Media Management in Crisis Communications

Course details

"Are you 100% confident that you and your organisation are prepared, if not, where do you start"? Simply put, the best way of dealing with a crisis is to avoid one in the first place. But if crises are inevitable due to a growing number of factors (including terrorism) then you and your organisation needs to identify all vulnerabilities and map out possible crisis scenarios.

Effective Strategic Crisis Management depends on sound and swift decision-making, and neither can happen without corporate-wide and multi-agency pre-planning. Expert analysis of business crisis find that rushed strategic management decisions, incorrect statements, actions, or inactions have caused many of the most newsworthy business crises during or following an event.

Effective Strategic Crisis Management begins with effective decision-making. In an emergency, the first major decisions made regarding how to handle the unfolding situation are almost always the most important ones. Good initial decisions can make even a catastrophe manageable; bad decisions can fatally exacerbate an otherwise small problem. In both cases, the window of opportunity for initial decision making is extremely small and closes rapidly. Once the moment for decision making has gone, it does not come back.

Your strategic corporate response must be coordinated and effective, your strategic crisis management team/s pre-identified and fully trained.

The Goals

Delegates attending will:

• Acquire an in-depth knowledge of the key aspects of Strategic Crisis Management
• Learn how to identify incidents and crises so you can cultivate and harness the potential successes of a crisis.
• At the incident site learn how to avoid mis-management and so make a bad situation worse.
• Learn how to generate ownership and responsibility by all stakeholders to ensure your organisation responds efficiently and effectively.
• Learn how to recognise and prioritise the issues that are most likely to affect corporate reputation during and after crisis.
• Learn the fundamentals of organising and managing Crisis or Emergency Control Centres.
• Learn how to plan and manage multi-agency exercises - and make them more rewarding and exciting.
• Take away step by step guidance on how to validate plans, to improve staff ownership, to augment training programmes and to raise awareness.

The Process

This programme offers the executive a series of tools and frameworks for improving their ability to lead strategically and enhance their own and the organisations resilience to successful outcomes when faced with crisis. We will take a hard look at what crises; both large and small have affected your industry over the past 10 years. History is a solid predictor of the future, so we will analyse the risks, address what has happened and therefore what can happen to you and your company - at any time as the result of incidents from natural, technological and of course terrorist causes.

The Benefits

The programme will identify the driving forces, the warning signals, the uncertainties and the inevitabilities. These ideas will compose the plots and stimulate their interaction - YOU will identify all the challenges and elicit the response.

This formula, adopting the value of an informal, strategic conversation between all parties will stimulate a series of detailed verbal reactions by key decision-makers that will examine YOUR reactions to that 'unexpected' crisis.

The Results

• The old mantra of 'it can't happen here' will be solidly replaced with 'it can happen anywhere'. Accepting this concept puts the delegate in a sound position to initiate the strategic crisis preparedness programme.
• Gain an understanding of Strategic Crisis Management as it relates to yourself, your teams and your organisation
• Learn about your personal strategic leadership effectiveness
• Learn to think strategically in a crisis - look at the 'big picture'
• Learn how to enhance strategic leadership in your crisis response teams, your organisational systems and your processes

The Core Competencies

• Evaluate your organisation's risks and vulnerabilities
• Develop communication and reputation management strategies
• Develop a strategy for enhancing the organisation's contingency plans and procedures
• Develop a strategy for business continuity
• Develop a strategic mindset for managing a crisis
• Implementing a strategic change for the corporate crisis management programme
• Developing and empowering pre-identified crisis response team members

The Programme Content

The programme has been designed to be interactive with several case studies and group exercises. A modular approach will take the delegates through the four stages of Crisis Management - Preparation, Planning, Response and Recovery. Participative lectures will involve the use of PowerPoint, handout material, work manual with all instructor notes and slides, examples of best practice and appropriate video/DVD material. The use of flip-charts, syndicate work-shops and reporting back sessions will encourage a fully participative and enjoyable event.

What should be in place before the event?

• Understanding Crisis Management

             - How to manage a crisis?

             - Virtually every crisis contains the seeds of success as well as the roots of failure

             - The Rationale of the Crisis Manager

• Consider the range of risks: Natural/Environmental; Hazards; Technological - loss of utilities/product/process/plant; Human Error; Sabotage and Terrorism
• Crisis Managers - Roles & Responsibilities - manage the issue before it becomes a Crisis
• Who else inside and outside the organisation should be involved?
• Evaluating your risks and vulnerabilities; Consider the worse-case scenarios
• Understanding 'denial-curve' and 'group-think' syndromes
• Who decides who sits in the 'hot-seat'?
• Case Studies, why some companies fail and others survive?

Pre-planning, who and what else should be considered?

• Who owns the mitigation process?

             - Self-evaluating questionnaires

• Developing and Implementing Emergency Plans
• Twelve point check list covering the whole planning process
• Mutual Aid arrangements
• Company-wide strategic contingency plans
• Service or departmental plans
• Building evacuation plans
• Crisis Management and Communications. Emergency Centre/s
• Developing and implementing a Business Continuity Management (BCM) strategy
• Business Impact Analysis. Case Study and Workshop

Dealing with a crisis - the 'communications' perspective

• Command and Control Issues

             - Operational (at the scene)

             - Tactical (at the forward control point/incident command)

             - Strategic (boardroom level/emergency operations centre)

• On Scene Crisis Management, essential elements for success
• Reputation Management - Managing the Media. 'How to' sessions include:
• Organising a Press Conference
• Conducting Radio and Television Interviews
• Case Study Exercise: Crisis Communications Strategy. Develop a crisis communications strategy and action plan based upon a given scenario

Incident Management & Aftermath

• Alerting and Warning. Case Studies. What can go right and what can go wrong
• Case Studies - Texas City Disasters 1947 and April 2005
• Major Incident Simulation - Role Playing Workshop

             - Syndicate selection

             - Reporting back

• Potential Psychological & Welfare problems in Crisis Management
• How to improve staff morale and confidence in the process
• The psychological effects during and after an incident involving injuries - and worse
• Looking after yourself and your staff
• Questionnaire, are your batteries in good condition?

Essential post incident actions

• Validating plans and procedures

             - Discuss the four types of exercise

             - How to get the most out of an exercise

• Post Incident evaluations
• De-briefing skills - managing the de-briefs - hot and cold
• How to keep all 'stakeholders' informed
• Prioritising the Recommendations
• Examples of critique questionnaires
• Critique report writing, executive summaries and recommendations
• Closing the loop. How to continue the process
• Case Study - Buncefield Oil Depot, Hertfordshire UK, 2005