Have a plan and turn it into a checklist

No matter how well planned you and your team believe you are, you can never prepare for the shock and stress when a crisis actually happens to your business. You will need to put your personal feelings and emotions aside and deliver your deliverables both professionally, calmly and not rushed. 

To be able to action the plan at a time of crisis it will need to have been agreed with all the stakeholders beforehand. Use a piece of software like Monday.com where you can proactively write out your crisis plan checklist and set roles to appropriate team members.

Take ownership

Get the first few hours of your crisis response wrong and it is almost impossible to recover without reputation damages. It is your role in a crisis to protect the reputation of the business and it’s how you react in the first few hours that sets the tone for the entire response.

At this point you will realise the magnitude of the tasks ahead. You will need to plot out what happens in the days, weeks and months ahead. You can’t be phased or overwhelmed; you’ll need to break things down and tackle each issue. 

You know that your crisis plan was written in peacetime. You crafted the statements to show empathy and support for those involved. Yet, it's not words that protect reputation – it’s the actions that back them up. It’s your role to help your business take ownership.

Crisis preparedness

Regularly review your crisis plan and update it based on feedback from colleagues from across the brand. Have quarterly meetings to run through different potential crisis scenarios and the different outcomes.  

Write statements, discuss their implications and achieve buy-in from across the business. Train the team so they are confident performing their roles, simulate the scenarios and, finally, put a duty roster in place. 

At this point, you will be your own best friend for organising all of this before a crisis situation takes place. As you see the plan roll-out quickly, seamlessly and without being impacted by the emotion of the situation you now know that this was the right approach. 

Let social drive the response

Driving your crisis response through social media is key. It means your first statement will be out quickly and it’s how you will drive proactive communications and broad stakeholder engagement which will start the process of your brand recovering.