MMC6730 Assignments Week 10 — Content Post
The greatest professional challenge a communication officer or social media manager can face in their careers is managing a crisis.
Great communication officers and social media managers have planned well in advance for a crisis management scenario and have worked at preparing multiple levels of their organization to better respond to a crisis when it emerges.
Respond to a crisis poorly, and you can damage the organization that hired you to manage their internal and external voice forever. Respond to a crisis appropriately and you will be recognized as a legend in your career field and organization.
However, why is crisis management so important? The best way to describe the importance of crisis management is to compare it to a fire drill. It is a fire drill for an entire organization.
You may remember taking part in fire drills at school. They happen several times each year and are meant to instill an almost reflexive knowledge in both faculty and students about where they should and what they should do in case of a fire.
Imagine a fire starting at your school without ever having gone through a drill. You, your fellow students, and your teacher would have no idea what to do. The school would descend into chaos and panic, likely with tragic results. A good fire drill exercise can prevent this.
The same goes for an organization when a crisis shows up. Without a crisis management plan, everyone from the CEO down to the most junior employee would have no clue what to do or how to respond.
The media and public would quickly pick up on the confusion and incompetence, deepening the crisis for the organization and everyone involved. This can be avoided with a good crisis management plan. These plans provide a step-by-step blueprint on how to respond in an organized and unified manner to the crisis at hand.
This can help the organization get a grip on the crisis and hopefully resolve it faster and minimize the reputational harm the organization may be facing.
The critical elements of a crisis management plan form an extensive shortlist. However, if I were to select the most essential elements they would include a crisis team that is empowered to lead the response; notification matrices detailing how information should be distributed, when and by whom; internal/staff communications channels and holding statements for immediate issue; pre-approved external communications channels and holding statements for immediate issue; up-to-date media lists of key press contacts; and key spokespeople designated to serve as the primary point of contact for both press and public — and always and at all times, putting a real effort into both sounding, being and acting with understanding and empathy.
With the above in mind, let us take a look at two brands that handled a crisis and explore where one succeeded and one failed.
USAID, through subcontractor TetraTech launched a 90 million USD program aimed at empowering women across Afghanistan. You can read about it here:
It launched to immense fanfare in 2014. Held at the US Embassy of Kabul, the event featured speeches in support of PROMOTE and Afghan women by former USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah and newly elected Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, as well as his wife Rula Ghani. The event even included a special video message from President Obama.
Promote Project: Afghan Women
Nevertheless, the first rumblings of a looming crisis could be heart just months later, when the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)
This independent oversight organization noted that USAID had not provided requested work performance plans for Promote. In short, this 90 million USD program was launched without any metric to track the program’s KPI’s. USAID tried to explain it away, saying those documents were in draft form because the contracts were recently signed…
However, here is the thing, after that initial expression of concern by SIGAR in 2015, neither USAID nor the subcontractor TetraTech made any real effort to address the concerns by SIGAR. They instead ignored them and went along as if nothing was amiss. This was the worst possible way to respond to the criticism leveled at the program.
Had I been in charge of the project or lead the communications officer at the time, I would have raised developing a detailed point-by-point PR response, detailed point-by-point on the ground rebuttal, showcasing the success of the program, and worked with the program officers to make any needed adjustments to shore up the integrity of the project.
They did none of those things, and in 2018, after three years of stony silence, SIGAR came roaring back with a damning report that imperiled the future of the program.
90 million USD spent, in exchange for some workshops and the creation of government jobs for just 55 women, according to SIGAR’s investigation. It was an unmitigated disaster and went out across all major media outlets here in North America.
The reputation of the program never recovered. It didn’t need to be this away. The biggest takeaway here? Ignore a crisis at your peril, it won’t just go away because you decide to ignore it. It will almost always just get worse.
That’s the wrong way to manage a crisis. Let’s take a look at the right way to manage a crisis now. Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most anticipated games of 2020.
The game has been in development for a decade and was scheduled to be released this October to millions of eager gamers worldwide. However, getting the game ready for release on this schedule soon began to look impossible to the developers. They could meet the deadline and publish a subpar game… or they could delay the game and buy time to put out a more polished product.
As late as October 26th the team running the social media account for the game swore it would be released on schedule. However, as you can see from this Twitter exchange, a delay was announced the next day to everyone’s shock in the company and outside of it. Instantly, the internet exploded in anger. They wanted this game, and they wanted it now:
So angry was the gamer mob that the developers soon began to get death threats! However, the developers quickly seized control of the narrative:
Before the story could spiral further out of control, the very next day, the heads of the company put their names behind a brief but direct letter laying out why they had to delay the game and how they understood this delay may have disappointed some fans but defended the decision saying it would lead to a better overall experience and ensure that when the game does ship, it will be a classic.
This is the right way to respond to a crisis. The company heads took ownership of the problem, expressed empathy for their audience and charted a blueprint that could ultimately lead to a win for both the company and the gamers eager to get their hands on Cyberpunk 2077. USAID and Promote, take note! Have the courage and agility to face the fire when it shows up, lest it consumes you.
