Communication during a crisis - David Asker & Jim Preen

Communication during a crisis transcript

Claire Scaramanga

Good morning and welcome to Scaramanga's latest podcast, where we're talking today about communication during a crisis. We have two guests with us today. Jim Preen and David Asker. I'll let you introduce yourself, Jim.

Jim Preen

Thank you very much, Claire. We're delighted to be here on this podcast today. I'm Jim Preen as you know, I'm a crisis management specialist. I've been doing that for more than 20 years. In various agencies and so forth. Currently, I'm a freelance consultant and my kind of major job is running crisis simulation exercises for banks, building societies, major retailers, and so forth. I also write crisis plans and conduct media training with senior executives. Prior to that, I was a journalist, mostly at ABC News, the American TV network, where I covered the first Gulf War, the Bosnian war, and it wasn't all wars, there were some other nice stories, too. I won two Emmys for my work while I was doing that. So that's me, a former journalist, now really a crisis communication specialist, I suppose.

Claire Scaramanga

Thank you very much. And welcome, Jim. and David.

David Asker

Yes. Hello, Claire. Good morning and thank you for inviting me onto the podcast, I suppose in a way, I'm your worst nightmare because if you meet me, something's gone horribly wrong. I am an authorised High Court Enforcement Officer, they used to call us sheriff's and for the last 40 years, I've been dealing with enforcing High Court writs. But of course, that brings me into contact with protesters. As we've seen over recent years, and particularly on the HS2 project, dealing with people who are disrupting business by locking themselves or seeking to prevent people getting on site, etc. is quite a difficult undertaking and particularly recently, in the last year or so, I've had a lot of dealings with our friends from Just Stop Oil. So what I do, the service I provide is somewhat prescient for matters of business continuity.

Claire Scaramanga

Thank you very much, and welcome to you as well, David. So let's kick off by sort of starting to look at first of all, how an organisation can prepare for an unexpected and potentially challenging event.

Jim Preen

Okay, well, if I can jump in there, I think the first thing it may sound obvious, but I think the first thing you've got to have is a plan. You know, you need to know who's part of the incident team, you need to understand their roles and responsibilities. And the plan. I mean, you think of these big business continuity plans as these great dusty tomes. But actually, these days, quite a lot of plans are really quite short, sometimes they're called playbooks. So you would have a playbook for a particular type of incident, you know, maybe for a terror incident or a cyber incident, something like that. And you just have the important information contained in those playbooks to help you through a crisis.

And there's nothing sort of magical or extraordinary about it. They're really kind of like handrails, if you will, that, you know, it's a bit like a pilot flying a plane, I assume a pilot knows how to fly a plane, but they constantly have checklists, and so forth to look at to make, you know, to keep them on track. I think that's very much what a crisis plan will be. And you know, any plan, I think, is better than a blank canvas. But I'd also say that there's the old army thing about no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Plans may need to be updated and so forth, during a crisis. But I think you need that plan there. I mean, I can talk more about what should be contained in the plan. But, David, I don't want to talk too much, David, over to you. What's your thoughts on this?

David Asker

Well, I would echo very much your sentiment and in fact, one of my major jobs, although it's quite often said of me that it's a case of jaw jaw rather than war war. Effectively, you need to plan for this and playbook is a good description. Now, one of the jobs that I do for some of the infrastructure so national infrastructure sites, is literally put together a standard operating procedure is what to do if the great unwashed turn up and block access. Or if you have strange things, even travellers arriving in a field next door can cause major business disruption.

It's little things like that, but when they come out, once the plan is written, the best way of testing it is to do putative tests. You basically say okay, to 11 o'clock Monday morning, unbeknownst to everybody except the senior management, we're going to have an exercise as to what to do and this really sort of test one's responsiveness. Where we come in is of course, for example, quite a few businesses find that then they're not in a controversial area that they're running ordinary industry, but somebody nearby is running an infrastructure, which is somewhat controversial, say they're an all storage depo protesters turn up block access, and suddenly they find their businesses suffering. What one can do about that?

