What To Do When a Crisis Hits

Crisis communications experts like to say that every organization is going to have a crisis sooner or later, and that in fact, the underlying reasons for your crisis are probably already festering in your organization.

Larry Smith, president of the Institute for Crisis Management, likes to point to the story of the Firestone tires that started failing on Ford Explorers in the 1990s. The first reports of these problems came to light in 1993, but it wasn't until 2000 that the story "blew up" into a crisis -- in other words, Ford and Firestone had seven years to avoid a crisis, but due to inaction, they didn't.

But crisis planning is a little like estate planning -- a very good thing to do that most people don't do. Smith, who makes his living advising clients about how to create and implement crisis plans, says companies should actually have three plans:

1. Operation plan: what to do when a crisis erupts
2. Communications plan: what to say
3. Business recovery plan: how to get back on track

1. Figure out as quickly as possible what you do and don't know about the problem
2. Identify the key audiences that need to be communicated with (e.g., employees, their families, customers, shareholders)
3. Create your messages: what do you need to tell people, and who do you need to tell?
4. Do something! Fix the problem.
5. Continue communicating throughout the crisis period and after, until the situation settles down