The Essential Guide To Managing Corporate Crises

The Definitive Guide to Communicating in Any Crisis “When facing an already difficult crisis, the last thing a company needs is to make it worse through its own communications – or lack thereof. As one who has lived through a number of [business] crises and served as an independent investigator of the crises of others, I consider Steven Fink’s book to be an excellent guide to avoiding collecting scar tissue of your own by learning from the scar tissue painfully collected by others.”—Norman R. Augustine, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Lockheed Martin There are few guarantees in business today. Unfortunately, one of them is the inevitability of a crisis having a potentially major effect on your business and your reputation. When your company finds itself in the midst of a crisis, the ripple effects can disrupt lives and business for the foreseeable future if public opinion is not properly shaped and managed. Skillfully managing the perception of the crisis determines the difference between a company’s life or death. Because in the pitched battle between perception and reality, perception always wins. Fortunately, there is a solution. Crisis communications and crisis management legend Steven Fink gives you everything you need to prepare for the inevitable—whether it’s in the form of human error, industrial accidents, criminal behavior, or natural disasters. In this groundbreaking guide, Fink provides a complete toolkit for ensuring smooth communications and lasting business success through any crisis. Crisis Communications offers proactive and preventive methods for preempting potential crises. The book reveals proven strategies for recognizing and averting damaging crisis communications issues before it’s too late. The book also offers ways to deal with mainstream and social media, use them to your advantage, and neutralize and turn around a hostile media environment Steven Fink uses his decades of expertise and experience in crisis communications to help you: UNDERSTAND AND MANAGE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PUBLIC PERCEPTION AND REALITY CHOOSE THE BEST SPOKESPERSON FOR THE CRISIS PROTECT YOUR BRAND AND REPUTATION THROUGH CRISES LARGE AND SMALL MAKE WISE, VIGILANT, AND DEFENSIBLE DECISIONS UNDER EXTREME CRISIS-INDUCED STRESS TELL THE TRUTH NO MATTER HOW TEMPTING IT MAY BE TO MISLEAD USE SOCIAL MEDIA OUTLETS TO COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT A CRISIS The explosion of the Internet and, especially, social media, has added a new layer to the business leader’s skill set: the ability to handle a crisis quickly and professionally within moments of its occurrence. Livelihoods depend upon it. With in-depth case studies of Toyota, BP, and Penn State, Crisis Communications provides everything you need to successfully lead your company through today’s rocky landscape of business—where crises large and small loom around every corner, and the lives of businesses and management teams hang in the balance. PRAISE FOR STEVEN FINK’S CRISIS MANAGEMENT “Every major executive in America ought to read at least one book on crisis management. In this way, he or she might be better prepared to deal with the disasters striking organizations at an ever-increasing rate ... The question is: ‘Is Steven Fink’s book one that busy executives ought to read?’ The answer is a resounding yes.”—LOS ANGELES TIMES, FRONT PAGE SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW

Do your company and employees have the necessary "IQ" not only to withstand a crisis but also come through it with strength and confidence? Like many companies over the last few years, yours has probably done a great deal to reassess its physical, strategic, and financial vulnerabilities. However, there is a huge difference between business continuity planning and true crisis management. Ian Mitroff outlines seven distinct competencies your organization needs to handle crises effectively: Right Heart (emotional IQ): By accepting crisis as an inevitability, you can process much of the shock and grief beforehand, and avoid making the effects of the crisis even worse through an unconstructive response. Right Thinking (creative IQ): "Crises don’t care about the ways in which we have organized the world," so out-of-the-box thinking is essential. Right Social and Political IQ: Understand that your business is subject not only to the pitfalls of its industry, but to the universal and complex challenges that threaten all companies. Right Integration (integrative IQ): Realize that crises are perceived differently by different stakeholders, and are never simple "exercises" that can be "solved." Identify and reconcile these perceptions now so that the path is clear when the crisis strikes. Right Technical IQ: "Think like a controlled paranoid" to uncover ways in which malicious forces could cause a crisis in your company. Question every assumption about what is "normal," "impossible," or "absurd." Right Aesthetic IQ: Reconsider the classic design of the corporation, which is meant to address problems as they arise, and move toward one in which crisis management is an overarching discipline on a par with, for example, finance. Spiritual IQ: Reject the notion that people’s physical, mental, and spiritual beings are completely separate; and establish ahead of time why our work is, and must remain, important to us on many different levels. Although crisis management has taken on new urgency in recent turbulent times, the need for careful planning did not originate on September 11, 2001. Mitroff’s examples, drawn from interviews conducted both before and after the 2001 attacks during his 25 years of experience, demonstrate the need for action -- and offer a blueprint for taking it.

Drawing on a survey of Fortune 1,000 companies as well as interviews with over 500 managers with crisis management experience, this book gives managers--at all levels and in every department--the practical, hands-on tools they need to determine where their organization is vulnerable and where they are prepared, who will be affected, and what strategies will work best for managing a crisis when it occurs.

According to Mitroff, one of the world's leading experts on crisis management, the rise in the crisis rate is due to an ingrained "it-can't happen-to-us" mentality--which, in turn, leads to a total lack of preparedness for crises.

Offering a strategic orientation to crisis management, this fully updated edition of Crisis Management: Leading in the New Strategy Landscape, Second Edition by William "Rick" Crandall, John A. Parnell, and John E. Spillan helps readers understand the importance of planning for crises within the wider framework of an organization's regular strategic management process. This strikingly engaging and easy-to-follow text focuses on a four-stage crisis management framework: 1) Landscape Survey: identifying potential crisis vulnerabilities, 2) Strategic Planning: organizing the crisis management team and writing the plan, 3) Crisis Management: addressing the crisis when it occurs, and 4) Organizational Learning: applying lessons from crises so they will be prevented or mitigated in the future.

This new practical guide explains what makes a crisis and who are the key players. It shows the importance of prior preparation and testing so that the company fully understands the crisis management environment and the importance of communications. Also included are checklists that should form part of the company's crisis management handbook and discussion of training and learning opportunities. This is a fully comprehensive approach to crisis management planning and implementation.