quick reminder about identity: sometimes one is in-house. but often, one is a consultant or project manager those implicate multiple identities both of you and of your clients. example: Crisis management and rhetoric Rule #1: The cover-up is almost always worse than the crisis. Rule #2: Cover-ups are absolute decision points for your employment. The risks are MAJOR. At this point, you might have to quit . . . quickly. People sometimes go to prison over coverups. Their careers are sometimes ruined, forever. Almost always better to walk away . . . probably without saying much other than “I can no longer work here.” THAT action might have implications for subsequent jobs. But the “should we cover up” line is a lot brighter and whiter than other ethics lines. While it's the case that managing issues and managing risk have elements of, both, real events and symbolic representations . . . crises are often a more thorough mix of the two. There's almost always a "real" element along with the symbolic work that competes to define meanings around the event. by definition, crises are unexpected, nonroutine events with high levels of uncertainty that challenge/threaten the organization's high level goals. the two elements present (the "real" and the "rhetorical") also have to be present in the response: actions must be taken and the meanings surrounding them have to be negotiated. There is a symbiosis . . . organizations have to do BOTH well and not doing so on either side can ruin anything done well on either side. The responses have to measure up to the crises. Stages pre stage: in some ways, everything one does/is, in relation to publics, prepares the way for how one can act within a crisis. But especially…. planning the steps for the response . . . having plans and strategies in place for crisis that might occur. Many of these can be done/planned/practiced without being specific to the unexpectedness of the details of the actual crisis that occur. p. 188: communicate with your publics about steps you are taking (1) to reduce the likelihood of crises (2) to prevent crises that are preventable. "We are being responsible, and here's how" Also: training and internal communications are key . . . if one looks carefully at some disasters, one can see dysfunctional organizational communication as one of the biggest fingerprints. Left and right hand communication disfunction breeds disaster. response state: consistency WITH credibility. Gather and process information. Update the media with respect, intelligence, honesty. But don't be afraid to say "we are still analyzing that feature and we don't want to jump to inappropriate conclusions about it." Then get at it. That phrase can't become a "stall" tactic, but can keep you from making harsh and uninformed statements. REMEMBER: SOCIAL MEDIA REALLY PUSHES THE NEED TO MANAGE CRISIS COMMUNICATION FORWARD 1) you/your org. CANNOT IGNORE THAT 2) you can’t let it rush you into stupid mistakes 3) you can’t altogether control it BUT 4) You can augment is, thereby moving toward taking it over. The more honest, real, reliable, credible, helpful, interesting… etc. … information YOU put out, the less reliant is the public on OTHER SOURCES. You can hook em up. If you don’t, someone else will. Right from the git-go. So the sooner you can leap into action… THAT YOU CONTROL . .. the better off you are. post: What did we learn? How have we changed? What's the best way to get out our messages so we can re-establish trust/credibility? Can we benefit from the losses? ("What doesn't kill you will make you stronger.") Crisis management: the situation shifts based on complexity/damage/scope, etc. AND on the audience's perception of organizational responsibility. Internal v. external causes. Now… let's put aside for a moment the reality that some crisis events are triggered by external forces. VERY VERY VERY often, the ways these are DEFINED by relevant audiences are the residue of meaning making that was within the range of the organizations' control. But they didn't. Or didn't, well enough. A simple way to think about this: let's spill something. Now… do our publics expect us to admit our error and to do an effective clean up? Or do they expect us to blame someone else and to try to shirk our corporate responsibility? Or do they expect that they won't know what we are going to do (or really, what happened) cause we always cover stuff up? and we build that set of meanings via everything that we do . . . in identity, issues, risk, and crisis communication. Deciding which audience to focus on is important. But not as important as figuring out ways to address THEM ALL individually, rather than trying to make one set of statements and responses fit them all. This is a crucial mistake many organizations make: they don't have enough responsible people and channels ready, so get forced into using just one for a wide range of circumstances. You can help fix this by remembering this feature and preparing to analyze multiple audiences and to present consistent messages that are probably structured differently for different constituencies using a wide variety of channels. This also requires that you and your team get good at a range of ways of making meanings. Get the order of things right: Act for human safety first; worry about image later. Getting this wrong will lose the image war for you before you even get started defending yourself. The constraints listed on pages 194-195 are justification for why so many of these procedures have to be worked out ahead of time. Once the bomb goes off, chaos reins and it's not the time to have to make nuanced determinations of legal, financial, and social costs/benefits concerning what to say to whom. The organization needs to work out most of that in advance of the unexpected. You have to build some templates for successful navigation of what are going to be very tricky waters. Because they are so powerful, crises are incredibly rich times for organizations to earn respect, admiration, honor. But only if they act honorably, responsibly, effectively AND if they communicate their good will and shape meaning around their positive behaviors (that might include taking blame). Strategies: p. 196: instructional: what are we doing, what do we know, what are we doing to find out, what should you do, what do we not know . . . apologia: denial, bolstering, transcendence, differentiation, reducing the offensiveness of the act, corrective action, mortification, counterattack…. Note that this is not a list of what organizations SHOULD do… they are theory and research-based explanations of the sorts of rhetorical action organizations can take/have taken. One should be familiar with all the tools (available means of persuasion). However … only some of these strategies will match the exigence and produce favorable outcomes. dissociation: -“only seems to some that this was our fault… with the right information, you'll see it wasn't even us." -“One of our members IS/WAS responsible, but that isn't all of us." -“That WAS/IS a mistake, but it's not the way we ARE or the way we do business.