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As a high-profile company in the airplane industry, The Boeing Company has long understood the importance of being prepared to respond to crisis. But in the last fifteen months, the unexpected has put the company's crisis communications strategy to the test. An earthquake rocked the Puget Sound region in February 2001, forcing the evacuation of 50,000 Boeing employees from hundreds of buildings. When Boeing announced the following month that it planned to relocate its headquarters out of Seattle, community response was more negative than anticipated. And in the wake of September 11, Boeing's financial outlook darkened dramatically, prompting the company to target up to 30,000 people for layoff.
But these events only proved to the company that the crisis communications processes it had in place were sound. Just hours after the earthquake hit, for example, Boeing had a Web site up and running to let employees know which buildings would be open for business the next day, and communicators were able to get out press releases that afternoon despite not having access to their offices or PCs.
"There can't be a learning curve," says Dean Tougas, crisis preparedness communication plan manager at Boeing. "Everyone involved in the response to a crisis has to be able to become immediately productive in handling it. That's why it's critical to run training programs and build infrastructure."
| Everyone involved in the response to a crisis has to be able to become immediately productive in handling it. |
| — Richard Bierck |
Because no company can predict when crises will occur, putting together an effective strategy to deal with them before they strike is crucial. Like other companies that have had to grapple with significant—and often unexpected—difficulties, Boeing knows that a poorly executed reaction can damage a company already reeling from a disaster, while a careful, quick response can minimize damage and, in some cases, actually strengthen a company. Yet while the benefits of having such a plan in place are clear, many companies hesitate to set one up. "There's a belief among many companies of, 'It will never happen to us,'" says Michael Regester, a partner in Regester Larkin Ltd., a London-based risk consulting firm, and co-author of Risk Issues and Crisis Management: A Casebook of Best Practice. "That's the attitude we often encounter when talking with potential clients. What turns the light on for them is our demonstrating the potential financial consequences of damage to their reputations."
Good crisis management doesn't end simply with a plan. Many companies that have crisis-response plans in place develop such complacency about their initial diligence that they fail to keep their plans up-to-date. In many cases, the key managers who were trained to work together during crises have left the company, and their replacements aren't aware of the duties of their predecessors. In effect, then, these companies have nothing more than a dusty script without players.
Developing and updating an effective crisis communications plan is anything but business as usual. It requires hard thinking about difficult scenarios to equip yourself to move quickly when crisis strikes. Speed is everything. Look at Johnson & Johnson's now legendary response to the Tylenol bottle-tampering incidents in 1982. Or consider how Pepsi's quick, smart reaction to the syringe scare the following year caused a nationwide panic to subside in a mere week.
As you build or refine your company's strategy for coping when crisis strikes, here are some steps to take.
Identify the risk areas
Larry L. Smith, president of the Institute for Crisis Management (ICM), in Louisville, Kentucky, says that when his company puts together a crisis communications plan for a client, the first thing it does is work with the client to identify six to twelve broad crisis categories. For a publicly traded company, these might include the death or incapacity of a senior executive, legal or ethical problems, workplace violence or terrorism, a labor dispute, and a strongly negative news story. Other potential areas of concern for corporations are worker injury, class-action lawsuits, recalls, mismanagement, white-collar crime, and manufacturing and distribution problems.
Corporations aren't the only organizations, Smith adds, that need a crisis communications plan; universities, nonprofits, and government agencies are just as susceptible to crises as corporations are.
Decide who the critical audiences are
Too many companies, Smith says, make the mistake of thinking of the press as the primary audience to reach when disaster strikes. "We tell companies to think of the media not as the audience but as the pipeline to reach the audience. In the companies we consult for, 80% to 85% of the time the employees are the first or second most important audience. They're core to your business and thus core to your business's survival." Plus, Boeing's Tougas points out, employees "are the ones in contact with customers and vendors as well as their family and friends; they're a vehicle for reaching the wider public."
Failure to keep employees apprised not only alienates them, but it also makes them wonder if the company is going to survive the crisis. The only way to prevent such sentiments is to maintain a steady flow of information to them. "This doesn't mean just putting press releases on the company Web site," says Jody Powell, press secretary to President Carter and now a partner in Powell Tate, the Washington, D.C., office of the global public relations agency Weber Shandwick. Tell them directly about the problem and suggest how to respond to questions about it. It is especially important that call-center employees know what to say.
ICM helped Edgewater Technology cope with the shooting at its Wakefield, Massachusetts, facility on December 26, 2001, in which seven people died. Employees and the families of victims were identified as the primary audience, and efforts were immediately made to reach out to them. "Seven executives volunteered to serve as the personal link to the company for the family of each victim and they remain so today," Smith says. "Counseling was made available almost immediately and this information was disseminated quickly. Supervisors were given this information to share, and they personally called all employees they were responsible for; they also told employees there would be an employee meeting the next day for any questions. A hotline was established for employees to call with issues, questions, concerns—or just to talk to someone."
Another critical audience Edgewater Technology wanted to reach was its customers. "The shooting happened on a Tuesday; on Wednesday, sales staff started calling their customers to tell them that while design work would be interrupted briefly, computer services wouldn't be," Smith says. "In every case, the customer said, 'don't worry about us; what can we do to help you?' Edgewater acted very smartly in reaching out so quickly to its audiences; doing so helped the business and its employees weather a truly terrible situation."
