Crisis is a unavoidable situation than one can face.The death of a close friend or family member,theft of your expensive car or failure to pass an exam can all account to personal crisis.
Crisis occurs in every organization so an organization needs to be well prepared to counter a crisis situation whenever it occurs.
Crisis can basically take two forms like natural disasters and human induced crisis,which can be further classified into human error,negligence,or even malicious intent.In the last decade or so all most all the crisis the corporate world has seen is human induced.When talking about human induced crisis, the best example which springs to mind is the Enron fiasco.The Enron fiasco also sank its auditor Arthur Andersen into bankruptcy.The reference given below gives a summary of the whole issue and the verdicts which were passed by the lawmakers.
www.cnn.com/money/2006/05/25/
How does one prepare for a crisis?I guess thats a million dollar question but any way these are few steps which can be followed
1. Asses the Risk for your organization
2. Plan for Crises
3. Determine Effect on Constituencies
4. Set Communication Objectives for Potential Crises
5. Analyze Channel of Choice for Communication
6. Assign a Different Team to Each Crisis
7. Plan for Centralization
8. What to Include in a Formal Plan·
a. A list of whom to notify in am Emergency·
b. An approach to Media Relations·
c. A strategy for Notifying Employees·
d. A location to Serve as Crises Headquarters
9. A Description of the plan.
These companies need to do when there are in middle of crisis are:- Get the facts right, gather the information and get the situation under control before things go out of control and the company starts loosing its reputation in front of its customers and potential customers.
- Communicate quickly with the media.Try not to say" No comments"
- Understand the media's angle for the story, is it to support the organization or to add misery to the situation.
- Try to have a direct communication channel to address the people who are directly effected by the crisis.
- Continue to focus on the primary business while handling the crisis side by side.
The best example that i can think of in the Indian context is the Coke India bounced back from a difficult situation ,where it was accused of having pesticides in its beverages in 2003.Coke India handle this issue well by giving a press conference along with Pepsi about the falsehoods involved in these allegations.Then Coke India opened up its doors to the media and the general public to visit its bottling factories, to have look at the strict quality measures that they were following.Later on Coke India launched a advertisement campaign where the CEO was shown having Coke himself to say that it was perfectly safe to drink one.
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