Information is the currency of today’s economy. It flows at lightning speed from one end of the world to the other. Reputations and profits grow or crash seemingly in hours or days. The catalyst that pushes this is how we get information from the Internet, social media, 24/7 news channels, or even from our neighbor in the next cube back in the office. The flow of information is only growing. Google CEO Eric Schmidt in 2011 said, “Between the birth of the world and 2003, there were five exabytes of information (one billion gigabytes) created. We (now) create five exabytes every two days.” On a good day it is seemingly next to impossible to keep up. The pace only speeds up in emergencies. A normal daily flood becomes a warp speed hyper drive event. What is an organization to do?
How do you get your story out to the public? How do you get what you want in the sea of information? How do you handle damaging falsehoods that crop up? As Winston Churchill said once, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” While this information explosion is occurring, organizations are suffering from tight budgets and/or cuts of unprecedented proportions. Ignoring things can be deadly. The absence of the resident “expert” to handle these things is no excuse. This article offers some tips that might help you ride things out.
The world seems like it is falling apart. Wars and rumors of wars fill the news pages daily. Terrorism is still a problem in spite of 12 years of war against it. News stories about natural disasters from tornados to hurricanes, to floods, to volcanos, and many other disasters continually fill the airwaves. These disasters are getting more expensive. The Congressional Research Service reports that Congress spent $120 billion for Hurricane Katrina recovery and $60 billion for Hurricane Sandy recovery. The off disaster years cost the government between $2 to $6 billion to help pay recovery costs. Many experts and scholars such as climatologists expect disasters to increase in both frequency and costs in the near future.
Small disasters also threaten to upset the proverbial organizational apple cart for organizations. Work place violence cases, active shooters, small weather incidents, local transportation issues, bad news stories, and other such things might not ruin a community, but it will for sure ruin an organization caught unprepared by it. Public perceptions from news accounts can damage future sales, harm relations with local government, or create damage to public support.
What is an organization to do? How can they weather the PR storm? To further complicate things today’s offices are changing. Offices aren’t what they used to be … the row of cubes down the hall. Offices now are frequently dispersing their workforce all over via telework and other programs. Offices can be staged in multiple sites over different states. Critical suppliers or partners can be located all over the world. Images from TV news in seconds might send the wrong messages to these suppliers. Communicating with these dispersed parties in the heat of the moment is as important as it always was.
Image management during a crisis amounted to just issuing a press release. Today the complexity of getting your word out has increased multifold. However, there is much more in the environment people pay attention to. There are the various 24/7 U.S. news channels you have to deal with but nowadays many foreign news networks operate regularly across this country. All of these networks have a lot of space to fill. It is common for them to reach down to cover what were local issues just a few years ago. The vast proliferation of smart phones further adds gas to the information fire. Anyone with a smart phone can make a comment about that they see and shoot a picture then put it on a social media Website for thousands/millions of others to see across the world. Frequently nowadays the traditional media frequently ends up getting their news right from these social news stories obscure citizens have passed around. The process just feeds off of itself. All of these things have further accented the need for organizations to get their side of the story out to the public quickly before the wrong image sets in the public mind. A blink of the eye and perceptions from these events can sink a team.
The common thing most organizations do during emergencies is to go run for the bunkers. Leaders just stick their head in the sand and hope. There could be no worse thing to do. The common image on the news of managers running past the TV news cameras yelling no comment is the image the public most remembers of that organization. Such images don’t promote public calm and trust, and it tends to generate negative ideas in the minds of the public. It is the same image people get when they see the FBI move terrorists and gangsters to the courthouse for arraignment.
What is an organization to do? Talking is the defense, not burrowing. The first step is deciding who you have to talk to during this emergency. Most organizations will have many different parties they have to talk to. The obvious first audience is the public. Other important audiences for organizations are employees, key suppliers, partners, stakeholders, regulators, government headquarters, families of workers affected, workers who are located away from the emergency, and your neighbors who will be affected by your emergency. Organizations have to create a plan to do just that. What will you say, to whom, and when?
