crisis management nightmare scenario, popular beer maker Heineken was blindsided by a picture of a dog fighting ring surrounded by banners promoting its product. The photo quickly went viral, and looked to be snowballing into a massive dose of reputation damage for Heineken.

Fortunately for Heineken, its crisis management team stepped up to the plate and executed a near-flawless crisis response, pulling the brand out of the fire and likely gaining the respect of animal lovers everywhere. Kicking off their crisis management quite literally the middle of the night (its first response via Facebook was posted at 2 am Central), the Heineken team’s response speed put their peers in other corporations to shame without sacrificing a drop of quality.

Here it is, straight from their page:

Heineken is aware of a shocking photo of what appears to be a dog fighting match in a foreign country with Heineken branding visible in the background. We’d like to thank the community for bringing this issue to our attention.

We are as appalled by this image as you are and have asked the Heineken Global Office to immediately investigate the circumstances of this event and whether Heineken was involved in any way.

If you have any further information regarding this picture, such as the source, or the venue where it was taken, please let us know in this thread.

A carefully crafted statement that assured stakeholders that Heineken was not involved, denounced dog fighting and included a call-to-action asking readers to contribute information leading to the venue where the picture was taken, which turns out to have been a club in Mongolia (with which Heineken immediately severed ties). Follow that up with active response to questions and comments across its social media platforms, which the Heineken team handled thoroughly, and you have a crisis resolved. A fine example of crisis management, congrats Heineken!

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

University of Pennsylvania’s Crisis Management Fail

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You can’t hide facts in the age of the ‘net

When it became known that Dough Lynch, vice dean of the graduate school of education at the University of Pennsylvania, did not in fact have a doctorate as he claimed, the University slapped him with “sanctions”, but he kept his job. Once the media caught wind of the story, however, he was put on leave, and fast. After all, you don’t want someone without a doctorate determining who gets into a school tasked with handing them out, right?

OK, so poor initial response, but you would think after the near-miss on their first mistake U of Penn would be prepared for a full-on media blitz. Wrong! Check out this quote from an  ABC News article by Colleen Curry explaining the crisis management tactic (if you can even call it that) now being employed:

Various UPenn university officials who spoke to the Philadelphia Inquirer about the situation refused to speak to ABC News today, including Stein, university president Amy Gutmann, and dean of the graduate school Andrew Porter. All three officials directed calls to the media relations department, which said in a statement that “the university now considers this matter closed.”

People, people, people…it’s the Internet! You can’t erase bad news! You can’t erase ANY news! Here’s our best advice for you, Penn officials – if you were deceived by Lynch, admit it, can him, announce your new plan to audit the educational background of potential hires, and move on with the job of education. If knowledge of his deceit went further up the chain, then you’ve got a deeper organizational problem going, and it’s time to clean house. Brutally simple, but the best crisis management often is.

Oh, and by the way, also consider canning whoever gave you the advice to issue that statement from the media relations department.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/