Special Report – What to do when the worst happens

Every business will go through bad patches. But occasionally something will go badly wrong, that could threaten the business itself – a crisis.

Crisis management and preparation is becoming an essential part of running a business. With the growth of social media, news of errors in judgement and controversies can spread quicker than ever before.

Charlotte Thompson, a Senior Manager in Deloitte’s Risk Advisory practice, explains how important it is for companies and businesses to plan for things going wrong.

“Our job is about thinking the unthinkable.” explains Thompson.

“Most incidents and crises aren’t, and shouldn’t be, unforeseen. There is a lot of information available now, which means you can identify and prepare for key risk scenarios. In terms of the response side of things, we talk about crisis operating principals. These are general success factors, when dealing with uncertainty. They centre around you as an organisation leading decisively in a crisis, being able to frame the crisis, understanding what is going on and what it means to you. Actively communicating with your stakeholders. You need to be agile in your response, you can absorb other things that are coming your way as well. You have to accept there will be uncertainties, but manage a crisis well, and seek out the best information you can”.

“Preparation is the key to all of it. It’s much more than having a plan. The more you practice, the better you will be at handling it. In the sports world you should be able to relate directly to that. It was Seb Coe that said you wouldn’t want to be an athlete standing on the Olympic start line if you have never trained. Rehearsal is key.”

The very worst time to be making strategic decisions is when a major incident is going on around you. If the worst happens, a plan needs to be at hand.

An event that had to face up to the very worst happening is the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. In the 2015-16 edition they suffered their first fatality in 20 years, but thanks to their planning they were able to handle it in a calm, clear, and tasteful fashion – and were later praised for the manner in which they dealt with the tragedy.

Global Business and Communications Director of Clipper Ventures Jonathan Levy, explained despite suffering a loss of life, the incident was never allowed to become a crisis:

“We want to prevent an incident becoming a crisis. For us the concept of a crisis is when something is out of control, from a communication perspective. We had an incident management plan that rehearses all the things that could go wrong. You can think with a cool head when you’re

not in the middle of an incident, and you can think through the best responses.”

“The quality of communication in the media was very good. We left no room for people to speculate. People felt we hit the right tone in the way we dealt with a fatality.”

While operational responses have changed little over 20 years, communications strategies have had to be torn up and rethought with the advent of social media. Deloitte’s Charlotte Thompson explains how perceptions can differ internally and externally.

“The role of social media in perceptions vs. reality in crisis management is reducing the timeline of unfolding events. What might be regarded as an incident internally to an organisation that is responding, once it hits the social networks and people start sharing, commenting, and passing judgement on how well or not it is being handled, the perception of it being a crisis can quickly spiral out of control. Whether it is called a crisis in the public, but it is just regarded as an incident internally, is an interesting dynamic.”

If the social media flame is lit, there is no silver bullet to make it ‘better’. Understanding that fact is key explains Thompson:

“You have to accept you can’t fully control it. Social media is a public information space, you can’t control that. You just have to accept that it is going to be there and devise the right strategies. There is nothing you are probably going to say or do that will suddenly make things go away or make things better. But saying the wrong things or doing nothing will certainly make matters worse. It’s about trying to manage the situation as best you can, you can’t control it directly, nor make it instantly better. But you can make it worse”.

Adrian Bevington, former managing director at Club England at the Football Association, agreed that developing a communication strategy in a crisis was key.

“It is crucial there is a document in every organisation that you can refer to very quickly, that you can see that this person is initially responsible, it’s escalated to this person, no-one else comments during that process, and one person has accountability. That’s the only way you can have a structured crisis management plan.”

Bevington admitted he had seen many crisis’ that had gone from bad to worse, made worse by poor planning, and poorly thought out communication.

“I’ve seen some crisis’ and thought ‘blimey this hasn’t been thought through’. Suddenly it has a head of steam and you can’t get control of it, because you’ve taken a very bad early decision, not thinking through the consequences, and suddenly you’re on a pathway you can’t change. Scenario planning is crucial. In my work with Wales, they did a lot of work around scenario planning for any risk or problem that could come their way.”

Conversely, Bevington has seen a potential crisis within the England team dealt with so well, that it never even saw the light of day in the press.

“I can’t go into details on the specific subject as it’s confidential. But we had something happen with England while we were at a tournament. The information came in, the group gathered that were designated to be responsible for it. We considered it, we spoke to the relevant people, we managed it in-house and it was dealt with. It never became a problem for us externally, and it never became a problem for the individuals concerned.”

The message from Deloitte and Bevington is the same – no matter how unexpected the incident, you should have planned for something similar enough, for you to deal with it in a managed way.

“The exact scenario that comes up is usually something that, yes you might not have expected, but when you go a level down and you look at the impact that the scenario created, whatever the scenario was, it’s the impact that is important, and what you are responding to.” said Thompson.

“Quite often, you turn round and say ‘You could have dealt with this, you should have been able to deal with the impact’. Whether that’s a disruption to your business process, or is it a delay or cancellation in the event, staff unavailability etc. The impact is what you respond to. Quite often there is a common theme and a common thread that people should have been able to foresee.” said Thompson.

“If you have spent time discussing the issues you could be faced with, there are many things you can consider. If you have something in a document form, you can refer to it. You should really be able to cover all bases in that, and avoid panicking”, added Bevington.

Finding out your risk/crisis planning is inadequate is usually discovered at the worst possible time. The question sports businesses must ask themselves is – what would you do if the worst happened you?

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