The unfortunate truth is that many companies have failed to recognize that physical events or nagging perceptions can be their undoing. As keepers of corporate reputation, we need to step up to one of our most important responsibilities: developing the capabilities for responding to threatening situations. In the process, if our planning is founded on ethical core values and implemented properly, it can help avert loss of public confidence.

Today, up to 25 percent of every chief communicator’s time requires attention to readiness planning. That planning had taken on new dimensions that will be discussed in this article.

Reasons for Readiness

Ten years ago the mantra for corporate executives who were facing a problem was “get public relations in here to deal with it.” Crises, whether a plane crash or a product recall, could be handled by smart communications. So much the better if there was a plan in place and the person at the helm had some experience in handling tough communication situations. Getting the messages lined up and a spokesperson geared up were the prime considerations.

Fast-forward to the 21st century. Previously unheard-of and unthinkable things are happening. Jet passenger planes are used as weapons of mass destruction, Victor Dricks, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said, regarding new vulnerabilities, “It was never considered credible that suicidal terrorist would hijack a large commercial airliner and deliberately crash it into a nuclear power plant.”

Earlier this year came the series of revelations in accounting, finance and analysis that opened a Pandora’s box of management behavior issues at a growing umber of companies. Clearly, today’s complete crisis response plan must have an ethical code of conduct as its basic guideline. The next company “disaster” might not involve a disabling plant fire, but rather an employee looking to cut corners to stretching dollar figures to meet targeted projection.

The corporate communicator—as skilled as he or she might be—has entered a new era that requires dimensions of planning and support never before imagined. As competent as some of us in PR firms thought we were in crisis communications management, there is now more to it than we had experienced in even the most severe crises of the past. The dimensions and the stakes are greater than ever.

Meanwhile, advances in technology require us to work more quickly than ever before. We recognize the nearly instantaneous spread of news that compounds the impact of a crisis. We respect the Internet. Safeguarding our interest means monitoring the Net and analyzing how its content affects our operations. On the other hand, technology gives us advantages to rapidly disseminate our message through special networks and strategic links. Companies must utilize all forms of interactive media to full advantage in constructive, proactive applications.

Today’s demands prompt the need for careful examination of a company’s readiness to deal with the unexpected and undetected.

New thinking must go far beyond traditional crisis communications planning. No company can feel secure following the paths of the past. Critical areas like security, human considerations and business continuity must be included in today’s complete response plan.

What’s required and How to Do It

The starting point is to examine what threat response means today. It requires evaluating what constitutes an issue, risk or crisis. It requires identifying the vulnerabilities of individual companies. It requires anticipating what you can do as a threat unfolds. it requires knowing who within the organization needs to be part of the response effort and which disciplines, like legal and corporate communications, should make up the core team. Which special resources and backup support should be trained and tapped and when?

The new environment also requires companies to prepare for threats that not only can challenge their business operations, but also those that affect the organization and its stakeholders. Current business challenges are expansive and include corporate governance, the dismissal of CEOs, senior executives’ pleading the Fifth, top Fortune ranked corporations filing for bankruptcy, analysts under legal and regulatory examination, continuing employee layoffs, and, now, terrorist threats that could disrupt operations.

New Services address Threats

New services have been established in the past year to assist companies in the crisis area. Among them are Omnicom’s SafirRosseti Security Investigations, headed by former New York Police Commissioner Howard Safir; Citigate Global Intelligence and Security, former by longtime corporate advisor Ernest Brod; Counter Threat, a division of Ogilvy Public Relation Worldwide, led by Karner Davis of Washington, D.C. and Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s new practice within Ernest & Young, Grief Counselors, security advisors and e-mail origination detectives have packaged meaningful offers for companies and organizations. The academic community also includes courses ranging from crisis communication management to corporate ethics at the graduate business school level.

Members of corporate America can attend seminars, participate in workshops and complete special study programs in a wide range f subjects leading to better threat management preparation. Insurance companies are giving increased emphasis to policies covering directors and officers, excess casualty and special risks so that policyholders can spot potential trouble and prepare in advance. Some major insurance companies, like AIG, offer immediate access to skilled crisis responders through preapproved qualification processes.

