Transparency in managing a crisis

As a communications specialist of 21 years and counting, I am always interested in other professionals’ opinions about how companies should react when called to publicly respond to issues or incidents that are detrimental to their corporate reputations.

One common advice that seems to effortlessly leap out from lips and laptops of many crisis management consultants is that companies need to be ‘honest and transparent’ in the way they respond to allegations or speculation about their involvement in scandals, misappropriations or accidents.

While rubbishing this approach by dubbing it as unrealistic would be easy — because in most cases it is rather impossible to fulfil it even if intend were there — I choose instead to say that the ‘honesty is the best policy’ strategy can only be effective in companies or organisations which adopt a culture of total transparency throughout and across every operational and functional aspect, without exceptions or discounts, as fictitious as this may sound.

For instance, simply urging Fifa to come out clean by accepting responsibility for the wrongdoings of a few high ranking officials and associated members is not plausible. And it should not be recommended because neither does Fifa’s press office have a complete picture of the scale and level of corruption nor does Fifa’s reputation hinge on the actions of individuals notwithstanding their status within the organisation.

When your reputation is in tatters and your body is being kicked and punched left, right and centre by a bloodthirsty media, leaving your face unprotected and exposed for the final blow goes against the basic instinct for survival. Gut feeling and the all too natural sense of damage limitation and risk mitigation should instead take prevalence in an organisation’s effort to preserve the last few scrapes of dignity left and try to use them in the reputational rebuilding effort.

How transparent or honest could Malaysian Airlines officials have been during the ‘golden hour’ or the few crucial days since flight MH370 went missing in March 2014? When even basic information about the circumstances which led to its disappearance is still unclear today?

These two examples taken from the world of football and aviation are quite different in nature and significance, but that’s just another argument that goes against a ‘one-sizefits-all’ crisis management credo.

One fundamental reason for which ‘full disclosure’ cannot be attained and which is more often than not overlooked by crisis management experts advocating ‘full transparency’ is the very simple knee-jerk need humans have to protect their own professional reputations and careers irrespective of any direct or indirect involvement. Whether intentional or inadvertent, what their actions or inactions may have had in any resulting crisis.

That alone is the most prohibitive factor that acts as a deterrent to any well-meaning intention for transparency in the aftermath of a compromising situation.

Full transparency in communicating details and the sequence of events that led to a crisis can only be credible and forthcoming once the findings of the corresponding investigations are disclosed and verified.

Then and only then, corporate communicators can have the go ahead from their boards to issue a polished version of a statement where, if found to be at fault, a company should accept its own share of the responsibility. Albeit, with many footnotes in fine print inserted by their colleagues in legal and dictated by shareholder and ownership interests.

Rather than waiting to make an impact after the beans are spilt, communicators are better positioned than lawyers to have their say before a crisis hits the fan by helping their companies or clients develop structured crisis preparedness plans based on a number of hypothetical, yet highly possible, scenarios of what could go wrong.

This means having a policy that assigns specific tasks and responsibilities to specific individuals and regularly training the teams on the basic functions they must accomplish during the first few hours of a crisis situation. It can go a long way towards ensuring that when the transparency piece of the puzzle is required, the impact on reputational damage that preceded its disclosure gets as painlessly absorbed as possible.