Welcome to today’s episode, where we’re diving into the world of crisis communication with an expert who’s been on the front lines. Amanda Coleman shares her incredible journey, starting as a journalist and transitioning into key roles in the public sector, including her time at the Environment Agency and Merseyside Police. Amanda brings valuable insights from her extensive experience, including the pivotal role she played during the 2017 Manchester Arena terrorist attack.
In this conversation, Amanda emphasises how crucial crisis communication is in shaping operational responses and why organisations need clear communication plans that focus on empathy and authenticity. She also breaks down the impact of social media on crisis management and why it’s essential to be ready for rapid response in today’s fast-paced world.
Whether you’re in communications, crisis management, or simply curious about what it takes to navigate through tough situations, this episode is packed with takeaways you won’t want to miss!
So, let’s dive in!
Notes for this episode:
Sign up for Amanda’s newsletter – (28) Under Pressure | Amanda Coleman | Substack
Amnda’s new book Kogan Page book details – Strategic Reputation Management | Kogan Page
Robb elementary report – COPS OFFICE (usdoj.gov)
Full Transcript (unedited)
Emma Drake 02:09
welcome Amanda. It’s really great to have you on the podcast. Been trying to get you on the podcast for a while, and we’ve been successful, which is great. So yeah. So thanks for coming on. And yeah, yeah, it’s great to have you on. I’m sure we’re going to have a really interesting chat today, because we’ve got some shared interests in terms of approaches and things like that. And I know you’ve got a new book coming out as well, which I’m sure we will touch on as well. So but why don’t we start by telling listeners today about bit more about your background and how you got into crisis communication, and you know what got your interest? It was there a particular experience that sparked your interest. For example, yeah,
Amanda 03:09
I was going to say it’s, it’s a long, it feels like a long time. No, so I started my working life as a journalist, which had been something I’d wanted to do virtually as long as I could remember, and I did it for a few years. It wasn’t, perhaps, quite what I expected it was going to be, and then I was looking at what next. And like a lot of journalists, PR is often where you end up. So I did, moved, worked for the Environment Agency. So did public sector, which is predominantly in my background, to the Environment Agency for a while, and then moved into policing, which was just because I saw a Hanford for Merseyside police were recruited quite a few press officers, because it was a time when they were moving from having police officers deal with the media to having press officers and kind of PR involved, and then I stayed in the police, in two different police forces for 21 years, which was, which was, went in the blink of an eye, and also was a huge lot of time. So it was really that experience that when I left the police as covid Hit 2020, and you set up, set a business up as covid happened. That’s, that’s the sensible thing to do, was I focused on crisis communication, the the all the time in the police, it’s a vast amount of what you’re dealing with, and reputational and operational crisis. And then the turning point for me, it was the Head of Communications in Manchester, when the arena terrorist attack happened in 2017 and the learning from that, and the kind of experience that had, which had the lasting kind of impact, really then forced me to go, this is this is my so it’s weird, this is my calling, but this is what I really am passionate about. Being better at crisis communication, helping people, making sure that the communication, which is so fundamental, isn’t an afterthought, and is driving as much the operation, the operational kind of response, as anything else. So yeah, so that’s how I ended up kind of doing what I’m doing, and and I’m lucky. I am passionate about it, and I love it, and every day is, is a good day to be able to do it. Not sure, it’s everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s very
Emma Drake 05:29
specialist, isn’t it? I suppose. Is it something that you which is a good thing, I think, you know, we, we both run businesses, but, you know, my, my, I suppose I’m a bit broader, obviously that. But you know, being in that sort of it might feel quite intense. Sometimes you’re always doing that sort of work. Or does it feel, you know, from a communications point of view, is it, do you get the sort of breadth there with that sort of work? Yeah,
Amanda 05:53
I mean, it is. I remember when I was thinking about setting up and working for myself, and so many people said to me, specialize. Do what you are good at and what is your kind of passion. And it felt really weird, because you kind of think I should be doing everything, because how am I going to get work if I can’t do everything, when actually, this is the bit that I am I can do. I’m not good at event planning. Don’t ask me to run kind of big promotional things. I’m not good at that work. I can sort of do it, but it’s never going to be what I’m good at, because everybody’s got different abilities. It does feel intense sometimes, and you can feel, you can get a bit overwhelmed. I think probably by is the best, best way I put it is kind of, you know, but, uh, 21 years dealing with police issues and two quite big police forces, Merseyside and Manchester, Greater Manchester, um, kind of fits you for dealing with just lots and lots of difficult things. But it’s a mindset and, and I’m, you know, everybody talks about the kind of mental well being in PR, and it is so important for everybody, not just if you’re dealing with kind of problematic situations all the time.