Th Conference Board, a leading global business organization with more than 3,000 members, will offer its first session on corporate security and crisis management this fall. Charles A. Schmitz, chairman of Global Business Access, Ltd. and planner of the program says, “To normal concerns with fire, flood, theft and wind, we have to add explosion, kidnapping, extortion, terrorism, sabotage, workplace violence, espionage, Trojan horses, worms, viruses, ad piracy.”

Four Areas of Advance Planning

Early this year, my own firm responded with three other firms to an invitation by Ragan Communications to conduct a series of two-day workshops at a half-dozen U.S. cities. These four firms, by nature of their distinct areas of expertise, offered a unique perspective to crisis management planning. The firms were Kroll Inc., the Center for Risk Communications, Crisis Management International (CMI), and Hill & Knowlton. Each brought a set of proven principles that introduced vital elements for contemporary response planning.

To illustrate, protection and investigative firms like Kroll specialize in all phases of operational security and risk management. Business intelligence, screening, surveillance and forensic accounting are among the broad spectrum of services the firm offers to reduce risk, resolve problems and capitalize on opportunities. There are several firms operating in this area, and some, like Kroll, offer a global presence.

Meanwhile, in the academic community, Dr.Peter Sandman at Rutgers University and Dr. Vincent Covello at Columbia University, among other academics, have studied risk form a communication viewpoint for more than 25 years. Their findings provide practical solutions when concern, high stress and emotion obscure situations. Dr.

Covello, now a private consultant to government and business, has established a system of procedures and required steps to develop messages, prepare the messenger and establish methods of message delivery.

The Center for Risk Communications, directed by Covello, provides documented proof points that support the validity of establishing three—and only three—key messages. According to the formula, each message requires support with three subpoints to ensure credibility. Like Sandman’s concept of outrage, which defines the emotion as when people are being duped and have no control, the center’s principles of risk communication advocate the indispensable value offered by trust, control and benefits.

Consideration for people during crises and in their after math is best addressed by specialists in human emotion. The need for such support, which clearly is required when an airplane crashes or an explosion destroys a plant, came into a new prominence when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It is the purview of psychologists, psychiatrists and human-care professionals. Handling people who may be emotionally distraught is the last place where amateurs should step in. Atlanta-based CMI provides humanitarian recovery through its network of 1,000 professionals worldwide. For example, CMI provided grief counseling to victims and families of some 200 companies in New York City following Sept, 11, 2001.

Finally, Pr Strategy and tactics add essential dimensions to response readiness. Clearly a core of the major PR firms has established a credible presence in this area. What’s more, specialist firms like the Institute for Crisis Management are qualified in both theory and practice. For our part, Hill & Knowlton covers the basic elements found in most communications sections of a comprehensive corporate plan. These items range from recognizing or establishing corporate ethical values to training executives responsible for responding to crises.

Contemporary Crisis Response

A corporation’s response plan must take into account many factors that were not considered important a year ago. Based on intense interaction with nearly 200 professionals dedicated to crisis planning who participated in the Ragan workshops this past June and July. I drew 12 lessons that can be categorized under the following four areas: threat management, massage strategy, humanitarian recovery and communication basics.

Threat Management

Certainly no corporation wants to be caught unprepared. Today, the excuse “we thought it could never happen” won’t wash. So the professionals urge us to consider:

1. Protection from attacks requires both perimeter security as well as boundaries for electronic access. This means establishing surveillance and identification systems and total access and egress control. It also demands rigid safeguards against Internet intrusion and foolproof protection from hackers and virus planters.

2. The ability of terrorism to affect corporate and organizational functions in the United States makes it necessary to provide appropriate preventive awareness planning. With it come precise procedures for dealing with kidnapping, espionage, sabotage, and extortion.

3. Former law enforcement officers form the FBI, Secret Service and municipal district attorneys’ offices now provide commercial evaluations, assessments and the means to identify situations where preventative measures pay off. Proper personnel screening helps assure a reliable work force. Established safeguards prevent loss of intellectual capital. Forensic accounting detects numerical manipulation.