Jim Preen

I mean, that's really interesting, David, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, I run a lot of tests and exercises as well, I'm quite surprised to hear you say that you don't tell senior management that you're going to run an exercise. Because largely, almost exclusively, I would say that I do, simply because there's always the worry that the senior executives could be made to look a little foolish if they don't handle the situation. Well, maybe I've got my clients hat on, but I'm always a bit careful. Maybe it doesn't matter to you. I don't know. But I'm always worried about making my clients look foolish. So, but just before you come back, go on.

David Asker

I think I was giving you a miss description. There were so certain levels, they don't know about it. It's much much lower down than that senior management.

Jim Preen

Oh, I'm sorry, I beg your pardon.

David Asker

It is mainly because when these types, like we call them tabletop exercises, and when they've been done in the past, what you sometimes find is because everyone knows is an exercise, it isn't taken too seriously. So it depends on the business and the personalities involved, but quite frequently, only at a certain level will know actually is an exercise, but for the purpose of the operation. Lots of people think, oh, crikey, this is real. Once it starts, and once it's underway, people are very surprised at the fact that actually, this is a simulation. But it does throw up some interesting things as to what has been done as a pure simulation, the atmosphere is very different. And you don't tease out those details, things that can make all the difference between something being resolved the same day or taking several days.

Jim Preen

Yeah. I think the point to make here is what you're trying to achieve here is you are basically not testing people, well, you are kind of testing people. But really you're testing your plan to see whether there are any gaps within the plan. And people might think, Well, why do we need this? Why do we need this plan and so forth? I think my answer to that is that if you have a crisis, or if you have a serious incident, you're going to be under incredible scrutiny from all your stakeholders, you know, all the regulators, the suppliers, maybe the emergency services, if a crisis is big enough the media may be interested and see if there's a story in it for them. Also, there's all the internal audiences as well, there's going to be scrutiny from staff and families and so forth. They're all asking the same question. What does this mean, for me? and what they're all looking for, basically, is strong leadership and reassurance that there is a plan in place, there's something in place that is going to provide an effective response to whatever the crisis might be.

David Asker

And the key to all of that, of course, is a bit hackneyed, I know, but it is communication and one of the first things that collapses whenever we do a test. And often when we hit the ground running, when there's been an incident, communication, always wobbles, it may not collapse, but it always wobbles because it is human nature, I think people tend to into if something happens that's unexpected, no matter how often you've planned for it. People do tend to internalise it, even people in positions of leadership. And one of the reasons for doing these tabletop exercises, and one of the things that's worked quite well in the past is rather than a formal tabletop exercise, we've quite often done an operational demonstration.

Because, for example, if you're dealing with interruptions, your business that involves third parties from outside involves people rather than events, people are probably the hardest thing to deal with. And of course, when I refer to people quite often, in my case, my experiences this is people that shouldn't be there protesters, squatters, what have you. What will happen is, the personalities involved in this will come to the fore, and it can be a blocked communication. So certainly when doing these tabletop exercises, you start to realise where the key bits of communication are, and they're not often high up in the chain. The real key ones are what's happening on the ground. I do quite a lot of work for some sporting events, etc. You can imagine they're the first intimation that something's going wrong or something has happened is going to be somebody literally, probably at a fairly low level. Gate guard, Security Guard member of staff on the ground is getting that information to where it needs to go to make things happen in the proper order. And there's the nub of that whole thing is communication.

Jim Preen

Excellent David, let me just give you one example of this when somebody once said to me that the first rule of crisis communications for a company is to keep in touch with the public mood, don't do or say stuff that's really going to irritate people. And I think, you know, you have to remember, I guess this is with my sort of journalist hat on but words of freighted with meaning. And let me just give you one example of this, I don't want to talk in too much sort of grey areas, let's hone in on something specific. There was an incident a couple of years ago with United Airlines where I don't know, you may have been in this situation where they overfill at flights, they need to get more people on.

And you know, you're offered like this, but it happened to me once you're offered a free flight, if you take the next flight, or you're offered a bit of money, and so forth. And United Airlines, they overfilled the flight needed to get more people on but they'd actually put people on board. And just to cut, you probably remember this story. But to cut to the chase, they actually sent on security to whole people off the flight, one of whom was a doctor, Dr. David Tao, and he was hauled off this flight and everyone' sat there on the aircraft, with their smartphones, of course, and I'm sure smartphones have cause you a lot of problems, David, but you know there they are, sat with their smartphone.

