SPOTLIGHT
An extract from When Crisis Strikes, by Francis Herd and Nicola Kleyn (Pan Macmillan)
So many scandals have rocked corporate SA that crises seem to be the norm rather than the exception. When Crisis Strikes looks at a variety of crises, with examples of who got it right, who got it wrong and how they could have done better. The following is from the Postscript: A word on Covid-19.
“As we were writing When Crisis Strikes, the world started to turn upside down and inside out as a result of the outbreak of the coronavirus, Covid-19. It arrived, an unwanted visitor, in South Africa. A public health crisis is beyond the scope of a book on organisational crises as it involves specialised strategies for supply-chain management, medical staffing, and resources and disaster management. However, the rules we have supplied contain principles that guide communication in deeply troubling times.
In “Rule 1: Stop the Harm”, we explain that concealing any information in the public interest can be one of the biggest harms. People have a psychological need to assess danger, and they should be told how to physically protect themselves. We can only behave rationally in response to a threat if we know where the threat comes from, how far-ranging it is and how relevant it is to our lives.
The Department of Health and the Presidency started out well by being upfront and honest about the rate of infections and the consequences, providing relevant information to help people to protect themselves. Updating and releasing the number of cases frequently was crucial to ensure that the government and the National Institute of Communicable Diseases were the accepted authorities on the statistics.
If there had been any suggestion that the numbers were being manipulated or the spread of the disease was being downplayed, that would have undermined trust. The media would have turned to other sources to provide information about transmission rates, and speculation could have run rampant on social media.
www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/books