Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Danger
Comes
Emergency Management & Safety Solutions
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Agenda
Definitions
Were not in Kansas any more:
The Communities we Live in
Two Critical Aspects of a Viable
Communication Plan
Communication exercises
In case of emergency, break glass
Definitions
Crisis Management
Crisis management is the process
by which an organization deals with
a major unpredictable event that
threatens to harm the organization,
its stakeholders, or the general
public.
The three most common elements
that define a crisis:
A threat to the organization.
The element of surprise.
A short decision time.
Reputation Management
Reputation is the opinion (or social
evaluation) of a collection of entities
towards a person, a group, or an
organization. It has three elements:
Defined by others.
Highly effective mechanism of social
control.
Fundamental instrument of social order.
What is reputation management?
Borne from the computing age, where the
fluid nature of that media requires the
constant monitoring of your reputation.
Small Town
Small population, frequent
face-to-face interactions, and
positive identification.
There is no question who
said or did what.
Reputation accrues not only
throughout one's lifetime, but
is passed down to one's
offspring:
One's individual reputation
depends both on one's own
actions and one's inherited
reputation.
Big Cities
Community members come
and go. We know a small
fraction of people compared
to the whole:
Small subgroups provide
some implied reputation
management.
Reputations are managed
with more formal tools:
Laws/criminal justice
system.
Elections/elected officials.
Racial or ethnic prejudice.
Online Community
Instant communication,
24x7:
There is no hiding, covering
up, or holding back.
Everything is available for
public comment in a
moment.
Everyone is a reporter in
the virtual world.
Cell phone photos and video
are released to a global
audience in moments.
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Emergency Management & Safety Solutions
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Communication Matrix
A simple and valuable tool for any team to
develop is what we call a communication
matrix.
Identify all of the stakeholders that you will need to
communicate with after any incident.
Name the internal owner of that communication
relationship.
Specify what tools will be used to communicate
with each stakeholder.
Communication Templates
Pre-written scripts that contain the basic outline of
what information might be needed, and then could be
quickly modified with current and pertinent
information during an incident.
Once the templates have been written, get all of the
formal approvals now, before an event occurs. Pre-
approval may need to include legal counsel, senior
management, investor relations; your company may
require other approvers.
Communication Exercises
Communication Exercises
Communications exercises can be done for
just the Communications team, or as part of a
larger Incident Management Team exercise.
Begin by determining what the team wants to
get out of the exercise experience. Start with
what we call the silly little question: Why are
we doing this exercise?
This conversation will help you to develop the
specific exercise objectives for the team.
Communication Objectives
To assess the ability of the communications
team to develop timely communications:
Validate the communication matrix: stakeholders,
owners, and tools. Note areas for improvement.
Utilize the new communication templates. Assess
tools and process for timeliness. Note areas for
improvement.
Assess the ability of the team to monitor and
respond to social media sites such as Facebook,
Twitter, Digg. Note areas for improvement.
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Exercise Narrative
Once you have designed the communications
objectives, now you can select an exercise narrative.
Create a realistic scenario that will deliver the kind of
results you are looking for in the objectives.
To best exercise the Communication team, it should be
a public enough event to create issues that may:
Impact the company reputation and brand (both internally and
externally).
Create media interest in the story.
Pull a headline from the news as a potential story line.
Exercise Deliverables
There are a variety of specific exercise deliverables you
might want to have your team develop and which
should be called out. Suggestions include:
1. Create employee hotline message.
2. Create employee text message (SMS).
3. Create company website message.
4. Prepare press release.
5. Prepare for a press conference.
6. Create Facebook, Twitter, and/or other social media
responses.
7. Create client message.
8. Create investor relations message.
April 2011 www.ems-solutionsinc.com 22
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Company Website
How are updates posted on the company
website? Which team makes the changes?
For an exercise, if a dummy webpage can
be set up, it is great practice to change the
page to reflect the companys status through
the course of the exercise.
If that isnt possible, ask the team to develop the
message and then post it on a status board in the
exercise.
Press Release
A formal press release should be developed
for the exercise, either in response to media
inquiries or just as a matter of course.
This release should be developed, approved
through the agreed-upon channels, and
distributed to the team in the exercise.
This gives the team a chance to use the pre-
approved press release templates.
Press Conference
This is a great conclusion to any exercise.
The pre-identified company spokesperson gets
up before a group of reporters to read the
company release and take questions.
Where do you get these reporters? Start with
those who know the story line. Simulation
Team members or other employees who have
been involved in the exercise design make
great reporters.
April 2011 www.ems-solutionsinc.com 27
Out of
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Client Message
Go back to your communication matrix.
You should have called out all of the owners
and the tools.
Develop several messages in the exercise and
deploy to the business units.
If you dont provide the talking points, they will likely
make them up themselves. This is not an ideal
solution for customer communication.
Post all client messages on the communications
status board.
April 2011 www.ems-solutionsinc.com 29
Out of
Danger
Comes
Emergency Management & Safety Solutions
Opportunity
Remember This
Gary Vaynerchuk
http://reputationprofessor.com/
Thank you