C R ISIS C LU B I NS IG HT
C R ISIS PRO OF: WH EN L AWYERS AN D COMMU N ICATIONS PROFESSIONALS PR ESENT A U N ITED FRONT Conventional wisdom has it that when a crisis erupts, lawyers and communicators find themselves at loggerheads. Lawyers want to muzzle the organisation in order to minimise any admission of liability, while communicators want to quickly establish the business as the single authoritative source of information relating to the crisis and issue regular updates to the outside world. The debate at the Crisis Club reflected the sense of frustration and “hands tied” syndrome that communicators can experience in the heat of a crisis, particularly when there are significant legal and compliance issues involved. However, the reality is that lawyers and communicators are often in agreement about the two cardinal sins of crisis communications: admitting liability and speculating as to the cause of a crisis. This commonality provides fertile ground for lawyers and communicators to collaborate when managing a crisis and decreases the chance of negative reputational damage. In a crisis, it is easier for the CEO to defer to legal counsel because lawyers can quantify the cost of the problem. Litigation, compensation claims, ex-gratia payments, fines from regulators, insurance claims ... each has precedent and can be totted up to a hefty sum that puts the fear of God (or fear of shareholder wrath) into the business leader. Difficult then for the crisis communications team to match this by quantifying the equivalent ‘cost’ to intangible assets of reputation and brand – even though business leaders are regularly quoted as saying that reputation is the company’s most precious asset. A recent study found that the reputations of the top 10 companies (of the FTSE 350) contribute an average of 48% to shareholder value.
SO, HOW CAN COMMUNICATION PROFESSIONALS AND LAWYERS WORK TOGETHER WHEN A CRISIS HITS? Preparation is key. Work together in ‘peace time’ to understand perspectives and put in place solutions that can expedite response time, rather than trying to work things through in the heat of a crisis. Two very practical ways to achieve this are by encouraging lawyers to play an active and integral role in crisis training – crisis media training and simulation exercises being two examples. Equally important is putting in place pre-approved statements for the most likely scenarios so that communicators can get initial statements issued promptly. When a crisis hits. In their efforts to understand, rationalise and quantify the impact of a crisis, organisations can wholly underestimate the nature of public response and the subsequent political response. This is where communicators come into their own: combating bunker mentality by bringing a degree of realism into the war room in terms of how the crisis will play out in the outside world, and anticipating the level of moral outrage for what has happened. Communicators will need to have compelling arguments in terms of the level of impact on reputation – which may be facilitated by instant polling on trust metrics – to combat the highly quantifiable financial and legal arguments. A serious challenge to communicators, and core members of the crisis management