Saturday 14 January 2017

The 10 Steps of Crisis Communications

Great Crisis Communication  Lessons From One of the World's Finest,  Jonathan Bernstein.
Ishola Ayodele (Impactful Communication Expert)


Crisis: Any situation that is threatening or could threaten to harm people or property, seriously interrupt business, significantly damage reputation and/or negatively impact the bottom line.
Every organization is vulnerable to crises. The days of playing ostrich – burying you head in the sand and hoping the problem goes away – are gone. You can try, but your stakeholders will not be understanding or forgiving because they’ve watched what happened with Volkswagen, Chipotle, FIFA, and Lance Armstrong.
If you don’t prepare, you will incur more damage. When I look at existing crisis management-related plans while conducting a vulnerability audit (the first step in crisis preparedness), what I often find is a failure to address the many communications issues related to crisis or disaster response. Experience demonstrates that organizational leadership often does not understand that in the absence of adequate internal and external communications:
Operational response will break down.
Stakeholders will not know what is happening and quickly become confused, angry, and negatively reactive.
The organization will be perceived as inept, at best, and criminally negligent, at worst.
The length of time required to bring full resolution to the issue will be extended, often dramatically.
The impact to the financial and reputational bottom line will be more severe.
The basic steps of effective crisis communications are not difficult, but they require advance work in order to minimize damage. So if you’re serious about crisis preparedness and response, read and implement these 10 steps of crisis communications, the first seven of which can and should be undertaken before any crisis occurs.

The 10 Steps of Crisis Communications

PRE-CRISIS


1. Anticipate Crises

If you’re being proactive and preparing for crises, gather your Crisis Communications Team for intensive brainstorming sessions on all the potential crises that could occur at your organization.

There are at least two immediate benefits to this exercise:
You may realize that some of the situations are preventable by simply modifying existing methods of operation.

You can begin to think about possible responses, about best-case/worst-case scenarios, etc. Better now than when under the pressure of an actual crisis.

In some cases, of course, you know a crisis will occur because you’re planning to create it — e.g., to lay off employees, or to make a major acquisition.

There is a more formal method of gathering this information I call a “vulnerability audit,” about which
information is available here.

This assessment process should lead to creating a Crisis Response Plan that is an exact fit for your organization, one that includes both operational and communications components. The remaining steps, below, outline some of the major topics that should be addressed in the communications section of the plan.


2. Identify Your Crisis Communications Team.

A small team of senior executives should be identified to serve as your organization’s Crisis Communications Team. Ideally, the organization’s CEO will lead the team, with the firm’s top public relations executive and legal counsel as his or her chief advisers. If your in-house PR executive does not have sufficient crisis communications expertise, he or she may choose to retain an agency or independent consultant with that specialty.

Other team members are typically the heads of your major organizational divisions, as any situation that rises to the level of being a crisis will affect your entire organization. And sometimes, the team also needs to include those with special knowledge related to the current crisis, e.g., subject-specific experts.
Let me say a word about legal counsel. Historically, I used to have to do a lot of arm-wresting with attorneys over strategy and messaging.

They were focused strictly on the court of law and, of course, a crisis manager is focused primarily on the court of public opinion. More and more lawyers understand that the organization in crisis can be destroyed in the court of public opinion years before the legal process plays out. And attorneys have also come to understand that, while “no comment” translates as “we’re guilty or hiding something” to the public, there are a lot of ways to say very little without compromising legal matters, while still appearing responsive to those seeking more information.

Remember this — Entire countries and causes have had their ambitions thwarted, or aided, as a consequence of their trials in the court of public opinion. ISIS’ PR efforts are, sadly, an example of right-way (for them!) crisis communications.


3. Identify and Train Spokespersons.

Categorically, any organization should ensure, via appropriate policies and training, that only authorized spokespersons speak for it. This is particularly important during a crisis. Each crisis communications team should have people who have been pre-screened, and trained, to be the lead and/or backup spokespersons for different channels of communications.
All organizational spokespersons during a crisis situation must have:
The right skills
The right position
The right training
The Right Skills

I’ve met senior-level corporate executives who could stand up in front of a 1,000-person conference audience without a fear and perform beautifully – but who would get virtual lockjaw when they knew a camera was pointed their way for a one-on-one interview.
I’ve also known very effective written communicators who should probably never do spoken interviews because they’re way too likely to “step in it” using that format.

These days, spokesperson responsibilities invariably include online communication, and social media is a very easy place to make a mistake.

Matching potential spokespersons’ skills with their assignments as a member of the Crisis Communications Team is critical.

