Managing Crisis With Positive Results

A crisis is an occurrence in a business or organizational setting that threatens the existence and continuity of the entire business, brand or operation as a whole. 

Did you know that there is a difference between an issue and a crisis? This difference is reflected in how both scenarios are managed. While an issue affects people, environment and assets (PEA), we can identify a crisis when the incident affects your reputation, license to operate and stakeholders (RLS). This article focuses on the best response to manage a crisis in order to maintain a healthy reputation, license to operate and stakeholders trust. To learn more about the difference between issues and crisis management, read our previous article here.

The core of every crisis communication effort is to manage the situation and achieve positive results, which is a quick de-escalation of the negative sentiments in the media. It is also to restore trust in the brand by stakeholders and maintain a healthy reputation. Strategic communications therefore becomes a critical enabler for crisis management.

How to Use Communications to Achieve Positive Results

• Manage the crisis from source: Every crisis emanates from an actual sentiment. Managing the crisis from source means addressing the sentiment and what has caused public agitation. It could be from the business or organization’s operations. In an instance where the crisis is operational, it is key to make adjustments where necessary and use communications to support the operational activity in order to regain the public’s trust. Spinning is an approach which is often used by organizations who refuse accountability but seek an easy way out. However, in the digital age, it is a more costly approach to managing a crisis.
• Respond on the platform that is actively spreading the negative sentiments: Many communications professionals managing brands get carried away with the many platforms and channels of communications even during a crisis. If a negative story is circulating on X for instance and is escalating on that platform too, the communications response should be channeled to X and not other platforms which barely have the news on them. Responding through multiple channels where the stories are yet to be told will only help circulate the sentiment rather than de-escalate it.
• Aim to de-escalate: A crisis communication response that does not de-escalate the negative sentiment is not achieving a positive result.
• Ensure your response ages well: This is of utmost importance when communicating in a social media age because as it is commonly said “the internet never forgets”. Therefore, crisis communications is effective and positive when it does not have a tendency to generate further sentiments in the future. For a response to age well, it has to be factual and verifiable.
• Don’t over simplify: This is common in political crisis communication where they tend to make the agitated stakeholders feel as though their sentiments are invalid or not much of a big deal. Oversimplifying a crisis can become more offensive to stakeholders involved.

You will find this article useful in developing a crisis communications plan.

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Sola Abulu & Associates is a strategy and communications consulting and training firm committed to enabling businesses, brands and organizations to achieve their objectives through strategic communications, organizational effectiveness and reputation risk management

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