Jan 2, 2019, 12:38 AM ETPodcast

a16z Podcast | Crisis Communications

Golden Rule: Never waste a crisis; use the event as an impetus to improve the company so it does not recur and emerges stronger.
Definition: A crisis is defined as anything negatively impacting business operations or public perception, ranging from negative press and oil spills to internal cultural failures.
Scope: Crises are fundamentally business issues requiring internal resolution before becoming public press problems, though media containment strategies must be prepared in parallel.
Cultural Prerequisites: Organizations must bake transparency, honesty, and urgency into their culture before a crisis occurs to prevent "fight or flight" suppression of truth.
Perception vs. Reality: Companies must recognize that perception is reality; media cycles and public narratives often rely on comparisons to past scandals (e.g., Theranos, Uber) even when the current situation is unique.

Signal Detection: Early detection often involves a "paranoid" mindset where key stakeholders maintain antennas for potential issues, as employees may observe problems for long periods without speaking up.
Coordination Failure: A common oversight is the lack of coordination between silent observers and decision-makers; communications leaders must be integrated into management to escalate potential crises.
Pre-defined Protocols: Success depends on modeling scenarios and defining processes (e.g., war rooms, contact lists) beforehand to avoid delay when the "S hits the fan."
Tech Sector Scrutiny: Tech companies face heightened scrutiny due to their scale (e.g., Facebook's user base exceeding the Vatican) and founders' rapid accumulation of power without sufficient leadership experience.

The War Room: The first step is convening a dedicated team, which may be virtual (dedicated phone lines) or physical, ensuring legal counsel is present to protect the conversation's privilege.
Legal Inclusion: Including legal counsel makes discussions privileged, protecting the company during depositions and limiting liability, even if the issue involves external or mixed internal/external counsel.
Stakeholder Composition: The response team must include decision-makers, technical experts, and specific functional leads (HR for personnel issues, Customer Success for product issues).
Decision Authority: The CEO must be present unless the CEO is the source of the crisis; senior decision-makers cannot outsource fact-finding for issues fundamentally impacting the business.
Information Gathering: Fact-finding is often complex, involving unraveling conflicting agendas and incomplete information; companies must gather "all the yarn" (full transparency) internally to manage the narrative effectively.
Trust Requirement: The PR team requires total honesty from the CEO and leadership, functioning like a therapist; partial truths prevent accurate representation to the public.
Urgency Balance: While the public expects immediate acknowledgment (e.g., a tweet), the full response should not be rushed at the expense of accuracy; the goal is to strike a balance between speed and truth.

Apology Nuance: Apologies are not automatic or universal; "eating shit" requires a full, genuine admission rather than a "nibble" or corporate legalese, but only after facts are confirmed.
Avoiding Legal Speak: Generic phrases like "we regret the error" create cognitive dissonance; effective apologies must be specific, factual, and aligned with the company's existing voice.
Brand Consistency: The response tone must align with the brand's identity (e.g., technical transparency for developer-focused companies) rather than adopting a generic, third-person legal tone.
The "Playbook" Warning: Companies should not blindly follow a crisis playbook; strategies must be tailored to the specific context and the brand's historical relationship with its community.
Internal-External Balance: Internal communication cadence should be established early; trust built before the crisis ensures employees remain faithful even when legal constraints prevent full disclosure.
Off-the-Record Strategy: Advising trusted journalists to go off-the-record can help explain the company's perspective, but only if the company can provide legitimate, ethical reasons for not commenting publicly.
The "Never Lie" Mandate: Lying to the media is irrecoverable; once trust is broken, the brand's ability to sell products or hire talent is permanently damaged.

The "Karma Points" Analogy: Companies operate on a bank account of goodwill; without pre-established "credits" from customers, employees, and press, a crisis places the brand instantly in the red.
Definition of "Over": A crisis is not over when stories stop running; it is only resolved when the company has implemented tangible improvements (e.g., new policies, culture shifts) to prevent recurrence.
The Comeback Narrative: Rushing a "turnaround" story is a critical mistake; the company must have demonstrable progress to shift the narrative from 80% rehashing the past to 80% future-focused growth.
Founder/CEO Overlap: For founders, there is no distinction between personal and business crises; personal issues invariably become brand issues and must be treated as such immediately.
Monitoring the Narrative: Continuous monitoring of social media, Reddit, and other channels is required to detect new "shoes dropping" and correct the record based on emerging public perceptions.
Irreversibility of Trust: Once a company lies or fails to act transparently, the resulting reputational damage is often permanent and significantly more costly than the initial crisis.