The Right Position

Some spokespersons may naturally excel at all forms of crisis communications – traditional media, social media, B2B, internal, etc. Others may be more limited. Only certain types of highly sensitive crises (e.g., ones involving significant loss of life) virtually mandate the chief executive be the lead spokesperson unless there is very good cause to the contrary.

The fact is that some chief executives are brilliant organizational leaders but not very effective in-person communicators. The decision about who should speak is made after a crisis breaks – but the pool of potential spokespersons should be identified and trained in advance.

Not only are spokespersons needed for media communications, but for all types and forms of communications, internal and external. This includes on-camera, at a public meeting, at employee meetings, etc. You really don’t want to be making decisions about so many different types of spokespersons while “under fire.”


4. Spokesperson Training.

Two typical quotes from well-intentioned executives summarize the reason why your spokespersons should receive professional training in how to speak to the media:
“I talked to that nice reporter for over an hour and he didn’t use the most important news about my organization.”
“I’ve done a lot of public speaking. I won’t have any trouble at that public hearing.”

Regarding the first example, there have hundreds of people skewered by CBS’ “60 Minutes” or ABC’s “20/20” who thought they knew how to talk to the press. In the second case, most executives who have attended a hostile public hearing have gone home wishing they had been wearing a pair of Depends. They didn’t learn, in advance, the critical differences between proactive PR, which focuses on promoting your organization, and crisis communications, which focuses on preserving your organization.

All stakeholders, internal and external, are just as capable of misunderstanding or misinterpreting information about your organization as the media. It’s your responsibility to minimize the chance of that happening.

Spokesperson training teaches you to be prepared, to be ready to respond in a way that optimizes the response of all stakeholders.


5. Establish Notification and Monitoring Systems.

Notification Systems
Remember when the only way to reach someone quickly was by a single phone or fax number, assuming they were there to receive either?

Today, we need to have – immediately at hand – the means to reach our internal and external stakeholders using multiple modalities. Many of us have several phone numbers, more than one email address, and can receive SMS (text) messages or faxes. Instant Messenger programs, either public or proprietary, are also very popular for business and personal use.

We can even send audio and video messages via email. And then, of course, there is social media. This may be the best/fastest way to reach some of our stakeholders, but setting up social media accounts for this purpose and developing a number of followers/friends/contacts on the various social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+) is not something you can do after a crisis breaks, because nowhere does news of a crisis spread faster and more out of your control than on social media.
Depending on how “techie” we choose to be, all of this type of communication – and more – may be received on or sent by a single device!

It is absolutely essential, pre-crisis, to establish notification systems that will allow you to rapidly reach your stakeholders using multiple modalities. The Virginia Tech campus shooting catastrophe, where email was the sole means of alerting students initially, proves that using any single modality can make a crisis worse. Some of us may be on email constantly, others not so. Some of us receive our cellphone calls or messages quickly, some not. If you use more than one modality to reach your stakeholders, the chances are much greater that the message will go through.

For a long time, those of us in crisis management relied on the old-fashioned “phone tree” and teams of callers to track people down. Fortunately, today there is technology – offered by multiple vendors for rent or purchase – that can be set up to automatically start contacting all stakeholders in your pre-established database and keep trying to reach them until they confirm (e.g., by pressing a certain number on a phone keypad) that the message has been received. Technology you can trigger with a single call or email.

Monitoring Systems Intelligence gathering is an essential component of both crisis prevention and crisis response.

Knowing what’s being said about you on social media, in traditional media, by your employees, customers, and other stakeholders often allows you to catch a negative “trend” that, if unchecked, turns into a crisis.
Likewise, monitoring feedback from all stakeholders during a crisis situation allows you to accurately adapt your strategy and tactics.

Both require monitoring systems be established in advance. For traditional and social media, Google Alerts are the no-cost favorite, but there are also free social media tracking apps such as Hootsuite.

There a variety of paid monitoring services that provide not only monitoring, but also the ability to report results in a number of formats. Monitoring other stakeholders means training personnel who have front-line contact with stakeholders (e.g., Customer Service) to report what they’re hearing or seeing to decision-makers on your Crisis Communications Team.


6. Identify and Know Your Stakeholders.

Who are the internal and external stakeholders that matter to your organization? I consider employees to be your most important audience, because every employee is a PR representative and crisis manager for your organization whether you want them to be or not! But, ultimately, all stakeholders will be talking about you to others not on your contact list, so it’s up to you to ensure that they receive the messages you would like them to repeat elsewhere.


