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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

Like it or not, crisis management is a team activity. An individual may direct and coordinate the team’s efforts, but it takes input from every department to do things right. In a recent CPA Insider article, Lee Terry drew a colorful metaphor for the situation:

Don’t be a cowboy. Cowboys are the enigmatic personification of the American west — independent sorts who might kiss the pretty girl but then disappear forever, or maybe shoot the bad guy — or a good guy — just for the heck of it. So when you are in a crisis management meeting and everyone else disagrees with your suggestion or idea, don’t decide to implement it anyway on your own. If you do, you may find yourself in a new crisis pretty quickly, and you won’t have a six shooter or a horse to get you out of it.

This isn’t to say that going against the majority is never right, but when you’re facing a room full of your (hopefully) trusted peers and everyone’s telling you that your idea’s a bad one, you’d be a fool to not take a step back and think again.

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

No matter how badly you want more business, it never pays to deceive your customers. One reason is that it’s ethically wrong, another is that you never know if the person you’re attempting to fool has a larger audience than your average citizen, like say…one Jonathan Bernstein. Although his prose is tongue-in-cheek, his reputation management advice is no joke. So readers, sit back, relax, and read Citibank – A Grimm Fairy Tale.

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

It’s easy for small business owners to become lax in their crisis management. The constant appearance of multinational corporations’ troubles on the front page may lull them into a sense of complacency, assuming that their single shop or small chain is simply too small for a crisis.

That type of complacency, however, is the very thing that opens up gaps for reputation damage to slip through, especially with the ease and pervasiveness of social reviewing. Too much of that, and your entire business could be in jeopardy.

In an interview with Platform Magazine’s Margaret Bishop, BCM President Jonathan Bernstein suggested that small business owners and managers follow his “Three C’s of Credibility in Crises,” to help them navigate anything from an upset customer to a spate of food poisonings:

Be confident

Small business owners and managers usually have the additional responsibility of maintaining their image through personal PR efforts. When managing a crisis, it’s important for owners and managers to be confident in their business, employees and mission. It’s okay (and encouraged) to admit when you’re wrong, but don’t admit so many faults that you begin to belittle your business.

Be competent

Owners and managers alike need to remember to be competent when dealing with crisis management. Admit the mistake, correct it and make sure to minimize the chance of the mistake happening again. Bernstein encourages owners and managers to be honest and proactive. “Stay in communication with your customers until you are sure that they are pleased with the results,” Bernstein said.

Be compassionate

Bernstein emphasizes that being compassionate is the most important part of managing a crisis. “If you aren’t compassionate, people are less likely to hear what you have to say,” Bernstein said. It’s important for managers and owners to show empathy toward their customers when a crisis occurs, and to be understanding throughout the situation.

These aren’t magical rules found inscribed on a cave wall somewhere, but rather some bits of simple common sense. Keep pride in your business, do your job well, and have compassion for others as you’d like them to have for you. Take those lessons to heart, and your reputation will flourish.

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

As use of social media by legitimate news outlets rises, so too do the opportunities for irresponsible reporting to plunge individuals and organizations into crisis management mode. If you thought reporters that skipped that pesky “fact checking” part of of the job were dangerous before, check out this timeline of a one recent (and false) report that leapt from small town blog to national headlines, creating one massive headache for South Carolina’s Governor, Nikki R. Haley. Here’s the timeline of events, from an NY Times article by Jeremy Peters:

March 29, 12:52 p.m.: The Palmetto Public Record publishes an article online with the headline “Haley indictment imminent? Stay tuned. …” It cites two unidentified “well-placed legal experts” who said they expected the federal Department of Justice to indict Ms. Haley “as early as this week” on charges stemming from her involvement with a local Sikh temple.

12:54 p.m.: A blogger for The Hill, a Washington newspaper that focuses on government and politics, sends a Twitter post about the article to his 1,500 followers, who include several prominent political journalists with large Twitter followings that reach into the tens of thousands. Some then repost the item — BuzzFeed just two minutes later; The Washington Post 18 minutes after that.

1:03 p.m.: The Daily Beast posts a short article, which it later removes, about the Palmetto Public Record report, becoming one of many online outlets to write lengthier items, including Daily Kos and The Daily Caller. Headlines like one on the Atlantic Wire’s post, “Nikki Haley Probably Won’t Win Republican Veepstakes,” are common.

1:12 p.m.: A USA Today reporter contacts Ms. Haley’s office with a request for comment, the first of dozens of such inquiries that will deluge the governor and her staff for the rest of the day.

1:22 p.m.: The Romney campaign, which is reported to be considering Ms. Haley as one of many possible vice-presidential choices, receives a request for comment from ABC News.

1:25 p.m.: Mr. Smith seems bemused by all the attention his report is getting, posting on Twitter: “Well, now I know what it’s like to watch a story go viral in real time.”

3:29 p.m.: Matt Drudge, whose heavily visited Drudge Report can help drive decisions in newsrooms around the country, links to a Daily Caller article under the headline “REPORT: DOJ targets S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley.”

By the next morning, South Carolina’s largest newspaper, The State in Columbia, had an article on its front page.

If you still have ANY doubt about the need to be prepared for social media crises, take a good, hard look at that timeline. It wasn’t even two hours from the time of the original post that ABC News was seeking comment from potential Haley stakeholders, in this case the Romney campaign, who I’m sure were less than happy to hear of the indictment rumors.

Would you even be aware that you had a growing crisis at all before you picked up the phone, or read your name in the Drudge Report? Even more importantly, do you know what your first move would be afterwards?

This type of situation is only going to become more common as social media continues to blur the line between official and non, professional and amateur. You’ve got to keep your (digital) ear to the ground, and be ready for crisis management on the social front.

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

On May 1, 2010, Naval Support Activities Mid-South experienced floodwaters that displaced over 300 families, single sailors and geographic bachelors, destroyed office buildings, stranded cars and shut off electricity and telephone services.

After the first day’s flooding, David Crenshaw, NSA Mid-South’s public affairs officer, logged on to the command Facebook page and found the command had yet to utilize it as a means of providing any official word. But the base residents had been active, uploading their own photos of the flood, sharing stories and asking questions. The “fan” count had gone from less than 900 on April 30 to more than 1,200 in the few hours since the flooding began.

“We decided that if social media was where our base population was looking for information on the flood, then that’s where we were going to give it to them,” said Crenshaw.

It may come as a shock to some, but this quote from a Northwest Navigator blog post demonstrates that yet another government agency has began to show its intelligence when it comes to fluid communication using the Web, and social media in particular. Prompted, as many organizations are, by the efforts of individual members, the Navy has jumped on the social media bandwagon wholeheartedly.

Although they provide an invaluable service to our country, it’s an unavoidable fact that military groups have a constant reputation management battle to fight, especially in times of conflict. Having an active social media presence not only presents a powerful listening platform for the Navy, but also creates unique and powerful crisis management opportunities.

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