Surviving in times of crisis

– The ten golden rules for crisis communication

In this post I give my own opinion, not that of any organization.

Surviving in times of crisis – The ten golden rules for crisis communication by Charles Huijskens

This book is by my knowledge only published in Dutch, but I still want to share the general ideas with you.

In the introduction it is stated that “afterwards” there are often apologies with the announcement that advancing insight has shown that communication should have been earlier and better. A warning to take home is that afterwards the harshest criticism is often about communication.

We are bad at openness, transparency and accountability. Is that why there is so much emphasis on it in the literature?

One aspect of life is that people are always making everything more complex, also in terms of technology. That makes us vulnerable if technology fails.

A booklet with lessons of others

So a booklet called Surviving in times of crisis with lessons that others learned from life always ends up in the right place. A number of lessons stay with me. The first is “Attack!” but does that always work? In a conventional warfare situation, offensive action, element of surprise and concentration of resources are an old dogma. That sounds great, but does it work against guerrillas? In any case, acting defensively will never help win the war. Maybe it just helps not to lose. A lesson that follows from this is that it pays to tackle and correct things from the start. This applies to crisis, software development as well as general contracting. The general rule is that not waging the offensive in the media will cause people to lose the media war. At that moment, in the beginning, immediate intervention can be taken without playing the victim role. At such moments, the essence of the crisis is often found in the CxO’s confrontation with itself.

A 100% correct story

An important aspect is that your story must be 100% correct. If it’s not 100% right, it turns against you. It follows, among other things, that being tough and fair, also with yourself, can prevent a victim role. A prerequisite for this is that one can recognize normal accidents. Normal accidents are not the same as common accidents, but in which humans are innocent. They often occur in complex situations, and yet there is a long search for a culprit, because people believe in technology and the malleability of the world. One may often think of non-human errors in complex situations.

Long story short, there is something to be said for playing the victim role is wrong. Not only that it should not happen, it should also not be able to be interpreted that way. In addition, putting the accident / crisis into perspective is also not done. Because then you trivialize something that is very serious, in which the real victims, no matter how strong they are, are deeply hurt.

Use all scenarios

A second lesson to be learned is that one should make more frequent use of multiple (all?) possible scenarios. For communication, this starts with a stakeholder analysis. This is important, because all stakeholders expect to be informed. A second step is a risk analysis. The importance of this for crisis communication is that society as we know it today is generally becoming more and more risk-averse. More regulation is an automatic consequence. People try to draw certainty from this. For an organization, a risk analysis primarily raises questions about its activities. Opportunities and impacts are then estimated. This is what people work on, often to avoid crises. In addition, if crises do occur, it is important to form crisis teams that are small, lean and mean, that have a strong mandate within the organization, preferably with someone from the board present to keep the supervisory board members informed. Furthermore, the people with the right knowledge in the field are needed. So that can change from crisis to crisis.

The spokesperson must know the details

One should also realize that the rule often applies that “the messenger is more important than the message”. The spokesperson must know the details of the dossier, know the organization inside out, have a careful choice of words, have the right attitude, do not allow himself to be pushed into a corner by a journalist, and do not appear as if he does not know what to say. That is why it is often a good idea to have an external communications advisor as a sparring partner for the chairman/CEO in the crisis management team (CMT).

Wake up call

What a CMT needs to be well aware of is that a crisis can unfold in two ways: the most striking is that it happens suddenly and for everyone at the same time. The CMT is then immediately deployed. The least noticeable is that it sets dormant in motion. Often there will be a press moment before the CMT can be properly deployed. That press moment is then a kind of “wake up call”, which has to be done formally and can complicate matters.

Plans and planning

To meet this, a crisis plan is needed, which must be thoroughly known. It is a standard manual in which tasks of the team members in the crisis team are divided. In this way, it is clear to everyone who takes on which tasks, what they can rely on from whom. It also indicates how the team members work together. It builds in moments for information sharing.

Furthermore, in peacetime, crisis communication must be prepared on the basis of statements that can be quickly adapted. It’s best to do this for each planned scenario, along with would-be Q&As and FAQs.

Practice !

Last but not least: practice! “Train as you fight, fight as you train”, they learn in the army. “Never let a good crisis go to waste”, Churchill once said. What is missing is “spot opportunities”. The booklet doesn’t tell you how to do that. But identify lessons and learn from them is good advice.

But also in crisis communication, self-knowledge is the beginning of all wisdom: “Know yourself and beware of vanity” warns the title of chapter 3.

Communication as a top sport

Pim Fortuyn

On the other hand, know that communication is a top sport. It is not for nothing that the late Pim Fortuyn took an afternoon nap when he had to participate in a television debate in the evening. As a result, he invariably came fresh at the start. He understood better than anyone the importance of alertness and creativity. These are also important in the CMT, at any time. Avoiding alcohol also helps, even the night before.