7. Develop Holding Statements.

While full message development must await the outbreak of an actual crisis, “holding statements,” messages designed for use immediately after a crisis breaks, can be developed in advance to be used for a wide variety of scenarios to which the organization is perceived to be vulnerable, based on the assessment you conducted in Step 1 of this process. An example of holding statements by a hotel chain with properties hit by a natural disaster, before the organization’s headquarters has any hard factual information, might be:
“We have implemented our crisis response plan, which places the highest priority on the health and safety of our guests and staff.”

“Our thoughts are with those who were in harm’s way, and we hope that they are well.”
“We will be supplying additional information when it is available and posting it on our website.”
The organization’s Crisis Communications Team should regularly review holding statements to determine if they require revision and/or whether statements for other scenarios should be developed.


POST-CRISIS


8. Assess the Crisis Situation

Reacting without adequate information is a classic “shoot first and ask questions afterwards” situation in which you could be the primary victim. However, if you’ve done all of the above first, it’s a “simple” matter of having the Crisis Communications Team on the receiving end of information coming in from your team members, ensuring the right type of information is being provided so you can proceed with determining the appropriate response.
Assessing the crisis situation is, therefore, the first crisis communications step you can’t take in advance. If you haven’t prepared in advance, your reaction will be delayed by the time it takes your in-house staff or quickly hired consultants to run through steps 1 to 7. Furthermore, a hastily created crisis communications strategy and team are never as efficient as those planned and rehearsed in advance.


9. Finalize and Adapt Key Messages.

With holding statements available as a starting point, the Crisis Communications Team must continue developing the crisis-specific messages required for any given situation. The team already knows, categorically, what type of information its stakeholders are looking for. What should those stakeholders know about this crisis? Keep it simple. Have no more than three main messages that go to all stakeholders and, as necessary, some audience-specific messages for individual groups of stakeholders. You’ll need to adapt your messaging to different forms of media as well. For example, crisis messaging on Twitter often relies on sharing links to an outside page where a longer message is displayed, a must because of the platform’s 140 character limit.


10. Post-Crisis Analysis

After the cowpies are no longer interacting with the air-circulating device, the question must be asked, “What did we learn from this?”
A formal analysis of what was done right, what was done wrong, what could be done better next time and how to improve various elements of crisis preparedness is another must-do activity for any Crisis Communications Team. I have developed a formal process for accomplishing this, but even a solid in-house brainstorming session can do the job.

“It Can’t Happen To Us”
When a healthy organization’s CEO or CFO looks at the cost of preparing a crisis communications plan, either a heavy investment of in-house time or retention of an outside professional for a substantial fee, it is tempting for them to fantasize “it can’t happen to us” or “if it happens to us, we can handle it relatively easily.”

Hopefully, that type of ostrich emulation is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Yet I know when all is said and done, thousands of organizations hit by natural and man-made disasters will have suffered far more damage than would have occurred with a fully developed crisis communications plan in place. This has also been painfully true for scores of clients I have served over the past 30+ years. Even the best crisis management professional is playing catch up – with more damage occurring all the time – when the organization has no crisis communications infrastructure already in place.

The Last Word –
For Now I would like to believe organizations worldwide are finally “getting it” about crisis preparedness, whether we’re talking about crisis communications, disaster response or business continuity.

Certainly, client demand for advance preparation has increased dramatically in the past decade, at least for my consultancy. But I fear there is, in fact, little change in what I have said in the past – that 95 percent of American organizations remain either completely unprepared or significantly under-prepared for crises. And my colleagues overseas report little better, and sometimes worse, statistics.

Choose to be part of the prepared minority. Your stakeholders will appreciate it!

Please share your thoughts with me by clicking on the post a comment box below.
Ishola Ayodele is a Public Relations practitioner and a member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations.
He offers the following services to Large Corporations, SMEs and Individuals.
Result Oriented Communication,
Effective Crisis Communication,
Effectual Political Communication,
Reputation and Image management,
And Impactful Presentation Coaching.
He can be reached on
twitter @ishopr and via
Email: impactfulcommunications@gmail.com


Sunday 8 January 2017

FIG LEAF; Spinning The Media To Cover up Malfeasance .


How Politicians and Policy makers Spin The Media To Manipulate The Public
Ishola Ayodele (Effective Communication Coach)


The phrase ‘fig leaf’ has it origin from the Biblical Book of Genesis, in which Adam and Eve used fig leaves to cover their nudity after eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Today, fig leaf is widely used figuratively to convey the covering up of an act of malfeasance or something that is shameful or distasteful.