Part of this planning is to break down the communication process into different parts. There are three parts to the communication process. First, there is the physical realm, then the actual information on the message, and last how that message is going to be received by the audience. The physical realm is the platform which will send out the message. Who do you want to talk to and what platform is the best to use for the audience you want to reach? Is the public news media the best option to talk to your employees or your higher headquarters? Most experts would say that the answer is no. You don’t want to use a broad medium for a select audience. Communication is a process. Can your audience receive on the platform you want to use? An example is if you want to use Twitter. Does your organization have a Twitter account? Does our intended audience have access? Do they read Twitter?
This platform issue is complicated. Nowadays people have multiple devices that connect them to the Internet. People use phones, computers, and tablets. One study by Strategy Analytics said that worldwide every person has 1.7 devices. This will increase to an average of 4.3 devices per person by 2020. Human nature is that the more things you have the less attention you give to each one. Everyone will have multiple message programs, Web, social media, or whatever on each of these devices. This gets further complicated when you consider other emergency devices or programs are out there which notify people like Voice over IP (VoIP) phones, two-way radios, robo call systems, building emergency sirens, PA systems, fire alarm panels and system, and the new Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS). Organizations will need both a plan and a system to get out the message through all of this quickly in a situation where you don’t have a lot of time.
You will also need a system to communicate internally. This has many different parts. It also isn’t what you might think. The old days you had your workforce living immediately around your office. Nowadays they might be located at the time of the emergency many miles away for your site. This is harder now because, according to Forbes magazine, up to 45 percent of all employees work remotely. Gartner Research puts that remote worker number at 60 percent. Systems will need to reach all quickly to tell them lifesaving messages. These systems also will have to be a way to account for personnel.
Systems should facilitate communication both ways to everyone no matter where they are located. You will need to push out information in an emergency to people all over. Organizations will have to have a way to pass on valuable information to dispersed workers. This information will have a lot of media like video, pictures, maps, text, etc. These data packages would be used to brief key players on problems like damage assessments. Organizations would gain a lot from systems that allow field users to submit back a quick field report to the operations center or management team about the emergency. The technology already exists. Social media platforms like Foursquare or Waze already allow users to do just that.
The next part of the equation is the actual message. Does your word choice say what you want it to say to your selected audience? Is the message too long or too short? Remember Twitter is immensely popular all over the world, and their messages only have 140 characters. Will your audience understand it? Are there inside terms that might not be understood or worse, understood the wrong way by your audience? Are you going to have to penetrate some cultural barrier to communication like language or definition?
The message needs to be crafted carefully. As I said before, you need a communications plan. This will have to be made on the fly in the light of the fire truck. No two emergencies are alike. You need to know when to apologize or show empathy. People and organizations should stay true to your values. It is very important to tell it first. Tell the story to the greatest extent as possible. Avoid silence; people fill voids with the worst information. If possible get others such as board members, physicians, third-party high-quality sources to tell your story. You should not stop talking when the crisis has passed. Lastly, you should pay attention to alternative media outlets. They might have a bigger audience than you think, outnumbering old outlets such as newspapers. Also, remember if you don’t tell your story then someone else will.
To get the most out of your press time you need to follow these basic rules. They will help you not be embarrassed in your interactions with the press:
- anticipate the questions,
- war game out answers
- have an opening positioning statement
- remember the messages you want to put out
- set for media interviews
- development of soundbites
- respond to issues
- treat reporters with respect
- stay in your lane
- say so if you “don’t know,” but explain what you do know or “can say.”
The messages you send out to the many different audiences all need to sync with each other. Different messages will be noticed by people. The same theme needs to appear in multiple formats. Don’t be afraid of repeating your message. In the words of Winston again, “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.”
Common sense also does have a role here. Don’t make email off-color jokes or controversial comments that can come back to haunt you or your organization. You shouldn’t argue with reporters. Don’t speculate about the emergency or talk about things you don’t know about. Don’t be tricked into speculation. The questions may sound innocent, but if you do not know the answer, then bridge to a topic or subject you do want to discuss. They can keep asking the same question in several different ways, but you control your response and should not be forced into discussing an issue you are not prepared to discuss.
A good public program can help your organization succeed in the next emergency.
Thomas Magee is a federal government worker with experience in emergency and continuity affairs for several different agencies. He is also an Army Reserve Officer with more than 28 years of experience, including two overseas deployments. Magee has an undergraduate degree from the University of Kansas and a graduate degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He also is a graduate of several different Army schools. Magee is married and resides in the Kansas City area.
