In any circumstance, the most ideal way to overcome a crisis is to be proactive in preventative measures beforehand. People will save money to build a nest egg in case of a crisis; preventative medicines encourage us to stay active, avoid smoking, and workout – “the best way to manage a crisis is to prevent one” (Coombs, 2015, p. 31). This idea benefits individuals as well as organizations. It is just good practice.
In a crisis an organization will have a choice between taking defensive actions (reactive) or being offensive (proactive). It is always best to be on the offense during a crisis, the offensive strategy is the most successful strategy. This is the foundation of preventative crisis management. Timothy Coombs (2015) posits that crisis prevention is best exercised under three dimensions: Issues management, reputation management, and risk management.
Issues Management
We mentioned in the previous blog that issues precede a crisis. Issues management includes the identification of these issues and actions taken to affect them before they become a crisis (Coombs, 2015, p. 33). Many crisis can be seen on the horizon; it is the crisis management team’s duty to be proactive in their endeavors to prevent issues from getting out of hand.
For example, if there is a high rate of alcohol abuse on a college campus that results in a higher rate of campus violence, there is a storm on the horizon. The offensive way to handle such a situation could involve a tightening of the campus regulations regarding alcohol consumption, flyers that propagate against alcohol throughout the campus, and any other persuasive methods honed from fields such as public relations that could influence a populous. In this way you are taking preventative measures by using communication to influence an issue’s resolution (Coomb, 2015, p. 32).
There are other methodologies within issues management that should also be utilized. Sometimes issues are internal and require the organization to take a closer look at itself and, if need be, changing aspects of the organization in hopes of preventing a crisis. In short, issues management is about predicting and resolving the issues at hand before they become a crisis.
Reputation Management
A reputation is what an organization gets after they have positioned their identity and the stakeholders have consumed that information, evaluated it, added their own beliefs based on perception and assigned that meaning to your organization. Reputation is based on both the words and actions of the organization and how the stakeholders evaluate the information provided. “Reputation management involves efforts designed to influence stakeholder evaluations of an organization” (Coombs, 2015, p. 35).
Reputations, then, are obviously formed during stakeholder/organization interactions. There are direct and indirect interactions, as well as positive and negative interactions. Positive interactions build favorable reputations while negative interactions foster unfavorable ones (Coombs, 2015, p. 35). Direct interactions are those between an organization and its primary stakeholders. Primary stakeholders are those who are directly involved with the organization such as consumers. Indirect interactions are met through secondary stakeholders such as uncontrolled media outlets and opinion leaders who interpret information about your organization, then spread that information. During an interaction then, stakeholders directly or indirectly evaluate an organization’s actions and abilities to meet their expectations, which, in turn, affects the organization’s reputation. Essentially, a reputation is the relationship between an organization and its various stakeholders. This means that “a threat to the relationship is a threat to the organization” (Coomb, 2015, p.35).
An organization survives or thrives depending on how well they manage these relationships. The more positive an organization’s reputation, the better chance it has of dealing with a crisis. The worse the reputation, the harder the chance of handling a crisis. In fact, a negative relationship (a negative reputation) could in itself cause issues and crises within the organization due to a dissatisfied group of stakeholders. By building a better reputation, the organization not only avoids conflict between themselves and their stakeholders, but they also build up a reputation capital that could tide them over in turbulent times (Coomb, 2015, p. 38).
Risk Management
You can choose to think of risks as errors that precede issues. Risks are vulnerabilities that become the issues that become crises. For example, let’s say you hired an individual for your fast food chain who would flirt with customers and employees alike. This individual becomes a risk and this risk could become an issue. Flirting holds up the production process, therefore creating the issue of dissatisfied customers. Your new employee has created vulnerabilities in your organization; those dissatisfied customers stop coming to your business and the ones that continue to show up begin to complain about sexual harassment. Now you have a drop in your profits and potential lawsuits opening up without extra revenue to cover all of the costs. You now have a crisis. Obviously this crisis could be resolved, however the idea is to prevent this during the risk management stage.
“Risk management represents attempts to reduce the vulnerabilities faced by an organization” (Coomb, 2015, p. 38). The example above is known as a personnel risk – there are also production process risks and product and customer risks. “Risk factors exist as a normal part of an organization’s operation” (Coomb, 2015, p. 38). For example, a production process risk in the same fast-food place mentioned earlier could range from burns from a hot stove to an employee improperly handling a deep-fryer and spilling molten lava all over themselves. Production processes could also go wrong without any fault attributed to the employees.
Risk management, then, is more of a focus on an organization’s internal environment rather than external forces. “Using inherently safer practices is one of a variety of approaches for eliminating or reducing risk” (Coomb, 2015, p. 39). “Another common effort is training, and topics related to risk aversion can range from chemical safety to email use” (Coomb, 2015, p. 39).
References
Crisis Company. (2011, November 06). Proactive Crisis Communication Plans. Retrieved January 23, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vATFXNLl_rQ
Coombs, W. (. (2015). Ongoing Crisis Communication. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
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