Crisis. A word most corporations dread. The same word is seen by a chosen few as a miracle of sorts. When the walls start closing in and the drama starts to unfold, those chosen few instead of by-passing the responsibility, dive head on and turn misery into opportunity. That is the key word of innovation. Everything new is a challenge. Fire can protect and destroy, so can wind, water, soil. The elemental difference lies in the utilization. There are rivals in every industry and they are faced with almost the same problems as you are. Whether it be the failure to perform or to meet a deadline, the core concerns relate to a client’s reactions. Instead of shirking responsibility and launching into blame game mode the superiors must take charge lead from the front. These are trademark leadership qualities that pave way for the rest to follow. The following should be kept in mind while engaging in crisis management. 1. It is just another situation. While it’s important to give due credit to everything, it’s harmful to judge something more critically than required. This understanding is achieved through experience. Overanalysing often leads to waste of time and a premature death of a perfectly good solution. See. Understand. Act. 2. Do not assume that things will fix themselves. It requires a conscious effort to get the ball rolling, to keep it on track and even bigger one to put it back on after it veers away. Sometimes PR tactics backfire. Clearly quick fixes to control fallout are the ideal solution. However, this must not be devoid of the knowledge that when the crises blows over, the shortcomings must be analysed to avoid repetition in the future. 3. Hold yourself accountable. A PR person’s job is to connect ends and ensure they flourish. It’s an intricate web of connections that need to be followed up. If anyone of this snaps, it can lead to a domino effect, snapping at some old ties. In such times, silence is your biggest enemy. Always prioritise in reaching out to the old clientele that has stuck with the firm’s services longest. An official statement ensures that the party is still in the game and retains faith of the stakeholders. 4. Regulate the team’s state of mind. Unless there is unity in approach a half-baked solution can adversely affect or even further spoil a strategy. 5. Do not allow for multiple solutions to be executed at the same time. The trick is one step at a time. So ensure that everyone is on the same page, including the official spokesperson of the client so that any rogue comments to do attack one’s own strategy in fly by mode. 6. Lastly, but not the least, undertake a thorough study of the reasons for failure of subsequent success of the PR project. Crisis can be avoided, sure. But when it cannot, and it sometimes doesn’t, since it’s not an exact science and sociology can only take you so far. In such times, the sustenance depends upon constant evaluation and to inculcate an approach that personal investment is necessary to tackle emergency situations with ease. Pressure building is essential to releasing pressure.
