Stop.
As soon as you realize you are in a crisis, stop what you’re doing.
Turn off your phone. For the rest of the day, you’ll communicate using your computer (messaging platforms, video meetings). You will not pick up any phonecalls.
Clear your day. This will be the focus of the rest of the day (or until you are blocked.) Delegate the rescheduling to someone else, if possible.
Eat and drink something. You’re going to need to think clearly and make decisions, and you won’t notice that you forgot to eat, and you won’t notice how that affects your decisions (it does).
Ok, now what?
There is no rule book on crisis communications; every situation is unique and requires an individual strategy.
Your objective right now is to navigate the choices immediately before you; there is no “right answer”, but there is a process to help you identify the best decision (given the choices at hand.)
Don’t try to do it alone. You need a thought partner who is not directly involved.
Reach out to hi@nolipservice.org to hire some support to get you through this.
Stop.
Gather your team.
Situation Analysis
What’s the worst that can happen?
Options.
Tell the truth. Say sorry.
Turn off your phone. For the rest of the day, you’ll communicate using your computer (messaging platforms, video meetings). You will not pick up any phonecalls.
Clear your day. This will be the focus of the rest of the day (or until you are blocked.) Delegate the rescheduling to someone else, if possible.
Eat and drink something. You’re going to need to think clearly and make decisions, and you won’t notice that you forgot to eat, and you won’t notice how that affects your decisions (it does).
Assemble the stakeholders. Refer them to the first three instructions.
Notify anyone who might need to be responsive at short notice. This list will always include your lawyer.
Notify your PR and customer support teams that you are beginning a crisis situation analysis and you will notify them as soon as you have information to share.
This is going to be the hardest part, hands down.
Don’t rush. Be meticulous and question everything. Don’t compile a report of “what happened” because that framing will force assumptions. Instead list “What we know” and “What we don’t know”. An assumption will be your biggest mistake, and knowing what you don’t know is your most valuable advantage.
Every crisis response begins with a panicked response to the worst case scenario, but in most cases that scenario doesn’t play out, or isn’t even possible.
Start with the worst case scenario and find where it fails.
There are always options, and crisis response is about choosing one.
Your goal is never to choose the “right” option — there is no single right option in any crisis — but there’s usually one that’s better than the others. Every option will have pros and cons: be clear who they are better or worse for, and record your logic; you might need to defend your choice one day.
Spin smells from a mile away. We’re better than that, be a human.