Thought Leads-Climate Crisis Series: Part 1
“Crisis is an event that brings, or has the potential for bringing, an organization into disrepute and imperils its future profitability, growth, and, possibly, its very survival” (Lerbinger, 1997).
Crises spring up in a multitude of ways. They are diverse, each with its own nature that cannot be explained away easily or immediately. No one can predict where the next crisis would spring from. In its 2021 study “Connected Crisis”, Edelman has found that over the past three years 88% of corporate executives faced at least one large crisis with business impact. A crisis may be technological, organisational, financial, personnel, or natural by its outlook.
Or a mix of them.
Technological (Eg: March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident), organisational (Eg: Amazon’s delivery issues during the Pandemic), financial (Eg: Enron scandal), personnel (Eg: WeWork scandal), natural (Eg: COVID Pandemic), national/ country-wise (Eg: Sri Lanka, Afghanistan) or mixed crises, do not come alone. They are often followed by a series of mini crises, such as a health crisis.
“When it comes to crises, organizations are better off acknowledging the “Murphy factor”: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” – Parsons, 1996
For businesses, a blow-by-blow categorisation of crises types, as found by Edelman, could be on the lines of: Product and supply chain issues, labour issues and leadership changes, financial, legal & regulatory issues, cybersecurity and cybercrime, technology failures, activism against the company, online / social media / digital attacks, environmental issues, misinformation etc.
Whatever their nature be, an unfolding crisis needs a “crisis management” strategy. Complicating it further would be a lack of an essential “crisis communication” to navigate it.
It pays to be prepared for crises in advance. For an organisation, having a crisis communication plan goes a long way in mitigating its effects. Still, it is short sighted to think that a communication plan alone would ‘fix things’. As much as having such a plan, it is important to know how to go about it-and how not to go about it. Edelman declares: “There are significant gaps between the importance placed by executives on many evolving aspects of crises, and the preparedness of companies to adapt…Only one in two executives agree that their company is well prepared for the need to respond quickly across communications channels in its crisis preparedness plans (search, media buying, media relations, employee channels, etc.).”
As bad as lack of preparations, a slow response in crisis or communications management is a way to not to go about it. Speed helps.
When a global crisis came to be with the 9/11 incident where terrorists attacked US and changed the course of history, most would not have expected the administration to respond speedily-but it did. As the world around crumbled right in front of them, citizens felt helpless but the US government was not sitting still.
“..The United States government had to keep its citizens calm. Crisis leads to chaos and that is what many people in public affairs departments across the country had to deal with that day. .. The Department of Defense did not come up with its plan in the gas station that day. The government, like many other organizations, prepares crisis management plans in advance and assesses possible crises frequently”. – (Katharine A. Szczepanik – The Importance of Crisis Communication: What lessons did we learn from Tylenol and Exxon? -2003)
Many are the brands that faced a reversal of their fortunes for not promptly reacting to a crisis. Uber is one – in fact it once became a case study on missteps in crisis communications. It often (unwittingly) ended up in the hellhole of ‘damaged brands’ with lack of transparency in handling crises (or, “seeming lack of transparency”).
“February 2017 saw Uber slapped with a lawsuit from Google. The technology giant claimed Uber stole technology from their self-driving vehicle division, Waymo. The suit was abruptly settled a year later when Uber paid Waymo $245 million…. A lack of transparency has been Uber’s biggest failing in handling much of the public interest which has impacted both their reputation and their bottom line. A heartfelt letter from the CEO promising to be a better leader won’t get the company far unless the public sees steps and actions taken to get there. For this reason, Uber is a classic example of crisis management gone wrong..”- Meg Prater in brandfolder.com
Similar to speed, accuracy too is vital. A crisis creates tension and it impacts on the accuracy of information –both incoming and outgoing- as reliability of the communication is of huge importance. Verifying information is a must if they are not trustworthy, then they cannot be released. Inaccurate information complicates an already difficult scenario where no one is able to understand what unravels next.
Lack of crisis communication or mismanagement of it, could result in its own crisis (and even chaos).
(To be continued)
