You may have a billion dollars in an account. You may keep a ton of gold bullion in the vault. You may even have 51% controlling interest on the Board. But if you walk into your bank wearing a black ski mask, you’re not going to get the treatment you probably think you deserve.
We all know perceptions matter a great deal, and in a crisis situation, probably more so. I read a tongue-in-cheek blog post listing crisis handling advice using real-world events. Of course the point is to learn from other’s mistakes and do the OPPOSITE of each tip.
The main theme though is proper, clear, and honest communication will help avert a problem turning into a crisis--or a crisis becoming a disaster. But while the bad examples in the blog post concern companies with larger than normal bankrolls--think BP--not all companies can get out to wherever and call a press conference. And anyways, sometimes the scalpel is better than the sledgehammer.
We may not have millions for spin-control, but audio, web and video conferencing is the advantage for the rest of us. As soon as a problem arises, we can have a conference call with everyone involved, from the CEO to the poor employee in the trenches. We can get to what really happened, find out exactly what our customers think, know our resources, and discuss strategy with ideas from everyone at once.
And once we fully have the facts, we can have a video conference, getting our face in front of everyone affected. We can use a web conference to illustrate and demonstrate exactly what has happened, and what we’re going to do about it. We can let customers and everyone else air their grievances in the conference call and we can acknowledge their feelings and reassure them personally at the same time.
We can make all of this accessible to all--families, local businesses, the media--showing openness, acceptance of responsibility, and the will to do what’s right. All of this can be done immediately through conferencing, no matter where any of our leadership, experts, employees, customers, or press are in the world.