So they're taking video, they taking snapshots of this doctor literally being hauled off the flight. And of course, they're on the ground, so they have contact with the Internet. And then it goes viral almost immediately, the chief executive gets up to apologise for this and this is two sentences from his apology. This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United, I apologise for having to re accommodate these customers. So let's just unpack that for a second. The first sentence is, this is an upsetting event to all of us here at United, I'm pretty sure it was fairly upsetting to the doctor who is physically hauled off the flight. And the second one is I apologise for having to re accommodate those customers. So David Dow, Dr. Dow, don't worry, you're not being hauled off the flight, you're merely being re accommodated. I mean, I just can't imagine a worse response. So ultimately, I assume the crisis comms team got ahold of it. And then he issued another apology, which we have committed to our customers and our employees that we're going to fix what's broken. So this never happens again, which is what they should have said or something like it, you know, right away. So I think you know,

Claire Scaramanga

People remember the first statement, not the second.

Jim Preen

Well, that could be true, Claire, that's a good point as well.

David Asker

The use of cameras, actually, what I suppose perhaps I've been longing you to the fact that the first thing that the protests community will do is put a camera in your face. I think that's a jolly good thing. I think it imposes certain standards of behaviour on everybody, including, of course, the protesters.

Jim Preen

Now, of course, police have body cams all the time now as well, right? So relatively new.

David Asker

Body cams are all very well, but particularly I remember a particular incident a few years ago, the gentleman says, listen to this, forgive me, but he is small and rotund. Little like the Fat Controller from Thomas the Tank Engine, his body cam recorded in perfect audio detail his interaction with a particularly aggressive protester who was actually assaulting him at the time and how he dealt with it.

Unfortunately, the video of his consisted of clouds scudding across the sky, due to the shape of his chest. So what we always do when any operation is planned, while any interaction goes on, we have AGT evidence gathering teams, that is a separate cameraman, with obviously an assistant to mind their back. Now that cuts both ways. It's very, very useful for evidential purposes. But what it is vitally important for is a communications tool for when you're planning operations when you're training people, and when you're trying to explain to your clients that when you have a problem, this is how it is dealt with. It is a very particularly useful tool. Comms concentrate people's minds wonderfully as well. So I have no problem with video. In fact, I very much welcome it as a modern development it's excellent.

Claire Scaramanga

Misinformation is often something that needs to be dealt with during a crisis, isn't it?

David Asker

Quite so.

Claire Scaramanga

I mean, I know on one of your recent projects there was video taken that was presented in one way to accommodate the story of the protesters, but the truth of the matter was somewhat different. So how can organisations deal with that kind of misinformation?

David Asker

Well, again, our central theme is communication and miscommunication. Quite simply, when it comes to now, obviously the enforcement officer is acting generally for the client in the action, it's not for us to go publishing things on YouTube. That's not something we do, EGT evidence gathering team, but the video evidence is there and available. So as far as it goes, the client is at liberty to use that in their community in their media communication. And again, the United Airlines thing demonstrated, don't rush to communicate, get your crisis management team to deal with it, they are trained to do this.

And certainly, when it comes to enforcement now, again, the communication issue is the contact between the press of the public, and what's happening on the ground. Quite often, there'll be enforcement officers there, now they are all trained at how to communicate properly, with third parties with the press. Generally, with a major operation, the client will have a proper media facing team in place. And it is the job of the enforcement officer if asked to point them in that direction. They're not there to give him interviews, they don't give interviews, but they don't sit there and say no comment with a handout, they simply say you need to get in contact with XYZ. And quite frequently, they'll have a card to hand out because people won't remember a phone number they're given or a web address, and they'll simply have a card, a pre printed card saying this is how to contact familiar information.

Jim Preen

Yeah, I think just picking up on a couple of things. You said that David, very interesting. I mean, I think for an organisation that is caught in a crisis, and there is misinformation, and God knows there's enough misinformation spread on social media, somehow, they have to become a source of truth. And that can be very difficult because they won't always want to tell everybody everything about a crisis.

