Defending Good Science

March 3, 2003

Mapping out your Landmines

Run through the following scenarios in your mind:

• You receive a phone call at 8pm from the local fire department. Your facility is on fire, and the fire department is considering an evacuation of a nearby neighborhood. Where do you find your chief spokesperson and facility manager right now -- and is the facility manager prepared to speak to the media about what specific chemicals are inside that building?
  
• On the way to address a shareholders meeting on a Saturday in Aspen, Colorado, your CEO and CFO are in a fatal plane accident. What do you say to the media, and where is the rest of senior management?
  
• You look out your office window on a Thursday at 10am, and are surprised to see picketers. You look closely, and see a Greenpeace logo and two local news vans pulling up to the front gate. What’s your next step?

Too many corporations or public sector agencies would have no realistic answer to some of these scenarios, other than “I don’t know.” And unfortunately, “I don’t know” isn’t good enough.

Many companies don’t prepare for crisis until after the crisis already occurs. Crisis communications planning should be like the fire-drills that every public school student goes through once a month – when the fire alarm goes, the response is automatic.

It’s inevitable – every senior manager will, some day, get the “Oh Crap!” phone call – what makes or breaks your reputation is how well that senior manager is prepared to handle the next few minutes. When was the last time you gathered your crisis team together and ran them through some hypothetical scenarios?

It’s called a Crisis Communications Audit. It does what you expect an audit to do – look at what’s available, and identify ‘problems.’ You may never identify every potential ‘landmine,’ but you would be surprised at what you can identify in advance. How many times have you watched the news after a crisis, only to see a story like “XYZ Company was made aware of the problem via internal memo several months before the accident, but management did nothing to address the problem…” Unless you want to insert your company name into that story, do yourself a favor and figure out where some of the next landmines are going to explode.

Once you’ve identified the likely ‘landmines,’ you should have at least a rudimentary understanding of how to navigate them. It’s only with frequent practice that your company’s reputation and image will make it through the hurdles of life. Saying “I don’t know” is a choice, not a symptom.

Bringing in a third party, identifying potential issues and preparing for them in advance is your way of mapping out solutions before they become problems.

Checkmate Link of the Month

The Centre for the Defense of Free Enterprise - http://www.cdfe.org/. The front page ‘news’ section is stuffed with ‘exposes’ on some of the activities activist groups and corporate attackers are up to every day.

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