Page 165 - Crisis Communication Practical PR Strategies

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1 146 Crisis Communication
ership. Moreover, in the absence of corporate crisis experience, many
boards assume that their knowledge and experience will enable them
to deal with a crisis, when it comes, as a high-level, high-speed muta-
tion of routine business.
A consequence is that often corporate crisis arrangements lack a
top-level perspective. They are not realistically tested at top level or
rehearsed regularly. Proverbially, there is an understandable reluc-
tance to confront an issue that may never happen. There is, however,
collateral evidence that the worst time to learn how to manage a crisis
is during the crisis itself.
Veterans of serious corporate crises emphasize that there comes a
moment of judgement when the board itself, in harmony with the
executive committee (if applicable), must reconfigure quickly to face
and resolve the precipitative demands of wild pressures that impinge
suddenly from all directions. There are well-tried guidelines for reor-
ganizing top management very quickly in the face of impending cor-
porate mayhem that can overcome many of the predictable and
paralysing effects of the onslaught, and enhance greatly a company’s
ability to achieve rational and effective decisions and generally to
perform under pressure.

How to demonstrate leadership

It is necessary to avoid two extremes of difficulty. One is the impulse to
make decisions quickly that then prove wrong but difficult to unravel.
The other is to defer essential decisions repeatedly whilst seeking clar-
ification of a galloping situation.
‘Leadership in crisis,’ says Jeremy Larken, of Octo, which my own
company partners, ‘requires those in charge to be willing to devote the
highest initial priority to determining what is actually going on.’ This
may involve extracting the nuggets from an avalanche of information,
or to divine the reality from a dearth of hard facts. In both cases, it may
be a question of reading the correct weak signals from amidst the
‘noise’.
Plainly it involves taking responsibility, but the means by which this
responsibility is exercised and delegation assigned is likely to be
crucial. Here’s Larken’s favourite quote on responsibility, which
always wins rueful acknowledgement and with which private sector
executives are perhaps more comfortable than some public sector col-
leagues amidst the complexities of government organization and min-
isterial accountability: