Articles > SEVEN WAYS TO MANAGE A CRISIS BEFORE IT HITS   Identify the nightmares Develop pre-approved responses Select and train spokespeople Enlist supporters Tell your own people The media matters Tool up Rehabilitate

There is no such thing as bad publicity.

Right. Tell that to Mel Gibson, the Australian Wheat Board or pre-season Rugby League players.

Poor publicity can trash the reputation of an organization or individual and inflict lasting damage. Unfortunately bad things can happen to good organizations. Bad news can lay in wait in many forms …. Tumbling share prices, cost over runs, death and injury in the workplace, employees caught in criminal activity, client claims of poor treatment, environmental disasters etc.

The lasting effect of any issue that turns into a crisis is not what happened but how well your organization handled the crisis. Don't wait until you are tomorrow's headline. To survive bad publicity you need to act now by ramping up your issues management planning.

Put simply an issue management plan is a strategy that details how you handle the next crisis if and when it hits. They are prepared in advance and involve seven interlocked activities. Implementing any of these activities will put you on the front foot when dark clouds gather over your organization.

Identify all the nightmare issues that will haunt you if they became public. Our consultancy experience is that most organizations know well in advance where the corporate scandals are. Yet many executives choose not to act on this prior knowledge. Hoping things won't happen is not a good basis for communications planning.

To identify potentially public penalizing issues ask three questions of those in your organization's top echelon:

• What issues would really keep you up at night if the media reported them?
• If they appeared on the front page tomorrow how damaging would those issues be for us?
• What issues do others have that we could be dragged into?

Rank issues in terms of which will do the most damage. And if you possibly, possibly can, get your organization to fix those issues before they become public problems.

If the public spotlight shines on these issues how will you respond? What will be your key messages?

Now, before the issues break, is the time to draft your talking points and gather the facts and figures, case studies, etc that will lend credibility to what you will say. Get your CEO to approve this preliminary work in advance. If you work in government, now's the time to draft Possible Parliamentary Questions (PPQs) for your Minister.

It's too late to schedule media training for your spokespersons when reporters are in the foyer. Make sure the people who have to front the media are trained to do so. And that includes the CEO, whose staff tell you is too busy for media training. Insist they get trained.

Putting untrained or ill-prepared spokespeople before the microphones does no favours for them, the organization or for journalists who in the first instance will just want to find out what's happening.

Murphy's Law says that your chief spokesperson will be on holidays, off sick, on course or otherwise unavailable when a crisis comes. Always have a trained back-up and if the media may need to speak to someone at the coalface who is directly dealing with the issues, get them trained too.

In a crisis try to share the inevitable communication load by enlisting trusted third parties to also tell your tale.

Approach key influencers before trouble looms and share your concerns. Agree how they can use their influence, good standing and networks to help you quickly communicate with the community. Are they up for media interviews? Could they write Letters to the Editor or OP-ED articles? Can they email their constituencies on your behalf? Would they set-up meetings with community leaders so you can explain your side?

In this day and age does anyone completely trust company spokespeople or CEOs? Naturally the media and others will want insights from your workforce or members about what is going on.

Make sure your own people know how you intend to handle issues and who can say what to whom and when. Surprises are for birthday parties. So brief boards, advisory groups, sponsors, partners and of course politicians in advance. Make sure your communications machinery is well oiled so information can be rapidly rolled out to workers and others as soon a crisis hits.

The media will be a dominant player in any crisis you may face. Therefore identify early on how you will manage media interest in your issue. A pre-approved media protocol can answer questions such as:

• What media will you respond to first or make special efforts to engage?
• How will you deal with high profile national media?
• How will you deal with local or trade media you regularly deal with, and will be still there when the big boys go home?
• Do you have images and file footage that could be used to tell your story?
• Is it better to hold media conferences or do multiple one on one interviews?

The job does not end when media releases are issued or the press conferences have finished. From Day 1 you need to find out what people are saying about your issues in the media, on-line and in the blogosphere. News monitoring and analysis can help you to identify how is saying what. Who is supportive? Who is critical? What is the prevailing commentary? Media monitoring can help to quickly counter threats and create opportunities.

Start your media planning today by contacting a media monitoring company to find out how they can help you in a crisis.

PR professionals will need certain tools in a crisis…experts on hand, media releases, fact sheets, case studies, website information, perhaps site visits etc. Are there things you can be preparing now? Crises also tend to overwhelm the communications capacities of many organizations. If something happens where can you get additional communications support?

It is not down time once a crisis abates. The media's job is to give readers, listeners and viewers a 360 degree view of what is happening and how a crisis affects people. But you may inherit a legacy of ill-founded commentary or misunderstandings from all this scrutiny.

So after a crisis you may need to rehabilitate your image. Finally your issues management plan should identify the range of rehabilitation measures you could take once things calm down. Perhaps site visits to show how you fixed things, engage experts to speak positively about any changes, roll out training programs etc?