Crisis Management
Crisis Management
Yes, we can go back to the pet food and continue, but, I want to speak more generally about Crisis Management.
In my experience, there are only two kinds of crisis' that occur:
1) Those that you were unprepared for,
2) Those that you were prepared for.
Yes, who would have thought that a supplier of yours would now start shipping poison instead of their regular product, or that your CEO died in a car crash, or that an earthquake would shut down your assembly plant.
The ones that you are not prepared for are truly a crisis. Everyone turns to everyone else for answers, which of course moves up the chain of command (and time is wasted) until the CEO is called upon to make a final decision as to how to respond, if a response is necessary, when to respond, and who will be the one in front of the camera's (or quoted in the press release, etc.).
The biggest issue when a crisis occurs - and one that you can't get back - is time. Every second that is lost can be perceived as "inattention" or "inactivity", and worse, that you don't care or were totally unprepared.
So, become prepared.
When I lived in Israel, I prepared "pre-packaged" press releases; that, yes, were pretty morbid. One was if a homocide bomber hit our building (and some employee's were killed), another was if our CEO or CFO died by a homocide bomber, and another was if our building was hit by a rocket.
But, I didn't stop there. I prepared for an earthquake in China and our fab was shut down (investors would be asking "how can you make product?"); or our European office was closed down because of a general strike in France; or, a plane crashed with all of our sales people on it (coming back from a trade show).
These weren't all press releases. These were plans laid out as to what we would say or not say, when we would say it, and so on. Just one page documents on the plan. If we knew that a press release was required, then, we had a draft made up - and yes, there were some blanks in it, but, the "meat" was there.
In a crisis, if I was on your team, and a crisis occured, at ANY time of the day or night, all I did was pull up the plan (or the one that closely resembled it), pulled the people listed in the plan together, and supplied them with the next steps (or draft of press release or speech).
It has occured to me in the past, and you know what, it saved me time, which saved my company time, which saved embarassment or perception that wasn't needed.