Leadership and Crisis Communication

  Ten or fifteen years ago when a crisis occurred, companies had at least a 24 hour period to reconcile what had happened and put together an effective plan to communicate with the public, stakeholders, etc.  Now, there is little to no time.  For instance, when Flight 1549 crashed in 2009, Kevin Smith reported the incident on Twitter within two minutes after the crash occurred.  Because Southwest Airlines was already engaged in social media they knew immediately about his posting and responded within 16 minutes after his first tweet.  They were able to be proactive and respond in real time to this crisis of attack on the company and they did so by interacting directly with Kevin Smith and others on Twitter.  Dan Landau says, "Today with social media platforms like Twitter, posting a tweet is like having a press conference with the world.  Organizations must begin to understand that today, anyone can be a journalist and individuals can report whatever they want to anyone in the world in just a few seconds".  Let's think about this for a moment.  This has many good implications for those motivated to compliment and help a company.  However, we are discussing crisis communication.  Any person including those with no moral compass, no decent standards of citizenry, severe lack of intelligence, and narcissism can now communicate to the world in a split second basically anything that entertains them at the moment.  Let's all pull our hair out right now!  An example of this is when Domino's Pizza had two employees post disgusting videos of how they were contaminating the food. The main problem is that consumers are able to generate information and that information go viral quicker than crisis communicators are able to appropriately respond to a crisis incident.  Eddie Obeng said, "all the rules are gone.  Instantly in this environment all the possibilities which turbulence brings are available." One thing that Domino's could have done differently is respond the second they were notified of what was going on with a statement letting everyone know they were investigating and verifying all information, they apologize for any and all inappropriate behavior that did not represent the integrity of the company, and assure everyone that it would be handled and that Domino's would keep everyone up to date as the process unfolded.  Then, once they had all the information and knew the videos were valid and created by actual employees they could, in more detail, outline their strategy for responding to be truthful as well as avoid lawsuits.  The fact that Domino's had to implement their crisis strategy plan in the midst of an actual crisis has put them in an excellent position to be proactive if a crisis happens again.  

Online crisis response plans must be an integral part of marketing plans if the company wants to remain in charge of its reputation instead of its antagonists.  We have to realize what a powerful force social media is because it allows information to be shared instantly with anyone in the world, people all over the world are using it, and it is extremely easy to use social media to spread information immediately to a wide audience.  The wit of Domino's team to respond using the same mediums (i.e. Twitter and YouTube) that were used to distribute the critical information and videos so they could take charge of the situation was ingenious.  It showed respect for its customers by reaching out to them where they were (online social media sites) and by being empathetic and genuinely concerned. This is also why Southwest Airlines was successful in their crisis communication response because they fought viral with viral.  Domino's made sure its publics understood that swift and appropriate actions were being taken to remedy the situation and make sure it did not happen again.  They practiced transparency, which placed them ahead of the marketing curve (we discussed transparency in my previous blog).  This case is a realistic example of the massive impact social media has on public relations practices and the systems that need to be integrated into PR to control crises and reputation management. 


There are many things that can be done by a company to place itself in a healthy position to deal with a crisis when it occurs.  It starts with leadership.  A leader should be someone who is prepared to manage the crisis and protect the company's profitability, reputation, market position, and have systems in place for the human resource managers.  If the franchise owner at the aforementioned Domino's would have used professional judgment and took the time to hire employees with a strong work ethic and integrity, this crisis could have been avoided.  The female involved had already committed multiple crimes that were part of her public record.  Wooten and James tell us in their article "Linking Crisis Management and Leadership Competencies:  The Role of Human Resource Development" that "crisis leadership demands an integration of skills, abilities, and traits that allow a leader to plan for, respond to, and learn from crisis events while under public scrutiny."  Neil Chapman helped with crisis communications during the BP Deep Water Horizon oil spill and explained that these abilities in leaders and CEOs is vital because part of their job is remaining effective while under extreme pressure and fatigue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjb196dB0VY  He said that Tony Hayward did a fabulous job prior to the oil spill in having systems in place for successful communication between the proper agencies and establishing what the roles and responsibilities of the various communicators were.  Hayward also established a strong sense of teamwork striving for a common goal.  The human tragedy was that eleven people lost their lives.  Chapman said you cannot "PR that away".  It then turned into an enormous environmental disaster and BP's messages had to be very clear:  

1.  They had to attack the source of the oil, 

2.  They had to clean the oil from the water, 

3. They had to defend the shore, and 

4.  They had to restore peoples' lives.  

Two things that social media really played into during this crisis in a negative way were it overshadowed the fact that BP was reacting to and operating under the United States government and Tony Hayward was attacked because of comments he made under extreme pressure and fatigue even though it was not mentioned that he had done several hundred beneficial interviews along the way also.  Effective leaders need to be prepared for crisis management by being "able to sense early warning signals that announce the possibility of a crisis, having the ability to avert crises and prepare should they occur, having the ability to maintain damage control by keeping the crisis from expanding to other parts of the organization or its environment, being responsible for implementing short and long term plans designed to help resume business operations, and to encourage learning lessons from the crisis to come out better on the other end".  Bill George with the Wall Street Journal said "a crisis provides the leader with the platform to get things done that were required anyway and offers the sense of urgency to accelerate their implementation".  Eddie Obeng says, "The real 21st century around us isn't so obvious to us.  So instead we spend our time responding rationally to a world that we understand and recognize but which no longer exists.  Technology is accelerating things exponentially and the key is implementation.  Make things happen!". http://www.ted.com/talks/eddie_obeng_smart_failure_for_a_fast_changing_world.html  Tim Tinker in his article "Eight Best Practices for Applying Change Management in Crisis and Emergency Events" says "capturing stakeholder insights during an emergency enables the strategic leader to drive long-term direction and evaluate programs for their inherent risks and benefits". 

Some things that are vital in gaining back some control, organization, and maintenance to communications especially during a crisis are partnering with the public and listening to their concerns, being honest and transparent, remaining accessible to the media and meeting their needs, being compassionate and empathetic, practicing patience and be good-humored, remaining calm, and using credible sources.  It would greatly help also for employees and consumers to "learn how to accept uncertainty and ambiguity while organizations are grappling with these new directions with social media and remain calm, patient, and positive.  Constructive criticism actually helps a company learn through a crisis so they can effect change and improve.