The term ‘spin’ according to Wikipedia originated from an old American expression "to spin a yarn". In the 18th and 19th century, sailors were known for using their spare time on board ship to make thread or string (yarn). Sailors were also well known for telling incredible tales about their exploits when they were back on shore. When someone fooled someone, it was said that "he spun her, an amazing yarn".

In public relations and politics, ‘spin’ is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to persuade public opinion in favor or against a country, an organization or a public figure using disingenuous, deceptive, and highly manipulative tactics.

Many PR Gurus and Communication experts like Prof. Timothy Coombs, Prof. Paul Argenti, Prof. Fred Helio Garcia, Dr. Kathleen Fearn-Banks and many others have written extensively on effective public relation strategies and tactics while warning against the danger of ‘spin’. Notwithstanding, ‘Spin’ is commonly used now in local and world politics.

A case in point is the current imbroglio between America and Russia.

 According to the UK Independent the Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed he has evidence that US-led coalition has given support to ISIS (The deadliest terrorist group in the world). He was quoted as saying “Now they (America) give support to terrorist groups including Daesh, YPG, PYD. It's very clear. We have confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos and videos.”

 According to Reuters, The Russian government also accused the US of backing Syrian rebels who use poison gas and anti-aircraft missile.
According to the UK Express, the US air strike on the Syrian military personnel and vehicles in north-eastern Syria led to the capture of the outpost by ISIS.    
Off course, the US government refuted that allegation saying their air strike played right into ISIS hand.

In my opinion, it looks like the argument didn’t hold water and the American government needed to do something drastic. They need a ‘fig leaf’ so they decided to spin the media to distract the public from making their malfeasance the subject of media discussion.

Firstly, the US government officially accuses Russia of hacking the computers of Democratic National Committee and other Political Organizations in an attempt to interfere in the US 2016 election according to the Washington post.
As if that was not enough the US government expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian compounds. Al Jazeera quoted Barack Obama saying that was "necessary and appropriate” against "efforts to harm US interests".  Although, Al Jazeera's Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington DC, said that the US administration had not provided any proof of Russia's involvement other than the flat accusations that 17 US intelligence agencies say so.
This has sparked public outcry in Russia and many Russians want their government to retaliate but according to the CNN the Russian President Vladimir Putin opted to delay his reaction till the new US president-elect Donald Trump assumes office. A move Trump himself tweeted to be a very smart decision.

Has the American tactics worked? The answer is a capital ‘YES’. The discussion around the world now is the degeneration of US-Russia relationship. Not many are talking about the US support for rebels or ISIS.

Here are some of the tactics used in spinning the media, though some Communication experts especially Brad Phillips opined that these tactics can also be used constructively for positive purpose.


1) Create a Distraction:
One of the major strategy used in ‘spinning the media’ in order to cover up misdeed or a shameful act is to bring up another controversial event and if there no story big enough to distract the media create one with the aid of propaganda.

For instance
When the Nigerian government was caught pants down committing the shameful act of money laundering in 2014 when a jet carrying Nigerian government agents was caught with brief cases full of dollars. There was public outrage, the media was awashed with all sort of headlines and stories.

Although at first the Nigerian government did the right thing by owning up and admitting its guilt but The then former President Jonathan and his media team decided to spin the media by inaugurating ‘the National Conference’ with about 492 delegates to discuss the problem of Nigeria and the way forward. From the time it started till it ended all the Nigerian media were so busy reporting this event that not many Nigerians remembered we had $15 million hanging in South Africa.

This was a spin because the Jonathan’s administration didn’t implemented any part of the resolution reached at the 2014 National Conference before it left office in 2015 and the succeeding administration is not even giving the resolution any attention. In addition, Some Senior Lawyers argued that the conference was doomed to fail from the onset because it was not backed up by any legislation which could have made its implementation binding on the government.

Note
For distraction to work the event has to be
a) National eg (America) Russia interfered in our Presidential election, (Nigeria) National Conference to discuss our differences, problems and solutions.
b) Very Important to the public eg (America) deciding who shapes our destiny as a nation through his/her policies, (Nigeria) deliberation on how we want our country to operate.
c) Emotional eg (America) we can’t believe Trump won the election we want a recount, (Nigeria) Our region produce the wealth of the nation yet our region is under developed.

2) Language:
This is another way the media can be spun. George Orwell, the author of the evergreen novel ‘Animal Farm’ captured this masterfully when he said, “Language makes humans easy to control, control their language and you control the people”. This is one of the reasons Africa is backward in development and technology. In all the technologically advanced countries of the world the children are taught in school with their mother-tongue not foreign language.