But I think there are things they can do. Obviously, they need to have media monitoring in place, they need to see what's being said about them particularly on on social media. Now bigger organisations will have their own social media monitoring departments. But for smaller organisations, that can be very difficult. I mean, the point being that if false information is being spread, then you need to get on top of that immediately, it's going to be difficult for you to stop it being spread, but you need to put your side of the story is what we sometimes call the information gap. And that's why I agree with you, David when you say you shouldn't communicate too quickly, but you don't want to be too quiet too quickly, particularly when you see misinformation being spread, you do need to take action. And I'm not talking about getting in a slanging match on social media. But I do mean about putting out your side of the story. So that this information gap that I'm talking about isn't filled by other people, it's filled by the firm's narrative telling you what they are actually doing. Because often firms do take too long to communicate. And I think, you know, the speed with which you communicate can be an indicator of how prepared you are to respond to an emergency, and that action is being taken.

David Asker

That's an interesting point.

Jim Preen

Claire, talk to us. Talk to us.

Claire Scaramanga

I was going to say, what part does media training play in all of that, Jim?

Jim Preen

Ah, well, yeah, I mean, it's, it's been obviously it's important, I suppose. Now, I know, you're all going to jump on me for this because I do this. So obviously, it's important to me, but I think it is important. I mean, let's face it, some people are better at talking to the press than others. That is absolutely for sure. But I think the important thing is, also a lot of chief executives who are very, very busy and people who are more likely to speak to the press go, "Oh, I don't have time for this". But actually, it can be taught really, quite quickly.

And the important thing is to get people in front of a camera and to see how they respond. And I tend to create sort of scenarios and give them some training. And we go, we get them on camera. And just very quickly on media training. I mean, there's just some basic rules that people need to know. One thing that astonishes me is that nobody ever asks a reporter what the questions are going to be. Now I know that some reporters may not want to tell you what all the questions are going to be. But it's certainly worth asking. And thereafter, the kind of classic media training thing is you need to have three or four messages that you are going to get across come what may. And so you know, you don't want to be a slippery person. You don't want to be a slippery politician. You should answer the questions if you can, and then you bridge to the messages that you want to get across.

And just sorry to talk too much, but just picking out one thing that David said, Is that all right, I agree that it's not always the chief executive who speaks and it can be the media team. But if an organisation is caught up in a big crisis, then ultimately, the chief executive is going to have to speak. And you want to know that person is capable of doing that job can face the press, and can speak, you know, in a sympathetic and empathetic manner. So that person does certainly need to be media trained. And just the one thing to remember, with the media, the camera is always running, the microphone is always on. And the reporter is always listening, even when you think the interview is over.

David Asker

And I would echo that now, there is in any operational plan, I write for a major op. And some of these run, including all the appendices with risk assessments and methods statements, they run to well over 250 pages, there is a large section entitled media communication. But it doesn't just cover the media, because now in the days of streaming social media, you will find the protesters themselves are very adept, at conducting ad hoc interviews. And then quite frequently, in fact, I think, floating about on the internet, there still is some fairly interesting video of me interacting with protesters who were being removed under a compulsory purchase order from a major infrastructure site, and obviously are quite aggrieved at this.

And their spokesperson decided to try and conduct a in depth questioning of me now, I'm not there to represent the client. I am, however, an officer of the court. And to stand in there like a wooden cigar store Indian is not appropriate behaviour. These people have a right to know under what authority they're being removed, what will happen, and how it will go ahead. And so these are the messages that I need to get over. All to their frame of reference, their frame of questioning, but, I tend to stick to my guns. There was a point during this where you can see a guy had lost the will to live because he was simply getting the same answer back, this is what we're going to do, this is how we're going to go about it, these your rights.

It does take, I think, quite a lot of experience and I say I've been doing this for 40 years, not bad for a job that was supposed to last six months. But part of the reason I've done it for 40 years is every situation is different, but one does learn it. Now it can be taught. And this is where certainly my more senior officers are trained and experienced in dealing with inquiries at all level, generally from protesters. But certainly from the client side. I do worry when we're in the planning stage, and they haven't got anything formal in place for dealing with media inquiries, because it can be a problem. And also one of the other communication issues that comes up in the same vein, as might be worth carrying on with this is when you're dealing with activists and protesters who are trying to prevent a business from operating or what have you. They will have their own narrative. And what will they will also do is they will mobilize supporters to inundate your switchboard with calls. And they will also do things like contact the Health and Safety Executive and say, you know, there are people dying here which is all rubbish but of course, the HSE are under an obligation to investigate.