Message Strategy

Communication is the primary skill of every PR practitioner. However, specialists who study how messages are received and acted upon during time of concern, controversy and stress offer us valuable, practical lessons.

4. Trust is essential at all times, but the factor determining it are entirely different in times of high concern when care and empathy count as much as competence, commitment and honesty combined.

5. Frequently, we see surveys reporting results on who is most believable, ranging from members of the clergy to members of Congress. Valid credibility can be established in hierarchical order. It must be determined for each distinct crisis situation because the rankings will differ depending on the people affected and their perceptions.

6. In high-stress situations, nonverbal actions count for 75 percent of the message received. Actions taken during crisis response, as well as historic actions, communicate more than the words that are issued in written and spoken messages.

Humanitarian Recovery

Sept. 11, 2001 established a new plateau for placing top priority on people—victims, their families, rescue workers, employees and residents of affected areas.

7. Establish a secure location off-site in advance in the event that your business base is inaccessible. Hotel meeting rooms, for example, were widely used in New York as gathering places for victims’ families.

8. Communicating with employees following a traumatic event requires acknowledgement of what happened, effective communication through employee briefings and access to professional counselors.

9. Contacting victims’ families requires sensitivity and knowledge in assigning teams trained to pro9vide condolences and assistance. Awareness of people’s feelings gets right down to such considerations as selecting the right place to sit when visiting the home of a deceased employee, (Select a straight chair from the dinning room or kitchen so as not to occupy the victim’s favorite place inadvertently –see “Blindsided,” a new book by Dr. Bruce Blythe, CEO of CMI, for more.)

Communication Basics

The PR role in contemporary crisis response planning requires our best thinking and lessons drawn from past experience. Therefore:

10. Conduct threat alert monitoring of the Internet. Create an online crisis resource center on your intranet for information sharing. Use satellites for around the –clock global information dissemination, whether from a boardroom in New York with interactive Q-and-A sessions or a factory floor in Malaysia with streaming video.

11. Today, perhaps more than ever, there is a awareness of a corporation’s values that can serve both in day-to-day operations as well as during times of crisis. Companies such as Johnson & Johnson with its Credo stand out. When companies live every day by their principles of ethical conduct, their words guide management in taking the right actions and in communicating those actions in any crisis situation.

12. Because crisis response is a dynamic process, those assigned response teams positions must be appropriate, few in number, tight-knit in commitment and well trained as representatives of the cross section of the organization. Prompt and proper actions taken by these trusted individuals can make the difference between success and failure in handling a crisis.

Today’s Response Plan and Its Implementation

In this demanding new environment what will the complete response plan look like? Clearly, taking into consideration all the factors described here, it will be voluminous, requiring many written pages with flow charts, diagrams and appendices. The plan is a precious repository of enlightened thinking that captures the procedures and policies that the corporation should follow, and serve as the basis for training those charges with implementation. In its useful day-to-day form, the complexity can be summarized in a vest-pocket folder and in electronic form for immediate access on a disc or laptop program.

Here is a suggested outline, with the broad headings, that deserve consideration when constructing your response plan.

Response Plan Outline

I. Objectives and purpose of the plan.
II. Response team positions and job descriptions.
III. Procedures (strategy, preparation and training).
A. Threat Management,
B. Humanitarian recovery,
C. Message strategy,
D. Communications tactics,
IV. Special considerations (people, property, other),
V. Outside resources 9third parties and hired hands).
VI. Facilities and equipment,
VII. Information aids,
VIII. Contact lists.

Your company’s plan will be unique in its scope and details. It should cover all four areas in the procedures section to qualify for meeting today’s demands.

It’s appropriate for you as a PR professional to get started with the planning process for three reasons. First, communication has a traditional and ongoing leadership role that can get the essential buy-in from the CEO, board of directors and other decision0makers for the commitment, resources and budget. Second, getting a plan prepared and approved takes time and then requires practice through drills and exercises to breathe life into the written words. Third, an established crisis response capability provides the organization with the opportunity to build a reservoir of trust among stakeholders and credible third parties that can protect corporate reputation.