Crisis Preparation: Part Two

         

        In Crisis Preparation: Part One we examined the first four of six steps an organization must go through within a crisis. The final steps are a bit more expansive which will require a heavier focus and more screen time in a blog. While the latter focuses on the evaluative portion of the entire construct, what we discuss in this blog revolves around the construct itself. 

How does one plan for a crisis? Why plan for a crisis at all when the issues could easily have been dealt with during the risk management stage. Risk management exists as the opportunity to reduce the amount of vulnerabilities that an organization would face. Imagine you have two pails, one full of water and the other empty. You cup your hands to move water from one pail to the other. Try as you may, some water is going to slip through. No matter how much effort are put into your endeavors, some water is going to slip through. A CMP is the plan you have when the inevitable comes your way.

To begin, a CMP must be simple, quick, and well-organized. “The most valuable CMP is a short document that must be user-friendly” (Coombs, 2015, p. 91). It must be manageable and flexible for when crises arrive. As the components to the CMP must be ready to use during the event of a crisis, the CMT cannot afford to be fumbling around when time has become precious. There are various components to a CMP, however, it isn’t structured as a solution to a problem. The CMP “does not include step-by-step directions for handling the crisis” (Coombs, 2015, p. 92). In a crisis, you have to be more flexible than a cookie cutter, but still just as effective.

A CMP will have the following basic components:

1.      A Confidentiality Statement

2.      Rehearsal Dates

3.      Introduction

4.      Acknowledgement

5.      CMT Contact List

6.      Incident Report Form

7.      CMT Communication Strategy Worksheet

8.      Stakeholder Contact Worksheet

9.      Secondary Contact List

10.  Centralize External Communication

11.  Proprietary Information

12.  Technical Jargon Warning

13.  Crisis Control Center Designation

As you can already tell, just these 13 components have the potential to make a CMP lengthy. Many organizations will have at least these 13 components, if not more, in their Crisis Management Plan. Obviously, confidentiality agreements (1) are to be signed by involved parties to indicate that the participants do not disseminate information that could be particularly harmful to the organization or insensitive to the other parties involved in the crisis. Rehearsal dates (2) are documentations that indicate when the CMP has been rehearsed in the past and could contain a brief overview of how those faux crises played out. An introduction (3) is a written letter by a form of recognizable leadership within the organization that “reinforces the importance of crisis management, the value of the CMP, and the seriousness of being a crisis team member [and the seriousness of the current situation]” (Coombs, 2015, p. 94). 

Here we get into a few important contents that are absolutely essential to the CMP. The CMT contact list is a list “of a variety of stakeholders who might need to be informed about the crisis” (Coombs, 2015, p. 94). As stakeholders are one of the life-bloods of the organization, it is important to keep them informed about the crisis and what is being done to handle the crisis. Now we are not merely mentioning external stakeholders who can affect the organization, but the stakeholders within the organization as well who can perform duties that are required of them to ensure we can endure the terrible storm. As you can see, so far, that the CMP contains various easy-to-use sheets that can help the CMT contact the necessary people about ‘what’ – this makes the circumstance easier to handle when the world is on fire. You do not want your staff to be running around searching for needed documents as indicated in the hilarious adaptation below.

In addition to the Stakeholder Contact Worksheet, a secondary contact list (9) contains more of who exists with the organization who will become a valuable asset to dealing with the crisis at hand and the means through which you will contact them. “The social media manager and the public relations director will be very valuable when constructing the secondary contact list” (Coombs, 2015, p. 94). All “contact information covers the people that can help a crisis team and make decisions during the crisis” (Coombs, 2015, p. 93).

The incident report form (6) “records when the incident was first apparent, where the crisis occurred, when various people and organizations were contacted about the crisis, and what actions were [and are being] taken to address the crisis, by whom, and with what results” (Coombs, 2015, p. 93). Imagine this as your playbook where you are handling the situation using whatever form of methodology chosen (intuitive, rule-based, or analytical) in a malleable form, and you record it as you go along for analysis and evaluative purposes. The CMT communication strategy worksheet (7) “reminds the crisis team that crisis communication is strategic…[reminding] CMT members what it means to be strategic and to document crisis actions” (Coombs, 2015, p. 93). It is a crucial reminder of the importance of the strategic malleability that is required of every member during a crisis. Which leads us into other important components of the CMT. 

Because communication is key, and the necessity of strategy there in, it is important to know how to portray and maintain your organization’s identity as it plays a role during a crisis. A Technical Jargon Warning (12) is a list that contains the various forms of jargon that may be utilized within the organization that those who aren’t in the know may not understand. The list endeavors to convert that jargon to terminologies that the publics can understand or, at the very least, explain what each nuance means.

The centralize external communication (10) portion of the CMP is an reminder that all communication efforts should align with the crisis at hand. As Coombs (2015) advises, it is “a reminder that public relations, marketing, and advertising messages should be consistent with the crisis effort” (p. 94). This means getting the social media managers on board with the effort as well. This means that any form of communication to audiences should be reflect what the organization is doing to responsibly handle the crisis and, in some situations, limit some forms of publicity to be sympathetic to the crisis at hand. “Organizations might suspend certain messages during a crisis” (Coombs, 2015, p. 94). All forms of effort will be cycled through the crisis control center (13), a center that has been predesignated as the location where members of the CMT will rally and filter information through during a crisis. 

In addition to the CMP, many organizations “should create emergency preparedness and business continuity plans that will interface with the CMP” (Coombs, 2015, p. 99). Oftentimes, having a CMP may not be enough. The plan needs to be tested regularly and constantly updated elsewise you will be relying on a stagnant CMP during a crisis. “Practice is the only way for team members to gain experience enacting the plan. Practice also builds team confidence that they can handle a crisis” (Coombs, 2015, p. 99). After all, practice makes perfect and in a crisis, you will want to be as close to perfection as you possibly can be. There are dangers in being unprepared and flying too close to the sun.