How can you maintain consistent messaging during a crisis?

One way to maintain consistent messaging during a crisis is to establish a designated spokesperson or a crisis communication team. This helps ensure that all communication is coordinated and consistent across different channels and stakeholders. By having a designated individual or team responsible for delivering messages, you can avoid conflicting information and effectively manage the flow of information during a crisis.

Preparation should go further than this. It is possible to anticipate the types of crisis that are likely to arrive at your doorstep. Therefore, holding statements should be written and approved with only minor edits needed at the time. Another avenue of preparation is understanding roles and the chain of command. There should be no confusion in the midst of a crisis who the spokesperson is and who needs to approve communications.

Mike Tyson, “You Got A Plan Until Punched In The Nose” I originally designed the platform of the current City of Houston Emergency Evacuation System. I the project leader, along with a team of professionals and 2 universities, created it after a hurricane and people were stranded on highways. One of many lessons, from that project is those of us on the team who were survivors of the storm or strained on the highway had a completely different approach to the plan than the experts who were professionals but had never lived through a disaster. When you create a plan, no matter what it's for. You need multiple perspectives; otherwise, when the action hits what looks good on paper, in an app, system, etc., it will not likely meet the needs.

cont... Of The Evacuation Plan Story In building that plan, the people who had not lived through a disaster did not want evacuees to understand or know the severity. Lke a Hollywood movie where the government doesn't want to tell the citizens what's happening, not to create more panic, hysteria, or chaos. For those of us who had lived through and were trapped in the storm, it was apparent how dangerous it was for people not to know how bad it was. When people don't understand or know the truth, it brings haphazardness, creates lackadaisical reactions, they underestimate or bad decisions. Reality, was life or death. A lack of truth made the few people who did understand the severity appear as conspiracy theories, crazy, or overreactive.

Pre-Messaging For those who become easily annoyed at people who need a lot of information to decide on something easy or obvious, it is also very annoying to the person to not have enough or correct information to make a sound good decision. It's worse for both during a crisis. I work in the jungle with many rebels, warlords, and para-military. Your first reaction should be not to run when hearing gunshots. Reason 1: figure out where the sound is coming from versus where the weapon actually is Reason 2: the first shots can be used to run you into an ambush We train, and you should also train on pre-messaging. Design a: "Pre-Messaging System" is your organization's preparatory "short" messages created before a specific event or crisis.

Nothing Is More Consistent Than Culture Make it mandatory to discuss 1 crisis system item before or at the end of meetings. For any meeting under 30 minutes, 2 to 3 minutes, an hour meeting, 3 to 5 minutes wholly dedicated to a new item each time from the crisis plan. Just one item in every meeting can bring up your effectiveness. Doing it this way, you start to develop a culture, reducing the need for separate training sessions. When it's part of your corporate and social culture, and it's cheaper than training. Ensure to be realistic from time to time. Use some of it in your daily emails, office chats (lingo), and text messages to familiarize people with it. It's a hell of a lot easier to do it now than when all hell breaks loose.

Message discipline should not just be a function of crisis. Quite the opposite. Being undisciplined in your messaging (conflicting messages and themes) are likely going to be the SOURCE of a crisis especially when the messages are contrary to your actions. And message discipline should cross every department in an organization. An employee email should have the same values weaved through it as a letter to your regulatory agency.

It's Not Going To Happen To Me Creating a 1 letter page foldable system that fits into a pocket is better than an entire three-ring binder full of things nobody reads. - No matter how sophisticated the system is, it will never work 100% the way you want, no matter how much you design or train. - This is why you must always train anyway. At the end of every meeting, spend 3 to 5 minutes talking about one thing from the crisis system; just one every meeting can bring you to 50% effective. You don't need much individual training if it's a part of your corporate and social culture, and it's cheaper. - Just make sure to be realistic from time to time. The problem with many societies is that everybody believes it won't happen to them.

Crisis preparedness is not just a communication function. Your comms team will usually lead the siren call for preparation because they are the keepers of the reputation but it is the C-suite that needs to sponsor and actively push these efforts from the top down.