The next mistake could be fatal
Disasters that kill thousands of people and destroy property and people’s and nations’ futures are again hogging the headlines. Reports from relief operations in
These devastating events bring back images of Reming and Milenyo in the
Indeed, crisis can strike anytime, anywhere. The unthinkable can happen to any country or organization — calamities, man-made or natural, disruption of business operations caused by accidents, a corporate takeover or the sudden death of a leader. The question is, are we ready for eventualities like these?
Crisis situations are byproducts of serious mistakes committed due largely to improper or no planning at all. Given the unpredictable behavior of Mother Nature, the need for crisis response planning and communication is indeed worth the time and investment required to prepare it. Here are some tips:
1. Put in place a formal crisis communications plan in place before a natural disaster or organizational crisis strikes. Crisis case studies tell us that those who were caught unprepared had to quickly put up a rushed plan to avert the escalation of the unwelcome situation. Conversely, those communicators who did have crisis response plans (CRP) used them, and found them to be effective in helping manage and counter the crisis.
2. Perform a vulnerability assessment where everything that could go wrong (sudden or smoldering) should be listed. Then move on to the heart of the plan determining step-by-step instructions, gathering the who, what, when, where, why and how of the crisis, and completing a “calling tree” for the crisis team, media, government officials, advocacy groups. Creating message templates are likewise critical: 95 percent of what can be said can be written today, and should be pre-approved by communication leaders and legal minds. Once the plan is in place, it would help to have crisis communications drills to expose possible flaws in the plan, assumptions and people.
3. Prepare your mind. You need to recognize types and patterns of mistakes and learn to extrapolate implications from other situations into your own.
4. Prevent crisis from happening, and if you cannot prevent it from happening, control it from getting bigger. Crisis is no fun. It is not an accident, either. It is an extremely and slowly developing pathology that can be diagnosed. Thus, it is completely foreseeable and avoidable.
5. When crisis strikes, manifest a real sense of duty to provide sincere public service. Avoid overshadowing that call with a heavy denial that a disaster is happening or has happened. Fast and competent action must not be overwhelmed by arrogance, and being responsible must not be supplanted by blame.
6. Avoid mistakes in execution. Even a good strategy will fail without adequate resources, training and discipline around implementation. You may have a good roadmap and a list of good intentions, but are your directions and goals standing on solid foundations?
7. Make responsibilities clear. Whether it is managing a brand, a company, a country experiencing a rice shortage or an electric rates battle, mistakes can be arrested and stopped if you know who is accountable for what, who should be overseeing the work to be done, and who should be providing the critical counsel.
8. Focus on people-related issues. A crisis problem is caused by multiple elements, but more often than not, people-related issues surrounding the process, training, knowledge and skill building push it.
9. Analyze data points and don’t be embarrassed to clarify what they mean. Ask the question, “I see it, but what does it mean?” It may be the most important thing you can ask to begin to break the mistake chain that can lead to crisis. The answer will not always be obvious, but starting the inquiry process is a good starting point and a necessity as you move on.
10. Ask, “What’s the other right answer?” You can play “what if” games, as you open your minds to looking at whether there is another answer by discarding what you have already thought about without success.
11. Learn from history or be doomed to repeat it. If the same characteristics of crisis handling lurk in the country, you must help warn the leaders and managers and disaster coordinating agencies, and determine if the country has a disaster communication plan. If it has, is it truly an emergency plan? Assuming there is such an emergency plan, does the plan work, does it get tested annually, and does it have a budget? Remember what Karl Marx said: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
12. Revisit your crisis response plans (assuming you have any) and update its components if necessary. We may not have super typhoons, earthquakes and coups d’etat at the moment, but this is no excuse to be complacent about getting prepared for the next big challenge.
13. If you fail to plan, then plan to fail. Your success as crisis response planners and communicators is measured by the way you generate your facts, how you analyze these facts and set them in perspective, design your strategies, implement your plan of action and measure the impact of the whole plan. Media man Bob Woodward captured the essence of great crisis communication when he declared, “In many ways, individuals and institutions get measured by their capacity to deal with change, surprise and the unexpected.”
Will the world witness many more desolations and grim emergencies because of the collective mistakes of people? There is no way to see what the future holds. But organizations and nations must prepare for adversities. Catastrophes don’t just happen, unless it’s an act of God. Every disaster is the result of a series of mistakes — errors in fact-finding, analysis of data, strategy formulation, execution and the way we do things. The challenge for planners and communicators is to avoid mistakes, because the next one could be really fatal.
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E-mail bongo@vasia.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.
