April 10 - Coombs 8 & 9

Coombs – Chapter 8 “Postcrisis Concerns”

The crisis may be over but the work is not done. Evaluation is in order. How well did the Crisis Management Plan (CMP) work in theory? How well was the CMP executed? How well did the Crisis Management Team (CMT) perform?

If these three components were effective, crisis damage should not exceed what was anticipated. An actual crisis is an opportunity for an organization to learn.

Evaluation

Data from crisis records, stakeholders and media coverage should be collected and assessed in order to determine the effectiveness of crisis performance. Assessments of overall crisis performance should include a systems analysis:

A) Technical – Was the CMT hampered by a lack of technical system support for crisis management?

B) Human – Were crisis management problems a function of a poor match between people and technology?

C) Infrastructure – Did the CMT fail because it is not considered a functioning part of the organization?

D) Cultural – Were any problems the result of constraints imposed by corporate culture?

Did crisis management protect the organization from damage in the following areas?:

Financial, Reputational, Human, Environmental, and Media.

All aspects of crisis performance should be summarized into a final report indicating:

A) whether the CMT performed effectively

B) if the CMP proved useful in anticipating and resolving situations created by the crisis

C) whether structural features facilitated or hindered the crisis management effort

D) if the completed evaluation provides a full assessment of the crisis damage

Learning

Remember to remember….and remember to forget. Institutional memory is both good and bad. For the next crisis, use what was learned from this crisis. But don’t blindly follow past successes.

Postcrisis Actions

Though the crisis may be over, follow-up communication with stakeholders and cooperation with ongoing investigations is a valuable component of any Crisis Management Plan.

Coombs – Chapter 9 “Final Observations and Lessons”

Coombs….Coombs….Coombs

Everything comes in 3s with Coombs. Coombs illustrates crisis management with a 3-stage model:

Precrisis Crisis Event Postcrisis

Each of these stages has 3 substages: (relevant chapter in parenthesis)

1) Precrisis: a) signal detection (3); b) prevention (4); c) preparation (5)

2) Crisis Event: a) recognition (6); b) containment (7); business resumption (7)

3) Postcrisis: a) evaluation (8); b) learning (8); c) postcrisis actions (8)

Coombs also wants us to remember a particular number of valuable lessons in his pedagogy of crisis management. Guess how many? You cheated. You looked ahead. Or behind.

1) Crisis management is an ongoing process. Organizations should routinely test and revise the various elements of crisis preparation.

2) Specific knowledge, skills and traits are associated with effective crisis managers. Spokespersons should be selected for their knowledge base or media skills. The selection and training of crisis team members must seek to maximize the knowledge, skills and traits that facilitate group performance.

3) Crisis management involves the development and maintenance of procedures designed to improve the flow of information before, during and after the crisis. A crisis-sensing network should operate everyday as organizational units scan the environment and internal operations for potential crises. An organization should monitor its actions to see if it is meeting key stakeholder expectations and delivering on promises during crises.

Coombs also wants you to reflect on your status as a student at the center of the collegiate athletic universe. How many major national championships has your university won in the past year?

For discussion:

As previously mentioned, I’m not a PR major, so my discussion point for Chapter 8 is a question directed to those of us who are. Chapter 9 touched a bit on this, but I imagine in the real world only the very largest organizations employ full-time crisis management personnel. Even then, if the company is any good at what it does, worst case scenario would have a crisis occurring very infrequently. What do these people do between crises? It could be years in between. Or is it the norm that a crisis team consists of employees who have regular jobs in the organization and come together as a crisis management team only when a crisis is imminent?

With Chapter 9, we finish the Coombs book. I would ask our PR majors to highlight—­in short—what they’ve learned from Coombs. What new ideas presented in this book appear to have the potential to be applied to the practice of Public Relations in the real world?

mic brookshire