There is no nation that has mastered this act than the United State of America. George. W. Bush during the Iraq war told the US media, "The war in Iraq is really about peace." The assault on Iraq was continually referred to as "liberation", and the US military called it "Operation Iraqi Freedom". Whereas, liberation and freedom had little to do with why the US and UK invaded Iraq but the use of these language allows concerned citizens an excuse to deceive themselves into supporting US and UK’s imperialism. Whenever the US invades a country the process is always describe as “peace mission”.

If you observed closely the language used by Obama was Russia not ‘Russia secret service’.
Almost all the media reported it just like that.

“US intelligence report concludes ‘Russia’ ordered hacking” the UK independent
“US spies just briefed Trump on the ‘Russian’ Hack” vox.com
“Trump election: US identifies agents behind ‘Russian’ hack” BBC
“Adviser contradicts Trump: ‘Russians’ hacked the US” CNN

This is a spin because when ‘Wikileak’ exposed the news that the phone call of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and 35 other world leaders were tapped by United States’ Security Agencies. No US or UK media reported it has “US tapped German chancellor’s phone calls” Rather the headlines were

“NSA tapped German Chancellery for decades” The guardian.
“Angela Merkel’s phone hacked by American Spies” the UK mirror
“Germany drops probe into NSA’s Merkel Phone-hacking” the UK register
“NSA spying scandal: Merkel and Hollande demand talks” the UK independent
“Latest NSA hack might reveal ugly side of US” CNN
“Germany’s Merkel calls Obama: Did NSA monitor my cellphone” nbcnews

Note how all the media avoid mentioning the US government, this was achieved by the language ‘autonomy’. The United State for long has made the world believe that government agencies in US are autonomous so they can’t be manipulated by the Presidency or legislature. So, when the CIA supported a coup d’etat to remove a duly elected president of Guatemala in 1954, the world only condemned CIA not USA.

Imagine the Nigerian DSS supporting the removal of Ghanaian President and the Nigerian President  knows nothing of it. This is what Professor Noam Chomsky called “Plausible denial” which means whatever any secret service does anywhere in the world can’t be link to the American government, why?
 They are autonomous and can act independent of the government whereas the presidency not the public appoints the directors of those agencies. (That is what they want the world to believe)

For more insight about language control read 'George Orwell and Language Control' by Duff Brenna

3) Repeat A Lie:
It is said that you believe what you hear repeatedly, this is why company bombard people with different kind of advertisement at every nooks and crannies.  The US and UK propaganda machine kept repeating the presence of a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq till the public begin to see it as a "good thing" to illegally invade a sovereign state. In the end there were no WMD in Iraq, according to the UK independent, “the CIA officer who interrogated Saddam Hussein confessed that there were clearly no WMD in Iraq” and President Bush himself later admitted the same.

So, why was Iraq invaded? In my opinion the US needed a military base in the Middle East to be able to police that region but I don't think they would have garnered public support through the media to invade Iraq if that is the story they told the media.
Besides, the Arabs will never allow the US or any non Muslim country to set up a military base on their land. To cover up this intent the lie about WMD existing in Iraq was repeatedly repeated in the Media until the American public believed it.

Today the US has military bases in virtually all the Arab countries in the Middle East. Based on information contained in the US Department of Defense’s latest Base Structure Report (BSR), the US has bases in at least 74 countries and troops practically all over the world and In his book ‘Base Nation: How US Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World’, David Vine, associate professor of anthropology at American University said, “According to the most recent publicized count, the U.S. military currently still occupies 686 ‘base sites’ outside the fifty states and Washington, DC”.

For further reading on the US military base map visit
https://qz. com/374138/these-are-all-the-countries-where-the-us-has-a-military-presence/
http://time. com/4075458/afghanistan-drawdown-obama-troops/

In closing,
My aim is not to promote ‘spin’ but to provoke a discussion that will lead to a  better understanding of this strategy and how we as professional communicators can separate 'Spin'  from effective PR communication.

In addendum, We can rework and restructure this powerful tool for constructive purpose (like Brad Phillips is currently doing) so it will further enhance our ability to deal with our clients’ stakeholders especially winning the customers heart in Marketing campaign and retaining good reputation during crises.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar and coffee, he can pay anything under the sun to get it”.

Please share your thoughts with me by clicking on the post a comment box below.

Ishola Ayodele is a Public Relations practitioner and a member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations.

He offers the following services to Large Corporations, SMEs and Individuals.
Result Oriented Communication,
Effective Crisis Communication,
Effectual Political Communication,
Reputation and Image management,
And Impactful Presentation Coaching.
He can be reached on
twitter @ishopr and via
Email: impactfulcommunications@gmail.com