David Asker

Again, major operations, they know this is coming because we liaise with them beforehand, they've seen our operational plans, so they can deal with it accordingly. But all these things need to be considered at a planning stage. And they need to be communicated to the right parties because otherwise, it can catch people by surprise. Who are not expecting it?

Claire Scaramanga

And social media is obviously a tool used very extensively by all the protesters we've certainly found that Twitter is a very favourite platform.

Jim Preen

Absolutely Claire.

Claire Scaramanga

Mobilising, Yeah.

Jim Preen

I would absolutely. endorse that. And I think the important thing, is that part of your plan, part of your crisis plan, social media, there must be a social media plan as well. We need to know who's monitoring social media. I think the thing to say here is that these days, things have really changed with the advent of social media. Now you're kind of communicating with your audiences, you're not just communicating to your audiences, it's a lot less sort of top down, if you will.

And I think, you know, particularly for organisations that are caught up in a crisis, it's all about listening to your stakeholders and responding to them sometimes, you know, individually, and I know that that's, that's a big call for small companies, but, you know, for large organisations who have a social media team, then that's doable, but for small firms, it can be tough, but I mean, just three very quick general rules for dealing with on social media is don't get involved in a slanging match, you can't win that. Try and answer questions if you can, because if you answer one question, other people, especially if you use the right hashtag and so forth, other people will be looking at those answers and that will be useful. And basically, it's back to this misinformation that you need to correct factual errors or mistakes using social media. Sorry, just one final thing here. I think, you know, social media pile-on is a horrible thing. And social media is full of negativity and all kinds of horrors. But it is a good way for an organisation to reach its most important stakeholders straightaway. You can just put out some message that you're aware that there's a crisis underway, and you have a plan in place, and then you may direct people to your website, or whatever it might be. But it's a good way, to communicate directly with your most important audiences.

Claire Scaramanga

I imagine also communicating with all your employees during a crisis is a thing as well.

Jim Preen

Yeah, just very quickly on that, before David comes in. Absolutely, and I think quite often organisations think very carefully about how they're dealing with external stakeholders, like the press, and so forth. And sometimes, you know, it's, you know, they forget to inform their staff. And what you don't want in a circumstance like that is the staff getting all their information from social media, because you know, social media is going to be really toxic, and so forth. So organisations need to make sure that staff are getting good dispassionate information from the company.

And this is where training days and tabletop exercises come in, from and familiarisation, even when there's not a formal exercise on, because we've got offices all over the country, a local office, they will generally make himself known to our clients, who've got a contingency plan in place. And every three months or so we'll visit, they then become part of the furniture. And so when something happens, the staff and employees there are aware that there are plans in place, which in itself, they may have heard of those plans, they may not be part of those plans. But that in itself does tend to damp down the forest fire caused when a crisis does happen with miscommunication. Some of it deliberate, some of it accidental, some of it well intentioned, some of it mal-intentioned, yes, the Internet has created its own social conditions. But it was always there. In the old days, it was the man in the pub in the corner of the pub with half a pint of lager muttering under his breath. Now he or she sits behind a keyboard. The difference hasn't changed.

Yeah, that may be true, David. But the reach has changed phenomenally. You know, one bloke sitting with his pint of mild in a pub might speak to three people, with the right hashtags. And an interesting topic, you can reach 1000s of people in seconds. And I think that's what's driven this. And it's a huge problem for organisations to keep, you know, to keep up to speed with this, because the reach is so massive.

David Asker

Yeah, I mean, rumours fly, but the truth trudges I'm afraid it and putting a plan in place is the only communication, a good communications plan. Pre, not just pre written but regularly checked and revised is the only way to stand a chance of countering that. I mean, look at the BP oil leak in the southern Gulf, Florida Gulf. Where the chief executives were on holiday and said I wish it was all over, I could get back on holiday.

Jim Preen

He apologized and said now I want my life back.

Claire Scaramanga

I think he resigned shortly afterwards. Didn't he?

