Here’s to the errors made between the lines–because they are a great equalizer in baseball. No matter how well you field, pitch, hit or run, everyone makes mistakes. Even the road to Cooperstown is littered with errors by the great ones, despite thousands of games played, thousands of hours of training and the best coaching money can buy.
While a few slip-ups on the diamond have become infamous, most errors are fleeting, thankfully. That’s not always so in the ‘real world,’ including the business of baseball and all others.
Seasoned PR pros know that preparing for those potential errors and managing the fallout if they do occur is no game. Most errors that become public are not fleeting. Every organization needs a tight crisis communications plan that is ingrained long before any public problems arise. Your communications team is pivotal to planning and executing a crisis plan. A few of the basic components to include:
- Identify all audiences (staff, Board, media, community and/or business partners, advertisers, customers, etc.)
- Identify and media train spokespersons. Any official spokesperson should be well media-trained, which will help them focus on specific messages and understand how to respond to ‘hot’ questions.
- Establish a clear “chain of command”—a crisis communications team—of management and communications staff responsible for making decisions and communicating internally and externally. Provide explicit contact information and a process for accessing the team.
- Create targeted messages based on anticipated questions from the media, suppliers, partners, customers, etc. Consistency of messaging is critical!
- Train all staff, Board members and key volunteers on their roles in response to a crisis. Be sure everyone knows to defer questions up the chain of command and not to comment “off the record,” post information on social media sites, etc. Those leaks can be disastrous to a streamlined response to a crisis. Give approved messages to key staff responsible for responding to questions from your range of audiences.
Ultimately, the goal in crisis communications is to move from responding to a crisis, to managing the situation, to overcoming the incident.
Too bad it’s not as simple as moving from an error to the next play and to the next inning. But with effective planning by a communications pro, any organization can put itself in a position of control if a crisis were to occur. Errors are a part of the game, but you can take control so that they don’t define you!
PR around the horn 