Take the fear out of a crisis with StormBirds

Leonie Vandeven, Founder/Director - Stormbirds

What if you walked out the door and a crew from A Current Affair stopped you to ask about a serious matter about your business?

What if something negative about your business went viral on social media, or someone claimed your business is sexist, racist, or you have a culture of bullying?

A crisis isn’t always a large-scale event, natural disaster, or failure - think Enron, Optus, Rio Tinto.

It’s usually a much smaller internal issue, badly managed, which takes on a life of its own, including transgressive behaviours, fraud, restructuring, product recalls, accidents, and cyber breaches.

Many businesses are unprepared because they didn’t think crisis would happen to them, they didn’t manage an issue well, or they didn’t respond at all, hoping it would go away.

This approach often leads to outrage and reputational crisis that is often worse than the initial issue.

Reputational crisis is serious and can derail a business in a matter of hours causing loss to financial capital, social capital, and/or market share, as well as personal impacts to you, your staff, and customers.

Having no prepared and practised plans for ‘What if’ crises is like having no extinguisher when your house is on fire.

During crisis leaders are expected to lead strongly and your team will be looking to you for guidance, reassurance, and action. They want to see the proverbial fire extinguisher in your hands.

Planning well before a crisis allows you to take control and respond confidently, quickly, and effectively, minimising damage and aiding your recovery.

Failing to plan means you have a lot of material for your lessons learnt discussion - if you’re still standing. 

Across every stage of the crisis life cycle there are critical communications activities your organisation needs to effectively engage in including:

Prevention - aligned vision and values, strong organisation culture, effective stakeholder channels, trusted and authentic communication.

Preparedness - scenario response planning, key messages, spokesperson training, Board engagement. 

Response - executive level comms advice, 24/7 support, responsive to rapidly changing environment, spokesperson services and support, media engagement.

Recovery - staff and customer engagement, acknowledgement, reassurance.

Rebuilding - reputation and trust strategies to grow social capital and goodwill.

At whatever point you are in the cycle, StormBirds can help destroy any fear around crisis and build business capability and resilience with strategic advice and hands-on services. Should you wish to contact us for further information visit:   https://stormbirdsos.com/ | e: SOS@stormbirdsos.com