Having been involved in a fair few crisis management situations in my time on both the client and agency side I found this from Steve Rubel and a link to a Google blog very interesting. Google have analysed what happens to searches immediately an issue or recall becomes public.

I have personal experience of crisis management having created a few and been involved in damage limitation in others. My recommendations to companies are as follows:

1. Have an immediate ‘holding position’ statement already prepared. Valuable time is lost in getting a message together, approved, signed-off and released. In the ‘old days’ pre-internet you had time to sort things out. Today the internet and social media networks give you hours not days and weeks to get sorted.
2. Have an outline ‘Crisis Guide’ that details what is the ‘holding statement’, who is authorised and trained to make it, who is back-up reserve if that person is unavailable and what the next step is. Make sure the guide covers all sorts of situations. The better prepared you are the smoother everything will fall into place.
3. Have all the communication links in place – your PR agency for external communication, internal employee communication plans and a ‘special project team’ that will work together for the period of the crisis. Usually valuable time is lost finding out who will be authorised to speak and then decide what to say. Have this pre-agreed especially up to and including board level. You need a board level ‘stakeholder’. The unexpected will happen. Someone at the highest level needs authority to react and give guidance.
4. Take charge of the news agenda. Don’t wait. Some of the best managed situations have been where the company takes the initiative. Don’t think in today’s era of Citizen Journalists that you can keep things under wraps by ‘drip feeding’ journalists. It will get out. Do you want to be reacting and responding or prepared and managing?

From my experience this is what usually happens with a company. Cock-up not conspiracy theory prevails.

• News trickles out in the market that there is a problem. The noise grows. The company may not have all the facts and senior management may not even get to hear about it as it takes time to filter up the organisation.
• When asked for comment the company plays for time by saying ‘no comment’ which fuels stories and rumours that they have something to hide. They may but more usual they are just trying to buy time.
• The usual truth? In back ground mode the company is frantically trying to understand the issue, get all the answers ready and prepare people to release the official statement. Because so much is at stake this involves many people. This takes to organise and is with any committee approach, it takes time to get consensus. That ‘dead time’ is when most damage is done. By the time the prepared statement is due to be released things have usually moved on. The company is now chasing the story and is continually on the back foot.
• In meantime the silence is filled with more stories and rumours that the company has known about it for some time and tried to hide it. Now the story is not just the issue itself but company ethics and behaviour.
• The company may now face not only class action suits from affected parties but possible shareholder class action suits alleging corporate and management negligence.

The company itself is now the story as much as the original issue. Brand and company reputation is negatively impacted. The share price falls. In retrospect it can have all been foreseen. Early warnings were ignored or the management processes and procedures were not in place or formally followed.  

To see how some companies have managed this issue of crisis management see articles by Mallenbaker and WPP.