Page 167 - Crisis Communication Practical PR Strategies

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1 148 Crisis Communication
Avoidance is endemic

These problems are not restricted to the private sector. In my experi-
ence senior civil servants tend to have a well-developed antipathy to
the prospect of being in the hot seat. I have witnessed numerous occa-
sions when individuals have chosen to duck below the parapet by
referring what should be personal decisions to committees.
This form of avoidance is endemic everywhere. You see it in gov-
ernment, local authorities and other civic bodies: strenuous efforts to
avoid accountability. There’s simply little or no culture of accepting
responsibility. And it’s not just prevalent in the UK: it’s found in most
countries. Civil servants do not see themselves as deliverers. They will
go to great lengths to advise their minister and guard their ministry.
But to be in the firing line, to carry the can if things go wrong – no
chance. Without accountability going down the line you can’t run
anything.
Returning to how a board should structure crisis preparedness.
Unfortunately, all too often the responsible board member delegates
too completely to a lead department – usually public relations, secu-
rity, risk management or business continuity. Larken comments:

The problem with this is that you tend to end up with a parochial crisis
plan prepared very much from that department’s point of view.
Usually it is a PR or media plan which is somewhat one-dimensional
and naïve. It’s not holistic and is correspondingly fragile.
You badly need a holistic plan because under extreme pressure in a
crisis the board has got to start operating in a very different way to
what it does normally. It’s not ordinary business speeded up. It’s liable
to be a matter of totally unexpected and unfamiliar problems and
issues flying at the board from all directions. If you try and treat it as
ordinary business speeded up you will run into the quicksand very fast.
The board needs to recognize this is a real issue and should recon-
figure its structure to deal with it. But persuading a board to do this or
bringing it to its attention and getting them to treat it seriously is quite
an art form. Yet to do so in the midst of crisis is exceedingly difficult –
yet another factor obscuring reality in the worst of circumstances.

Some boards understand this. Crisis is bound to be a feature of life, for
instance, for hydrocarbon ‘majors’, and all of them take their crisis
management arrangements very seriously. There are, however, a sur-
prising number of prestigious companies where the board does not
have an effective and tested structure in place to deal with a major cor-