With all the attention on the Lansing Board of Water and Light’s (BWL) epic crisis communications failure, it’s time for a brief primer on strategic crisis communications planning.

First off, though, let’s remember why this stuff is so important. Your reputation rides on how well you perform – especially in a crisis. Your failure to rise to the occasion will undermine your reputation, short- and probably long-term. If your customers respect and trust you now – and I sure hope they do – don’t lose them because you can’t meet their expectations under difficult circumstances.

Second, don’t think you’re immune from a crisis. Fires, floods, embezzlement, food poisoning at the Christmas party … A crisis is anything that puts your business and its reputation at risk.

The underlying foundation of crisis communications is elegantly simple – in fact, it’s so simple one has to wonder why the BWL failed so miserably. There are but three simple rules for communicating during a crisis:

1. Acknowledge (own up to) the problem – with honesty, integrity and credibility. Don’t sugarcoat the facts.
2. Apologize for the situation – sincerely and with care, compassion and concern.
3. Actively fix the problem – and explain how and when action will be taken, what steps are involved, what challenges may arise, etc.

How you communicate all of this is the guts of the crisis com plan. It takes commitment and discipline to identify the elements of the plan, but let’s give it a whirl in the hopes that you can avoid the BWL communications debacle.

Crisis communications must-haves:

1. Identify your internal crisis team. Usually it’s your exec team and includes the CEO (always!), the COO, legal, HR, PR, etc. The team may vary based on the type of crisis but these are invariably the essential players.
2. Identify all of your potential audiences and tier them based on type of crisis:
   a) Internal (board members, employees, retirees, volunteers, donors, etc.)
   b) External (starting with those directly impacted by the crisis, plus other customers/clients, vendors, suppliers, law enforcement, elected officials, media, etc.)
3. Determine your communications tools and tactics – and make sure you take into consideration access to and credibility of those tools from your audiences’ perspectives. Traditional and digital/social media are both essential but also be prepared to think out of the box – will phone calls, door-to-door, etc. be necessary under certain circumstances? Figure it out now – before you’re facing the crisis.
4. Know who will be responsible for what aspect of the crisis com plan and have those folks prepared before a crisis. For example. If you know you will need outside expertise to implement portions of the plan, have those folks identified and at the ready NOW.  Also, make sure your spokesperson is the best, most credible individual in or to your organization. Don’t send out the top dog if the top dog comes across as arrogant, defensive, angry and patronizing. Care, compassion and concern are the leading attributes for a spokesperson in a crisis. Hire out if necessary – but make sure you hire credibility as well.
5. Don’t over promise. Better to exceed expectations by fixing the situation earlier than people expected than to let them down by missing a deadline.
6. Communicate, communicate, communicate. A vacuum of information from you will be quickly filled by others – and it won’t be pretty. Be clear on what you know and what you don’t know, how and when you will provide additional information – and meet and exceed everything you promise.

Last but not least – and I can’t believe I even have to point this out – don’t leave your station in the middle of a crisis.  The captain goes down with the ship for good reason – he or she is in charge. When people discovered that BWL’s general manager had actually gone to New York City for Christmas, smack dab in the middle of an historic power outage, the outrage was palpable. In contrast, after a fatal explosion at Ford Motor Company’s Rouge plant, Bill Ford immediately left his executive office and headed directly to the scene.  The message was clear: I care about you and I’m here for you.

The bottom line is this: you can make your crisis even worse by failing to communicate early and often. Be strategic, be thoughtful – but most of all, be prepared.