Crisis Communication
Summary
There are a few different types of crisis situations. One is when the company is at fault, and the other is when the company becomes a victim. The book speaks about many different situations dealing with crisis situations but I will just mention a few. One example of a company being at fault was in June 2000 when the Panamanian tanker sunk. It spilled 400 tons of heavy oil into the ocean. This was a major crisis that ended up harming a lot of animals and people whom depended on catching certain seafood to make money.
The next type of crises is when a company becomes a victim such as when a bank becomes a victim of online theft. Many people are using "Trojans" that are created by hackers that when opened on someone's computer can steal all the information they use when doing online banking. There have been many cases of this over the past two years, and with the recession were are in, people are trying to do whatever it takes to get people’s money.
Some steps to help prepare for a crisis situation are highlighted in the book. The first step is to realize that at any time a company can be involved in a crises no matter what. The next step is to assess the risk for your organization. Know if your company is more at risk for a crisis to happen compared to other companies. The third step is to have a plan for crises. The person in charge of the corporate communication should brainstorm with all the head managers and come up with ideas about potential crises. These are the three major steps in the crises planning, and there are many more throughout the book though.
Experiences
I feel that having a good handle on the type of crisis situations your organization could possible be involved in is the major factor to being able to reduce the problem from happening, and if it does happen, it will make it much easier to maintain the problem and get it taken care of as soon as possible. More recently, we have seen many organizations go into one form or another of a crisis. One crisis I can recall that happened about a year ago was the crisis of the peanut butter recall by McKee foods. I did not think that the company had a good plan set up to handle a crisis. I personally thought that their situation could have been avoided if they did a better job screening the products before the left he company.
Related Material
http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/mckee01_09.html
This is an article about the McKee foods company recall on some of their peanut butter products.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-aig30-2009mar30,0,2898712,full.story
This is an article about AIG, and how their improper business within the company created a downward fall for the company.
By: Pat McDanel
I think that companies such as Toyota have ignored certain risks because they were less likely to occur- perhaps because their area of strength was quality. In light of this, it's important that all risks be treated just as importantly.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Walter that companies should not ignore any kind of risk even when they are confident in their strong areas. In fact, nothing is perfect and things keep changing. Toyota which has been well known for its quality products for more than 70 years and although it has given the world a variety of quality control and improvement methods such as Kaizen (a Japanese term for improvement), PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act, Poka-yoke (a Japanese term which means mistake proofing, it now facing an unprecedented slowdown in global car sales. Every company should have their own plans to deal with risks they might encounter in order not only to be better prepared but also mitigate the consequences of any crisis.
ReplyDeleteI think most of the companies are surprised from a crisis as it is an unexpected sudden event but some companies are well prepared for the crisis like JP Morgan. JP during 9/11 attack was able to evacuate 90% of their employees safely because they gave their employees training after the incident of fire in three floors that took place in World Trade Center before 9/11.
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