What to do during a crisis?

Last Wednesday Kenon Brown came in and talked to us about organizational crisis management. Mr. Brown is in his second year of pursuing his Ph.D.
We first started out by talking about the BP Oil Spill and the impact it had on our country and Gulf Coast lines. The oil spill stretched 320 miles of the Louisiana Shoreline and all the way down to Destin. I could see the affects of the oil spill because I live in Orange Beach, Al and we were one of the places that was hit hard by this spill. We also talked about the stress that it caused on the different communities around the shorelines. We said that it causes numerous anxiety, stress, and health problems for the people. The fishing industry also took a hard hit. The reaction of the CEO of BP acted like it was not his fault and did not take the blame. When the stepped down, the person who took over, also took over the blame and started trying to make amends. In the end the United States government blamed BP responsible for the oil spill.
Next we talked about the definition of crisis? A crisis is a perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes. A crisis is also unexpected. You never know when a crisis is going to arise and it can spring up at any moment. We had know idea that the BP Oil Spill, Katrina, or any other natural disasters were going to happen.
We also talked about the importance of crisis management. Here are the things to keep in mind:
1. Value of reputations
2. Stakeholders activism (very important)
3. Communication technology (all correct information, and get it fast)
4. Broader view of crises
5. Negligent failure to plan
The last thing that we talked about is the best practices in crisis management
• Process approaches and policy departments
• Pre-event planning (we need to plan for these things, so when they arise we are not in total shock.)
• Partnerships with the public
• Listen to the public’s concerns and understand the audience
• Honestly, candor, and openness
• Collaborate and coordinate with credible sources
• Meet the needs of the media and remain accessible
• Communicate with compassion, concern and empathy
• Accept, uncertainty, and ambiguity
• Message of self-efficacy
The last thing that we did in class was play out crisis scenarios. We had to come up with a message to tell the media, and make a client look in a good light. Even though the situation they might be in are bad. After we came up those messages we had breaking new, where get received another message where something else went wrong. It was fun getting to play out these scenarios because some of these could actually happen.
My question to the class is: have any of you ever been involved in a crisis? If so what did you do to prevent and/or help the situation.

By: Reed Ellis