Wake-Up Call on crisis communication LG

Wake-up call on crisis communication

By Robert Masters

Victorian business and government were delivered a wake-up call this month in crisis management and community engagement with the release of the Hazelwood Mine Fire Inquiry report and recommendations.

The Inquiry, headed by former Supreme Court Judge Bernard Teague AO, who also headed the Black Saturday Bushfires Royal Commission, has effectively told all companies and government that international best practice is the operating standard required for communication and community engagement plans.

Although some communicators, with coal-face experience in crisis communication, may question some of the relevance and details of the evidence given at the Inquiry, companies and governments now have a ‘must do’ action on their plate.

If you fail to bring your current crisis management and communication plans up to international best practice, you leave yourself exposed to reputation damage and litigation to name just a couple of major risks that you may never have envisaged or imagined. The fact is that those two risks alone can destroy your business.

At the end of the day, crisis communication is about ‘perception management’. If your plans and actions on the day don’t embrace this as the over-riding principle, your community licence to operate comes into question.

The media, the community, legal profession, politicians and interest groups will ensure that everything you do will be under the microscope. It is no longer acceptable to say that ‘your first priority is managing the incident’. Community interest, knowledge, consultation and engagement now all share equal status in the incident management pyramid.

The Inquiry’s recommendations highlight this in a stark manner. They draw attention to lack of co-ordination among the agencies, confusing messages, contradictory messages, communities struggling to find answers, communities seeking reassurances, inadequate consultation, lack of international best practice, lack of ‘trusted networks’, lack of internal emergency management plans… the list goes on.

Compliance with community expectation is always difficult, even for the largest companies with significant resources at their disposal. Sadly, the risks are the same for SMEs should something go-wrong. Consequently it could be argued that industry associations should also be looking at developing at least standard crisis management and communication plans for their members to be able to activate should the need arise.

ICG has decades of experience in planning, development and implementation of crisis management plans, training exercises and in handling incidents. We can assist business and government to develop international best practice crisis communication plans and community engagement models.

RM

Crisis management crisis

Crisis management: Three or four word problem in a crisis

By Robert Masters

There is a major problem for business today facing a crisis or issue in the public domain.

We are in the midst of a bubble that is now international, with the crisis with Malaysian Airlines disasters and the conflict in the Middle East.

If you do not master the three or four word principles of crisis or issues management you will flounder.

However, you have a very good case study in the Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s handling of the Malaysian Airlines MH17 tragedy, and all sectors could do no better than take a leaf out of his book.

He displayed his strong understanding of the communication principles behind effective crisis management and put them into effect with precision and timeliness.

Acknowledgement, Sympathy and Action – the three principles of sound crisis management – were on display for all to see and study.

He also ensured that the supporting platform for the principles were also in place – Defend, Deny, Defer or Deflect.

He left the Australian community, and the superpowers, in no doubt that Australia was going to take strong action with the tragedy when he called on the world to ensure that the victims were brought home as expeditiously as possible and that the perpetrators be brought to justice.

His actions with families, international leaders and at the United Nations highlighted that he was not going to defer any decisions to a later date.

His naming of those responsible for the event highlighted that he was deflecting any doubts about who was responsible for the tragedy to the Rebels and Russia and what needed to be done to address this issue.

Further, he put into place a nationwide movement – which is now international – of sympathy and grieving for the families of the victims.

The Prime Minister implemented a most effective crisis management strategy that should be studied by all sectors.

To learn more about the three and four word foundations of effective crisis management contact Robert Masters & Associates, experts in effective crisis and issues management, planning, training and implementation.

RM

would your team stand the pressure test?

Crisis training: would your team stand the pressure test?

By John Kananghinis

Our team recently undertook a live crisis simulation training exercise for a high profile multinational corporation.

Part of our role was to observe the performance under a real-life scenario and note areas for improvement.

The crisis exercise was carefully constructed to put pressure on key staff to respond and act appropriately, closely mirroring a potential operational crisis.

Even though participants knew this was an observed activity, perceived pressure very quickly started to expose issues.

In this case we uncovered both organisational process issues and skill shortcomings on the part of key operatives.

These findings formed the basis of an ongoing training and procedural change program that is being implemented across all relevant divisions.

Some of the issues will be easy for the organisation to address, some will take further training and instruction.

Most significantly for the organisation were the actions that highlighted either a lack of preparedness or lack of skill in dealing with the ‘community’, ‘media’ and ‘essential services’ scenarios.

These were planning and skill-based elements that had previously been assumed as a given for people employed in a range of roles.

Even the most experienced team can gain valuable insights from crisis simulation training.

An effective crisis training exercise allows for the identification of areas where structural and training improvements will ensure far better performance should a real crisis occur.

When conducted in a thorough and cooperative manner, such training exercises have no downside for either the company or the individuals. There are only positive outcomes in terms of lessons learned and identification of processes and skills to be improved.

Pressure testing is not to be feared – it is an essential component of ensuring that a team handles real pressure when needed.

Contact ICG to discuss how we can help prepare your team for the unexpected.

JK

risk management

A climate of fear is a risk management failure

By Robert Masters

A key element of the governance of any business or government today is its risk register. It should be the right hand tool for ministers, CEOs, chairpersons, boards, cabinets and advisory committees.

It is integral to the due diligence process and provides an overview of the degree of exposure, or ‘appetite for risk’ leaders are prepared to take with a policy, project, product, service or any new initiative.

What is surprising is that risk management programs appear to have fallen off the agenda for government and companies. The number of issues emerging in the media shows something is sadly lacking in the risk management process.

Public stoushes between corporate leaders, disruptions of ABC’s Q&A program, the goings-on of ICAC involving politicians and corporate leaders with party donations,  forgotten bottles of wine etc,  are just some of the examples that should have been considered in a risk register.

The public deserves better than what it is seeing at the moment, not to mention the climate of fear, misinformation and misguided debate that is going on.

It is accepted business knowledge that well-designed risk management plans can decrease problems encountered on a project by as much as 90 per cent. This applies equally to the management of any company or government.

Combined with very sound management methodologies, a robust and detailed risk management process can eliminate the headlines of today and diminish the issues arising unexpectedly, or provide the basis for sound, reasoned debate – not hysteria.

Unfortunately, many risk frameworks only cover operational risks and few provide sufficient analysis in relation to bad PR, potential issues and negative stakeholder reactions. Risk mitigation strategies are often at such a high level that they fail to provide sufficient guidance for an acceptable outcome consistent with the ‘appetite for risk’.

All corporate and government policies should go through a thorough stakeholder and operational risk assessment process before they are floated in the media to assess ‘community debate and reaction’.

Communities nor the proposers of policies or projects need a plethora of hysterical headlines creating fear, anger and angst. Six structured steps are all it takes to develop an effective risk register, but its effectiveness is in the detail of its planning, development and diligence.

ICG has extensive experience in creating and implementing comprehensive risk registers and  risk mitigation action plans; contact us before you embark on your next big project.

RM