Crisis Communications:
Planning Makes It Easier to Weather a Storm
By Michael Stoner

For CEOs, communicators, and other senior staff on campuses, a major lesson of the shootings at Virginia Tech is that an active crisis is no time to find out that you aren't prepared. Since then, crisis contingency planning has been an ongoing topic of workshops, seminars, conferences, and listservs.
     
One of the most important elements of a crisis plan is communications. Timely communications to the people affected by a crisis—your students, faculty, and staff—can save lives. Thoughtful, transparent, and thorough communications to the outside world about the crisis can allay the fears of parents and families about their loved ones, ease the concern of alumni, and make a real difference in how your institution is perceived. That perception, of course, can affect admissions and fundraising for years to come.
     
Good crisis communications does not happen by accident. While no institution can ever be completely prepared for a crisis, having a crisis communications plan in place—one that has been created by the appropriate stakeholders, clearly identifies roles and responsibilities, segments communications, and allows for monitoring of the reaction of various audiences—will help you weather a crisis.
     
From only a brand perspective, the first question to ask, perhaps, is "What is a crisis?" According to Christopher Simpson, author of Weathering the Storm: Protecting Your Brand in the Worst of Times, it is "any event that jeopardizes or harms your image, reputation, or financial stability."
     
In planning for a crisis, Simpson says, the first important decision for the president or CEO is to designate the institution's senior communications staff member as the crisis communications manager. He or she should then convene an issues management or crisis communications team, consisting of members from across campus.
     
The role of the team will be to identify potential crises and how to deal with them. In Simpson's view, the responsibilities of this group can overlap with those of an issues management task force, which can identify issues that are not crises but might affect important areas such as recruiting, athletics, or fundraising. In any event, this team will be responsible for drafting, testing and implementing a crisis communications plan.
     
The appropriate members of this group include leaders from the administrative and academic sides of campus, campus police, student affairs, and others. In short, people who are accustomed to representing the institution and talking to the media. One key reason that clearly identifying the spokesperson during a crisis is important is that during a crisis, everyone needs to know who is the boss. "When a crisis hits, you don't want to be figuring out what decisions need to be made and who makes them," Tom Krattenmaker, Associate Vice President, Public Affairs and Communications, Lewis & Clark College, observed. "There's no time to figure this out on the spot, as media questions come in fast and furious, and the to-do list can quickly become unmanageable."

Simpson says that the most critical parts of any crisis plan are these:

      1. Clarity about who speaks to whom. In times of crisis, the institution should designate one person to act as the spokesperson. This should probably be the president or the chief communications officer. Simpson notes, "This doesn't mean that this person is the only person who will speak to the media, but he/she is the only one who can authorize who else can speak. Reporters love to interview senior staff and board members, for example, to get conflicting responses. Conflict equals news. Bottom line: in times of crisis, your job is to control the message and flow of information. You do this by controlling who speaks and who does not."

      2. Audience segmentation of communications. "In times of crisis, you respond to carefully selected target audiences (faculty, staff, and students; prospective students; alumni and donors; business leader and opinion leaders; elected officials, etc), not simply the media," Simpson points out. It is important to determine the best ways to respond to each of these audiences. How you communicate with people on campus may vary depending on what happens. What do you do, for example, if your crisis communications plan relies on text messaging and a tornado obliterates cell service?

      3. Monitoring the response that key audiences have to your messages. In a crisis, you have to monitor the response to your messages in order to learn about what additional information audiences may need from you, or how they are responding to what you are saying. For example, your alumni director should pay close attention to what alumni are saying. "If they disagree with how you are handling a situation," Simpson says, "consider changing strategies and tactics." The same is true for other key audiences. Their responses help you to measure how effective your response—and your communications—are.

These days, technology plays a key role in crisis communications, but you have to be fully prepared to use technology well. That means being cognizant of how people use technology, the multiple technologies that they use, and how best to deploy various technology options. Dave Smallen, Vice President for Information Technology at Hamilton College, observes, "Prior to Virginia Tech we thought of email as a sufficient way to communicate.  We could do it quickly. Then we realized that it wouldn't necessarily reach enough people quickly enough."
     
At Virginia Tech, the first email alert was delivered to everyone on campus within five minutes. But for some crises, that wouldn't be fast enough. O'Neal Smitherman, formerly Vice President for Information Technology at Indiana’s Ball State University, asks whether it really makes sense to try to deliver email messages to warn students about a tornado that will hit campus in five minutes. It doesn't; in this case, a siren or alarm will work much better.
     
And, depending on the crisis, technology can fail. Smitherman points out that "Even regularly used technology can fail during a crisis.  We have seen cell phone systems (voice and text messaging) and web servers quickly become overloaded in the event of a major crisis.  Other local systems such as email may also be flooded with incoming and internal mail, making emergency ‘broadcast’ email messages delivery even more difficult.  For all of these reasons, a university needs to consider how the communications plan will work if certain aspects of the technology (especially technology hosted on the campus) becomes unavailable.  Several foreseeable crisis situations such as an evacuation of the campus or a tornado or flood may render on-campus technology assets unusable.  Having a contingency plan for dealing with the loss of local campus technology assets is critical."
     
Michael Dame, Director of Web Communications at Virginia Tech, responded to a question about what technology-related issues should be considered in developing a crisis communications plan by saying, "Load balancing, local network infrastructure and capacity, co-location of production environments. Another big one is the absence of a ‘lite’ version of the home page to facilitate faster load times when traffic spikes. We were fortunate to have our ‘home page lite’ ready to go on April 16."
     
A system that is just used for crisis communications is probably not going to work well in a real crisis, Smitherman points out, because people are not particularly good at maintaining contact information in systems that are used regularly. "Few students (or even employees) will take the time to update their cell phone and text messaging addresses in the campus communication system for the sole purpose of emergency contact.  The technology used by both the sender and receiver which enables the emergency communication will also be more likely to work successfully if used routinely for non-emergency ‘opt in’ communications."
     
Everyone who is involved in crisis communications agrees: A plan is worthless if you create it and put it on the shelf, then dust it off if a crisis occurs. Dame remarked, "You need to practice. We have an occasional ‘fire drill’ to test our response time." Simpson, whose company specializes in crisis communications for higher education, suggests revisiting a crisis communications plan at least twice a year, "in August and again in January. You must update contact information of the crisis team members every 90 days. And test the plan fully once a year." Unfortunately, you can't avoid a crisis. But careful preparation and testing can help you focus on managing one more effectively.

Michael Stoner is president of mStoner, a communications and branding firm whose work leverages the power of the Internet and print.  You can contact him at michael.stoner@mStoner.com; www.mStoner.com; www.mStonerBlog.com.