The Delta Media P.R. Clinic

Anticipating Your Next Crisis

By Bernard Gauthier, MA

Most crises your association will face are foreseeable, so it’s important to think through what the likely crises might be and plan ahead so you can manage the situation carefully. Here’s how to go about doing that.

First, gather a team of people to reflect on potential crises and the optimal way to manage each. This team should include the executive director, your senior communications person, as well as some members of your staff or Board with plenty of corporate memory. Someone from outside the association might offer an objective perspective and help you see the proverbial forest for the trees.

With your team in place, begin by looking back. If you’ve faced a particular crisis in the past, be prepared for something very similar to occur in the future. Be sure to include “near misses” on your list of potential crises. Just because you narrowly avoided a crisis in the past, doesn’t mean you won’t take a direct hit next time.

Next, have the team look around. What kinds of crises have organizations similar to yours faced in the past? Focus on associations whose activities, events and members are similar to yours and consider actually speaking with your counterparts in those associations to learn about crises long since forgotten.

The third step is to reflect on the aspects of your association and its work that are most likely to garner the attention of the news media and the public. Consider, for example, that in May of this year, Ipsos-Reid reported that the top five issues for Canadians are: the economy, the environment, health care, the price of gasoline and national defense. Clearly, then, you need to consider the crisis that could emerge if the activities of your association might have an impact on the following:

• People’s money (i.e. misappropriation of charitable funds, reckless spending)
• The environment (i.e. toxic spill, lobbying on environmental legislation)
• People’s health (i.e. injuries at an event, lobbying on health care issues)
• People’s safety and security (i.e. crowd control at an event, illegal acts, leaks of confidential information)

By following all three steps, you should be in a position to identify a long list of potential crises your association might face.

You will next need to rank order the potential crises so you can devote your attention to the likeliest scenarios. You can do that simply by going back to the three lists of potential crises you have created and count how often each crisis appears. If a crisis scenario appears (1) in your list of crises that have affected your association in the past, (2) your list of crises that have affected similar associations, and (3) your list of activities that generate media and public interest, award it three points and move it to the top of your list.

By anticipating the likeliest crises to affect your association, you’ll be in a position to prepare your response, including assembling a crisis response team for each type of crisis and mapping out what your first crisis response steps will be if your predictions should ever prove correct.

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