One way for a crisis communications team to review its crisis plan is to critique how other organizations respond to crises of their own.
The recent disasters in Japan – a magnitude 9.0 earthquake followed by a tsunami and a nuclear disaster – are stretching the government’s and the electrical power company’s plans beyond the limits of plausibility.
People around the world watched a nervous spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) on television advising citizens to evacuate a-mile area around where the company’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear generating plant was spewing radiation.
The crisis quickly devolved into a lack of trust which inflicted serious damage on the reputations of both the government and TEPCO.
Critique your crisis communications plan
Analyzing crises in real-time can give you a sense of how fast an emergency can develop. You should be able to release some information from your organization within one hour. It took far too long for TEPCO and government officials to understand the scope of this event.
Suggestion
Review how long it takes your organization to identify and admit a crisis is in progress. This may be a data-driven exercise or it may be based on anecdotal information. No doubt the definitive answer depends on what type of crisis you choose. Whatever you use the conclusion for this exercise might be a subject worth discussing at a crisis management meeting.This may be data and/or anecdotal.
One source for information
Government and TEPCO officials were releasing conflicting information about the situation at the nuclear generating plant. This led citizens and reporters to wonder whether the information they were receiving was accurate. Don’t have competing outlets for news or information.
Suggestions
If, for example, you are required to coordinate with the Coast Guard in a crisis then ensure you have their current contact information in your plan. Invite Coast Guard officials to participate in your crisis response drills and exercises.
Practice preparing for and participating in joint press conferences with outside agencies that respond to the crisis represented. Conduct crisis communications training with representatives from all outside agencies participating.
In other words, if you respond together, practice together.
Don’t speculate
Early in the crisis a reporter asked Prime Minister Naoto Kan when he thought the nuclear emergency involving the Fukushima nuclear power plant would be solved he answered, “matters there should be resolved soon.” The reporter was asking the Prime Minister to speculate.
The problem: A week later the “matters” were worse.
Suggestion
Anyone who has been interviewed about a crisis would like to tell the reporter everything is okay. It’s natural to want to minimize the situation. However, sooner or later the truth comes out and the situation develops another storyline: Your organization doesn’t tell the truth.
If you don’t know, say you don’t know. The best way to learn how to handle these types of questions is to practice them in media training sessions.
Executive clairvoyance
CNN reported that when offered an opportunity to participate in a practice exercise of a worst-case scenario eerily similar to the recent situation, a TEPCO executive declined, reportedly commenting, “That will never happen.”
Suggestion
Although most crisis response exercises should be concentrated on likely emergency events attention must also be given to a major incident. You should have identified at least one “worst-case scenario” for your organization when you did the preparation work for building your crisis communications for the crisis scenario.
Practice the communications plan
TEPCO sources told reporters that although the engineering crisis plans were occasionally exercised the communications portion of the plan wasn’t.
Suggestion
If you find yourself in such a situation conduct your own practice exercises to ensure your team members know their responsibilities and are familiar with the plan.
Check media accuracy
The media often times gets things wrong, especially when the subject matter is as technical as a damaged nuclear generating plant. For example, during the Japan crisis, some American reporters frequently confused kilometers with miles. That can be extremely important information especially when it is used to describe the evacuation area around a plant.
Suggestions
Include a guide with important concepts, pronunciations, spellings and definitions as an addendum to press releases. In some cases a federally required Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) could be helpful.
If you are monitoring the media for stories about your crisis you also should look for mistakes and bring them to the editor’s attention.