Emma Drake 07:10
Yeah. I mean, I’ve seen that on your on your feed, and I see, I know you’re very passionate about that, and the people that you know, communications teams that are perhaps listening and dealing with some of these things, or maybe worried about dealing with some of these things in crisis communication, you know, there’s lots of things to think about, isn’t there? And I know you’ve been very passionate about the mental health side of things as well, and making sure that, you know, because it traumatic, is probably the wrong word, although the one that you referred to in your intro is, is obviously was very difficult for everybody involved. But, you know, sometimes a crisis can be, they’re so different, right? There must be, you know, situations that you deal with in the police, you know, very serious through to, sort of, you know, business ones that might be, I don’t know, fraud, or, you know, other situations. Have you got sort of, sort of breadth does it cover,
Amanda 08:03
really? I mean, a crisis is whatever, whatever that the organization deems is a crisis. It can be quite a low level threshold, or, like with policing and some of the emerging services, because of the amount of risk it carries a high level for anything to be crossed across as a crisis, but they are equally as important and they are equally as impactive. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing. I one of my other kind of big experiences, which you don’t really talk about, but was really massively impacted. Was was the Chief Constable at the time, dying whilst in and we were suddenly left without the person at the top of the organization. So the internal kind of impact of that was massive, as well as the kind of external scrutiny on what had happened and what was going on. So, you know, you can, you can see it in so many different ways. It can even be, you know, something that somebody says at a senior level that then it undermines your values, undermines what the business is about, and you find yourself catapulted into a crisis. As you say, it’s easy. It’s easier sometimes to look at the operational things of we’ve had a flood or there’s a fire, or something’s happened physically, but the reputational crises, often, organizations are not as equipped to respond to and the plans on an operational side that they have in place don’t necessarily work. And one of my kind of passions is comms teams and kind of PR teams need to be able to activate those responses, to go hang on a minute. We’ve got a major crisis reputational here, and we need that kind of system that, you know, governance, that approach in place to help with this, because otherwise, as PR and comms professionals, we end up trying to do everything and sort it out, and we can’t with. With these really big reputational crisis that you see, and there’s been lots of them that we see all the time, things like thinking like the TBI, or, you know, things where cultures within organizations are really challenged. That is really incredibly damaging, really difficult for staff, for stakeholders, for, you know, everything, for the perception, the reputation, and yet, we don’t necessarily have that really kind of strong, structured approach, as you would do for business continuity or anything else.
Emma Drake 10:32
Yeah, that’s so true. And I think that differentiation is something that does get missed, isn’t it? Like you say, sort of crisis has to be this sort of major, you know, we don’t need to think about it, or it won’t happen to us, because we’re not the emergency services, or we’re not, you know, but you know, you know, there can be just things that mismanagement is a big one, isn’t it, whether that’s on a project. I mean, so as you know, so my specialisms in the built environment, so I work on big, major projects, lots of people, you know. And I think they can be the information exchange with some of these things, because it’s not a very so it’s not very well liked sector. And that’s probably the wrong thing to say. But there are, you know, development generally, people can like, you know, it’s bit Marmite. People either love it or they don’t, or, you know, so that people have very strong opinions about it. And mismanagement of information can impact reputation quite a lot in so, so that you know, those sort of small, not smaller, but those sort of, they can feel more minor. So do you question for you, do you think that teams, you know, project teams, operational teams don’t see them as as important for that reason. You know, from a from your perspective,
Amanda 11:47
I think that’s one of the issues. I think it’s the bit around what people see as a problem. And, you know, not having a delivery of something which means that x can’t happen and y can’t happen is a problem, and everybody recognizes it a problem. But I think it’s that bit of, do we understand what reputation is for an organization and then what impact it has if it’s good or if it’s bad, and kind of quantifying it, and that is some of the stuff that I cover in the in the new book, because I think we, we’ve, we’ve got to get to a position where everybody’s owning the reputation of an organization so that it, it’s really easy to identify. Oh, hang on a minute. This might be an issue. I’d rather have comms team, and sorry for comms teams, commanding for their workload. I’d rather have comms and PR teams. We think we might have a little problem here, and it’d be nothing, because, again, you