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Getting comfortable with disasters faster

Friday, June 15, 2012

After a disaster, senior executives can usually figure out what to do and what to say eventually - but it helps if they get there faster, says UK consultancy Link Associates

Most managers can, eventually, get to a point where they are reasonable competent in a disaster situation, says UK emergency response consultancy Link Associates.

Most managers understand their business, understand the dangers, and, with time, can figure out what needs to be done after an accident happens, and what story to tell.

The problem is that time is not usually available in a crisis situation. People's first instinct is often to tell journalists 'no comment', which is one of the worst things to do, because it creates an opening for someone else to give a comment instead, so you 'lose control' of the story, the company says.

So Link Associates runs disaster simulator centres, where a company's management team can practise dealing with a range of different disasters, with professional role players phoning in as journalists, and get practise getting to 'own' the story themselves as quickly as possible.

The company opened a new centre in St Katherine's Dock, London, in March 2012, in addition to its centre in Derby, UK.

You can send your executive team so they sit together in a room, and receive a phone call saying that something has gone very wrong, based on a real life event, for example the loss of IT, fraud or an emergency, fires in a chemical plant, an offshore helicopter incident.

Then they have to figure out what to do, and meanwhile the phone is ringing with calls from (pretend) journalists asking what is going on.

The simulation suite has a range of audio and visual equipment so people can replicate the communications and information flow that would actually take place after a disaster. Professional role players are brought in.

Link Associates will monitor and record people's responses so they can be discussed afterwards.

Link Associates also provides training on the effects a crisis can have on people, assets and reputation, and how to maintain business continuity.

'We try to give people sweaty palms,' says Mike Hogan, senior consultant at Link Associates International.. 'And try to get people to where they make a reasoned decision.'

Owning the story

Having a crisis is as inevitable as death and taxes, Mr Hogan says. But you can learn to minimise the impact of them if you can get back in control of a situation as quickly as possible.

After an incident, you probably need to have something to say to a journalist within 30 minutes, or they'll go and find someone else to talk to, such as one of your disgruntled employees, or an environmental campaigner with an objective to make the accident look as bad as possible.

'The worst thing you can say to a journalist is 'no comment',' he says. 'People's instinct is to put their head in the sand. But in the 24 hour news environment, it won't happen. We teach people to face the fact that there's no hiding place.'

The company needs to quickly decide on a message it can put out, so you can 'buy yourself time,' he said.

'You want to get quickly to the point where you know your key messages.'

'The ideal is if you have 3 key messages, and something new every few hours,' he said.

This way, you 'own' the story, rather than someone else 'owning' it.

As you shape the message, 'you want people who are aware of what the issues are and what the problems might be. A lot of it is about presentation, you have to think, what we are trying to put over.'

It is also critical not to lie to journalists, he said. 'We teach people two rules in PR - Rule One don't lie; Rule Two. Remember Rule One.'

If your internal discussions don't fit with the message you are giving the public, you might end up in trouble. 'What you say inside the company and outside has to be matched,' he says.

Your entire workforce has to be engaged with the company's agenda - because if they aren't, they might be engaged with a different agenda.

How to behave

Mr Hogan has extensive experience on both sides of the media fence with crisis public relations. After an initial career as a journalist with the London Financial Times and economics reporter with the BBC (including editing the famous 'Panorama' program), he joined PriceWaterhouseCoopers as head of European media relations, then joined Shell as head of global public relations.

During his time at Shell, 1996 to 2003, Shell ended up involved in two very challenging public debates, how to dispose of Brent Spa, and pollution in the Niger delta, with events leading to the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by the Nigerian government.

Since working at Shell, Mr Hogan has also led a master's degree in international public relations and crisis management at Cardiff Business School, Wales.

When he was head of global media relations at Shell, one approach Mr Hogan took was to try to help people make their own judgements.

At one stage, the company chartered a helicopter for five journalists, some accompanied by film crews, to spend time in the Nigerian delta, so they could decide for themselves whether Shell or local people were responsible for the oil spills there.

As a result, there was a front page story on the UK Times newspaper saying that Shell was not at fault, Mr Hogan said. 'It turned things around.'

'You tell people what has taken place and leave other people to make the judgement,' he said.

'We are never going to be loved because we were big oil,' he said. 'But we wanted to be admired for what we did.'

Shell has hired market research organisation MORI to do surveys to find out how Shell is viewed around the world. Its chairman has also held meetings with members of Greenpeace. 'We were trying to get across that we weren't a secret society,' he said.

Mr Hogan says that the way the public person should behave is illustrated by the behaviour of the chairman of UK aviation company British Midland, after one of his aircraft crashed into a busy motorway in the UK in January 1989.

The chairman conducted a radio interview whilst driving to the crash site, saying that he regretted the incident, it would be investigated, and the results would be published - a code of behaviour with the memorable acronyms RIP (regret, investigate, publish).

The success of the initial approach to the media was reflected in the fact that British Midland shares climbed on the week of the disaster, Mr Hogan said.

Similar behaviour was shown by Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group, after the derailment of one of his trains in the UK in February 2007. 'He was on holiday and flew to the site by helicopter, and did the same thing. He said 'people don't know you care until they see you care'', Mr Hogan said.

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