Values

Of course, the CMT starts from the values of the organization. However, a value that the CMT must always meet, especially in its communication, is integrity. This must stand up to high pressure, uncertainty, ambiguity and criticism. In order to succeed in this, transparency is therefore also important. Because from the moment you bury your head in the sand, you are also behind the facts. You lose control, and the image of you and your organization becomes detrimental. Explaining something away, and all forms of cognitive dissonance, are therefore detrimental. Acknowledging a (justified!) mistake can therefore be important as a first step towards regaining trust and curbing the crisis. So one has to identify lessons, take actions to turn them into lessons learned, and then never make the mistake again.

Attitude

So the right attitude is to always look for solutions. Blame games come later. These are asked by others anyway. For that, one has to be careful with the media. So one should not look for debtors or mistakes, not even leaks and whistleblowers.

A trap that is easy to fall into is that one pretends to be ‘in control’, when one is not.

Creativity

Separate attention is paid to creativity: it is needed to

• Set up an exercise
• Create an exercise
• Solve a crisis.

In addition, sometimes someone from outside is needed to be put back on track after the loss of the pedals.

Knowing that you are doing a good job

A criterion for knowing that you are doing a good job is often when your colleagues say that the disasters you have come up with are too crazy for words. A pitfall in aging is to try to gain control over your creative impulse. You become more thoughtful. You will refine and tinker more with your first hunches.

There are 3 essential prerequisites for success according to Surviving in times of crisis:

1. Talent, intuition, instinct, creativity
2. Expertise, training, preparation
3. Luck and coincidence.

So, some important hunches include:

• Make sure there is enough creativity in the CMT.
• Always tell a coherent, summary and logical story. Don’t leave the plot to the media.
• Dedicate creativity, energy, time, and attention to aligning the elements of your story.
• Don’t repeat “heavy wording” from journalists in your response as a spokesperson. Don’t use dark clichés.
• Correct dark clichés with solution-oriented mindset and vocabulary.
• Don’t exaggerate things, don’t downplay them.

Pieces of advice

An important question in all of this is whether the journalist is your friend or your enemy. General advice in Chapter 6 is that you should nurture the relationship with the press. A crisis can ruin your reputation, people often think. However, it can also make your reputation complete! To do this, however, good preparation is required. You have to start from thinking as a journalist. Searching for books by journalists can be a tool in this regard.

A second piece of advice is that you don’t go into anonymous sources.

A third piece of advice is: know the facts, and never lie.

A fourth piece of advice is to realize that you are being interviewed because of your position, not because of your opinion.

A fifth piece of advice is: if you want to get ahead of the rumor mill, contact the press yourself. But not unprepared.

Regarding (a)social media, there are also some lessons to keep in mind:

Lesson 1: Communicate quickly and in a timely manner.

Lesson 2: Avoid an information vacuum.

Lesson 3: Preparation is half the battle.

Lesson 4: Monitor

Lesson 5: Recognize the power of traditional media.

Managing risks

Managing the risks only comes in eighth place in the list of chapters.

In order to manage risks, one must recognize the signs in time, and this requires a certain mental flexibility. That’s called being agile: creative and mentally agile.

In addition to preventing or avoiding risks, the board must manage the risks. Mostly to obtain higher returns. This can only be achieved if they are properly and timely recognized.

In addition to short-term risks, there are also long-term risks. The question is whether anything should be provided for this. And whether the risk is already accurately quantifiable. For example, environmental impact and access to clean drinking water in Africa.

An important lesson is that you always have someone around who can and may warn you about your own arrogance and self-assurance: someone who can hold up a mirror to you. Nowadays, expensive consultants do that.

Remember that if you want to avoid risks all the time, you should not become an entrepreneur.

Ten percent vs ninety percent

An important lesson from Marc van de Kuilen is: “Life consists of ten percent of what happens to you. The other ninety percent is what you make of it. Even when you are faced with major setbacks, you and no one else decide whether and how you get through this.” You do have to take into account the collateral damage and the way in which the crisis affects others. This is important for communication. You don’t just tell your own story, but also that of your organization, your employees and your environment.

So always make sure that the crisis does not become a disaster.

Important advice there is “take it one step at the time”. In the end, those small steps ensure that you can rise above it.

This is perhaps the most important lesson from the book.

Learn from the Past

The tenth and final lesson of Surviving in times of crisis is “Learn from the Past.” The important question in the CMT is not whether you have all the important qualities to be a good leader in a crisis. Perhaps everyone agrees on that. The real question is whether you will be the leader when the time comes. Translated to the CMT, this means whether the CMT will pull out the crisis.

Churchill’s advice is “have an overview and know the details”.

It is important that there is a boss in the CMT, that the pace is maintained, that the CMT consists of and surrounds itself with allies, and that the leadership “lives in the crisis center”.

Some of the lessons of great figures are:

• Fix your concentration
• Don’t compromise with the circumstances
• Put personal feelings aside
• Look to the future, put the past aside
• Attack!
• Fantasize without improvising
• Engage in storytelling.
• Polishing your speeches: “things well said & well done”
• Prepare, prepare, and prepare. And that may take time. So start on time.
• You have to take the best talents in your CMT. These are not always the ones who (often) agree with you.

Title: Surviving in times of crisis – The ten golden rules for crisis communication, Author: Charles Huijskens, Publisher: Prometheus, ISBN: 9789044643015