can go, Okay, I’ve had it on my radar, but it’s nothing then, then not be told about it. I mean, the other thing as well is, I think that comms teams are very central to everything that goes on in a business, in an organization. And you know, you might find that in those small bits of information that you get, say, from 234, different parts of the business, you suddenly go, oh, hang on a minute. All these elements are our reputational crisis, and you’ll spot it way before anybody else in an organization. And I’ve had experience of that in the police operationally, where we’ve gone, hang on a minute. There’s been this, this and this happen. We need to flag this up as an issue. So I think there’s a strength, if we can grasp it in the right way. But I’m conscious, and I’m always conscious of this that teams are incredibly stretched, and when I talk about, you know, being prepared for a crisis, and planning and putting all those things in place, and being trained and exercising and all these things, that sounds great in my world where that’s all I do, and that’s all I’m kind of talking to people about. But when you’ve got demands for this, that you know, all this on a to do list that’s extensive, it can feel like, well, why am I going to invest a lot of time for something that may or may not happen? On the flip side of that, I think, you know, crisis comms isn’t an add on. It’s like the other half of the proactive coin. You know, you build, we talked a little bit earlier about trust, trust and confidence and and the importance of that. And you build all that, don’t you in the in the in the quiet times, and you’re prepared for the potential impact of something happening, and the two go really hand in hand. And the more we can see that it becomes less of a, oh, I have to have these plans, and I have to do this, and more of a, well, it’s, it’s part of a good comms kind of overall, you know, approach to what we do. Yeah,
Emma Drake 14:40
I can see that. And it’s that the way you’ve just explained it there actually she, I think, when you’re when you’re across a number of different areas there, the comms, I’m using that broadly, the comms person could is often involved in a lot more different areas to like you say, can see patterns. We see the patterns, don’t we? And we go, hang on. Minute, you know, if that happens, and that happens, and I think that’s partly having a strategic thought process. It’s not, not everyone perhaps, would spot that, but you and I would spot it, and others will spot it. So there’s a skills piece there as well, I suppose, in terms of helping people think strategically about, you know, patterns and of things happening, and how to log them, and, you know, that sort of thing. Let’s move on to some we’re talking a lot about sort of, you know, operationally, how this might work, and sorts of where issues, you know, crises can come from. Have you got a particular example of, of how something’s been managed well, and what, or what, maybe, maybe not the case study, but the sort of, what the key qualities of something I was like examples, because it’s easier then to sort of understand them, isn’t it? But the sort of, and what are the sort of key bits of that example that made it successful in your, in your, in your opinion?
Amanda 16:01
Yeah, I think it’s much easier to give you bad examples. Because the bad example, we remember them, that the ones that are all over the media and, you know, and are in our faces for,
Emma Drake 16:14
yeah, no one wants to be the example. Do they? That’s the thing, isn’t it? You know, when someone goes wrong, oh, this is going to be a case study
Amanda 16:22
and, you know, and there are lots of them I can kind of talk through, I think in terms of food, is it? Well, I you know, when you look back to two examples, KFC, when they ran out of chicken, why was it? Why? Because they stuck to their brand values. They yes, they showed empathy, and they tried to cover off that people were affected, and all the rest of it, but they did it with that kind of lighter tone, which which reflected, and I think one of the things I’m very passionate about is that your crisis planning, crisis comps planning, should really be part of that kind of values piece. You know, if you are an organization that says we value customer service, and yet customers are way down on your list of talking to when something happens. Then you know, clearly you’re not kind of enhancing and kind of living the brand values. So so I think on a lighter kind of touch that I think you look at the New Zealand terrorist attacks back in sort of 20, Oh God, it’s been about 2019, something like that. I think I’m gonna go pre, pre covid or post covid. But you know, that was really handled very well, very sensitively. Lots of kind of details that were were really carefully managed, really sensitive to the impact it was having on on those who were affected. And lover or hater. Jacinda Ardern was very good at doing that. And I think partly because way back in her past, she did have some kind of PR experience, so perhaps was more attuned to how things would feel and what it would kind of, you know, look like. And I think that’s the bit that sometimes organizations really struggle with, which is taking themselves out of the detail of what they’re dealing with, that kind of bubble of experience, and looking at it, what does it look and feel like to people who are caught up in it, to your stakeholders, to people in the area, and