Even if the press isn't your primary audience, you want to work with reporters carefully. Powell advocates implementing a "60/40" strategy. "Let's say a reporter is working on a story that a company clearly won't like," he says. "If a communicator works hard, she can change the story from being 90% negative and 10% positive to 60% negative and 40% positive."
Put together a crisis communications team
The crisis communications team should include people from different departments, and each member of the team should have a clear idea of his or her responsibilities in putting the plan into action. It is also helpful if team members get to know one another before crisis strikes, because with familiarity comes trust—critical when a company is under pressure and its employees have to work together in unaccustomed ways.
"Sometimes there are turf issues that need to be overcome at the outset," says Powell, and sometimes friction arises from cultural issues. "For example, there tends to be a natural tension between communications people and lawyers; the former tend to want to answer questions whereas the latter tend not to want to show the company's cards until they have to."
Appoint spokespeople for different types of crises
Much of this will be obvious: The CFO is probably the best person to speak about financial crises, for example. But how well does the CFO do before the camera? Now, rather than later, is the time to get him or her some quick media training. "You don't need to be doing this in the middle of a firefight," says Powell.
Sometimes, the only person who is appropriate for addressing the subject is the CEO. So CEOs should be involved to some degree in crisis planning. "Clearly, the effort needs to have the CEO's imprimatur if people are going to take it seriously, and the CEO needs to know what's going on," Powell says. "The company must continue to run, and decisions have to be made. But regardless of how involved the CEO is, he or she should have some serious media training so as to be able to evaluate the efforts of top managers from an informed standpoint."
If for whatever reason the CEO isn't directly involved in crisis communications planning, then it's important to appoint a head decision maker, says Stephen Haynes, a partner in the Integrity Resource Group, a consulting firm based in Olney, Maryland. "You must know in advance who in the company is going to make the final decision on how to respond and on what kind of information is to be released."
Create an in-house litigation/communications "shop," if appropriate
This is especially helpful for any company subject to the vicissitudes of class-action lawsuits, which can seriously affect a company's reputation and share price—you don't want to be building life rafts while the ship is going down. "The worst situation to find yourself in is to be on trial in a court of law and in a court of public opinion at the same time," says Powell. "The rules of evidence in each are not parallel, yet you have to fight as a team on these parallel fronts."
Members of this shop should include communicators who have worked in crisis situations and understand legal and regulatory ramifications, including public policy people and lobbyists. "It's not unusual for a festering crisis to have profound implications for Washington," says Powell. "But it's more common than you think to leave out the Washington people."
Don't be afraid to bring in contract communications help; sometimes bringing in outside communications help is as necessary as bringing in an outside litigator. "Outsiders will say things that staffers won't," says Powell. "They're able to tell companies things they don't want to hear."
Prepackage your virtues
If they're responsible, companies that perennially anticipate problems also try to prevent them. Yet no one will know of these efforts if you don't keep track of them during the normal course of business. "Let's assume you are doing the right thing to avoid crises in any area: consumer product safety, workplace safety, security, you name it," says Powell. "When something big pops, you need to have this material collected and stored somewhere where it's accessible."
Regester takes preparedness a step further. He recommends readying for distribution copious background information about the company and relevant plants or offices. This, he says, fills the damaging "information void" that typically develops during the first 24 hours of a crisis—a void that, if unfilled by the company, can soon become replete with negative and/or inaccurate fodder. "Offer the media background on the company or the installation affected," he says. "This creates valuable breathing space to gather and check information about the incident, and it demonstrates that the company is cooperating."
None of these recommendations is a panacea; the very nature of crises is that they're unpredictable. Yet having a well-tuned plan in place provides a structure to work within. The ideal plan balances defined actions with adaptability. Says Boeing's Tougas: "A standardized process that's too detailed isn't helpful; scalability is crucial. The same basic plan should work for a fire in a specific building and for an earthquake that affects many sites across a region."
Above all, your crisis communications strategy should help your company deal quickly and forthrightly with a crisis. "If companies display honesty and show they're able to solve or cope with the problem," says Smith, "most people are usually willing to forgive and forget."
Crisis communications: for Boeing, it's a matter of accuracy
Boeing's crisis management and crisis communications strategies are designed to respond to two distinct types of issues. In the first category are "emotional events" that, if not handled correctly, can mushroom into crises. These include non-life-threatening product, brand, and corporate-image problems. In the second category are the issues no one wants to have to face: true emergencies such as airplane malfunctions and crashes in which people are injured or killed.
Getting accurate information out was key to Boeing's strategy here, as it is when the company faces second-category crises. But in these situations, Boeing's communicators and specialists are much more likely to work behind the scenes.
"When an airplane we manufactured is involved in an accident, we play a secondary role because the airline is the first-line company involved and government investigators are out front and center," says Tougas. In the event of a U.S. plane crash, Boeing works with the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board as part of the investigation team. Larry McCracken, vice president of media relations at Boeing, says, "In addition to Boeing people who become part of the accident investigation team, Boeing also sends technical communicators to help reporters understand the mechanics of accidents, to explain what exactly the rudder, actuator, elevator, etc., do."
With an airplane accident, Tougas explains, there's so much room for speculation and rumor. "We've found the best way to combat that is to have technical experts explain why seemingly obvious conclusions aren't that obvious at all." Accurate reporting is in everyone's best interest, McCracken says. Victims' families deserve it. The public needs it. And Boeing's clients appreciate Boeing's efforts to promote it.
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