Jim Preen

I tell you what, Claire, just can I just very briefly just lay out, well, I think and David can come in on this as well, is what should be in a crisis plan. Because we've been talking in general terms about that. And I just wonder if I could just It won't take long. Just sort of lay out what I think people should have in a crisis plan. As I've said already, it should be a series of checklists, I think, that's the best way for it to go. So you need to assemble your crisis team. You need to know who's in the crisis team and what roles and responsibilities they all have.

Obviously, these days, a lot of people will be joining online, they won't actually be in a room together as they would have been in days gone by, then I'm gonna get a bit military here but then I think you need an incident report or a situation report. So it's all those W questions who, what, when, where, why. It's funny when I first got into crisis management, I didn't know what a CIT rep was, again, I was a journalist, but I certainly recognise those questions. Because the who, what, when, where, and why questions are the questions that journalists are all taught to ask as well so it amounts to the same thing.

Then you need to have a series of boilerplate statements coms that we've been talking about today. Now, you're never going to use one of these boilerplate statements exactly as it is. But what it does is it allows comms people to have something there. You're not starting from a blank piece of paper and those boilerplate statements can then be adapted to fit the situation that they find themselves in, then you need to identify the key audiences that you're going to be communicating with, during the crisis. And then you need to develop you know, Q and A's lines to take press releases, and so forth and you need to nominate a spokesperson who's actually going to speak to the press, whether that's going to be the chief executive, or it's going to be someone else. And just one other thing about that chief executive thing. What's quite good is if you don't use your chief executive, to begin with, in an incident that if things don't go so well, initially, with your first apology, or statement, or whatever it is, you can then and you haven't used the chief executive, you can get the chief executive and to take another tack, and hopefully, it will go a little better.

Because the problem is, once you use the chief executive journalists and the public will think well, why aren't we hearing from the chief executive, that's who we're expecting to hear from. And just very quickly, the other thing is you need obviously, you need media monitoring in place, you may well need call takers in place if you have a call center or whatever it might be. And a really important one. And this might seem like quite a lowly job, during an incident, but you need a secretary or you need a note taker, who is logging all the information that's coming in. And particularly, you need to log all the actions and decisions taken by the organisation, because in a really big crisis, there may be an inquiry that follows. So you need to know what actions and decisions were taken. And I think this might be one for you, Claire, actually.

Also, you need to think about your website as well. Because the first place journalists are going to go to in a crisis is the company's website. And if everything is lovely, and they've got ads there or smiling faces, and there's no kind of reference to the problem that the company is having. That's not a good look from a journalist's point of view, or indeed the public. So you might need what we call a dark website, or some other website to be able to put up there.

Claire Scaramanga

Anything from you David to wrap up?

David Asker

Well, yes, I'd echo what Jim said then, very wise counsel, were my operational plans. Obviously, they're more concerned with the doing, but they always are prefaced with an executive overview, which really should form major material for the media team. So they actually speak with some authority as to what steps are being taken to deal with the crisis, what is going on the ground. But the point about event logging is absolutely vital. Obviously, in my job as an officer of the court, everything we do is logged in detail, because it may be used evidence in future. But when it is really useful and comes back to tabletop exercises. At the end of the operation, I prepare a synopsis report, this is what we did, this is what happened.

And from that, following you've dealt with the crisis, it's all over, it's not all over, the most important thing to do is a lesson learned because that will save it from ever happening again in the future if it works really well. But at the very least, it'll mean that you're able to deal with it much more efficiently in future. And the key to the whole thing is communications, right down from the enforcement officers on the ground dealing with the source of the crisis, or the emergency services dealing with the source of the crisis, right the way through to the chief executive, if the communication isn't there, at the very best, it won't work as well, at the very worst, it will be an absolute unmitigated disaster. Some of the stuff we see on TV every day, you look at it, and you think, oh, dear, why did you not? But of course, communication is the only way you're going to do that. We all have great ideas, but if they stay in here, in our head, they won't work, okay, thank you.

Claire Scaramanga

Brilliant. Thank you both very much for giving up your time to join us on today's podcast. Thank you and till next time.

Jim Preen

Thanks very much, Claire. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Claire Scaramanga

Thank you, Jim.

David Asker

Thank you, Claire. Thank you, Jim.

Claire Scaramanga

Thank you, David. Goodbye.