Panel
Crisis Management and Communications
- Global crises are expected to become faster, more intense, and more aggressive, potentially destroying organizations if they reach the 21% threshold where they overshadow all prior achievements.
- Technological hyper-connectivity and social media will transform consumers into unpredictable media sources, making immediate responses necessary to force policy changes, as online content remains a permanent public record.
- Regulators and the public are predicted to be more hostile toward big business and anti-authority, demanding CEO leadership and holding corporations accountable for failing to see one to five years ahead.
- 63% of CEOs are identified as unprepared for crisis communications despite media training, requiring constant preparation to avoid the risks of playing fire drills during actual emergencies.
- Organizational culture must reward honesty and open discussion to prevent bad news from being suppressed, while trust and integrity require measurement every three months for the remainder of an organization's existence.
- Effective crisis response involves creating content to avoid disinformation, viewing the crisis as a starting point for rebranding, and ensuring actions taken at the outset determine the ability to recover.
- The apology process is defined by four specific steps: acknowledging the mistake, defining it, apologizing, and asking for forgiveness, with scripted apologies deemed unlikely to be perceived as sincere.
- Profit prioritization over safety is identified as a direct path to market failure, whereas early recalls are financially preferable to long-term liabilities, with reputational rehabilitation for major firms likely spanning a five-year timescale.
- Political leaders are expected to aggressively target big business due to sensitivity regarding the economic downturn, while companies must appear to be part of the solution to survive.
- Managing communications is projected to be at least ten times more difficult than in the George H.W. Bush era, and establishing a perpetual attitude of taking constituents seriously is necessary to build goodwill.