understanding that is really fundamental, and we’re probably meant talk about the speed of everything at the minute. But I think with that, where we are kind of, that’s the critical bit, and there’s a the other things that, that I always look for are a kind of honesty, empathy, authenticity, particularly kind of the empathy, authenticity in the post covid world, I think that’s become way more important to people. Are you really? Do you really care? Are you being human about this response, and are you being genuine around it? If anyone remembers Matt Hancock crying Good morning, that’s not the authentic that we want, but it’s a challenge. And I think there’s a massive challenge with that for senior leaders around the vulnerability that it brings to be really genuine and authentic in the kind of response. And also you’re back to, I mean, love or hate, kind of the response. Some people criticize it. I mean, I think you go back to Alton Towers and the smiler accident of about 2015 they very quickly said it’s our responsibility. This was a problem. We should have sorted it, and we’re really open and took the accountability at a very early stage. And I think that’s the other kind of key for me, lots of problems you see is when organizations are doing they’re nothing to see here, nothing to see here. It’s all fine, don’t you worry about it. And you can’t do that, not in the scrutiny world we’re in, and the kind of detail that people can get hold of very, very quickly, and the access to the information that we have, you
Emma Drake 19:53
can’t, no, you can’t hide anything anymore. You know, there’s a digital footprint for most things, isn’t there? Say. You’d have to have been off radar for at least 15 years to not have any digital footprint at all, wouldn’t you? So, so I agree, it’s very difficult. I mean, there are lots of it you do. This is the problem, isn’t it? We talked about this that you it’s always the sort of, you know, something happens. And then there were lots of people sort of dissecting it and saying, Oh, this could have been better, and that could have been better. I suppose, a fundamental kind of bit I’ve just been listening to you talk and thinking about, is, is it a skills issue? Is it a, you know, is it from the comms team perspective? Because, you know, having a crisis plan is one thing, isn’t it? And, you know, write a crisis plan, you get someone like yourself to help or not, you know it, but you know you can. Most people could write a crisis plan of some description, right? But actually to do all the complex stuff and to do the thinking and actually spot stuff. And is it? Is it a skills issue? Do you think, or you know, is there, is there a way teams can be more confident. Is it A, is it an ongoing, you know, there’s always an ongoing argument about whether comms is in, you know, around the table at the right moment, and, you know, so what? What’s your sort of, what’s your perspective on that? Do you think around skills?
Amanda 21:18
I mean, I would say this, that you could always improve the skills. I think some of it is that having a crisis comms plan is seen as a kind of, yes, we’ve got one. But then when you get somebody new into the team, do they know what it means to them? Have you thought through the detail of how it’s going to work? Have you run through an exercise to test whether your plan would work or would broadly work, because, you know, plans always need to be flexible when something happens, because it’s never what we’re kind of dealing with. And I think there’s a bit so there is a little bit that, I think is, is around just taking it a little bit deeper than perhaps we’ve been used to, really easy to do an exercise. I mean, you can, you can go all bells and whistles with a big crisis simulation that can replicate social and everything else. And I do some of those, and I really enjoy doing them. And there are really, really good tests of plans, particularly for big organizations or complex planning or whatever. But you can do this with with the team. You know, if you’re a small or enterprise, small business, small comms team that’s got three or four people, AI, let’s raise it. It’s, you know, raise it. Chat. GPT, you can quickly get a scenario. You know, there’s lots of things now that will make it really simple for you. And then you talk it through, don’t you? Well, if what we doing at this point, what are you doing at that point? So I think there’s a bit of that that we can definitely do and making sure that we’re all really up to speed with it, because the minute something happens, you don’t want to be like, Well, where did we have that plan?
Emma Drake 22:47
I also think plan, where’s the plan?
Amanda 22:52
If anybody’s got a plan, and then your computer doesn’t work and it’s somewhere on the system and nobody got a printout. But also, plans don’t necessarily give you what you need. So often we’ll be splitting things into here’s the plan, here’s the theory element, almost here’s the approach that we want to take, the values that matter to us, the channels that matter that you know you can do that bit. But then with the speed of it, you need. Have you done these things? You have a crisis. Have you done X, Y and Z? Have a checklist, have a workflow. Do I know if it’s this or that? What do I do? If it’s this, you can do a lot of those practical elements and have them ready to go. And I think that’s the bit that probably will help. Most teams will be the biggest help would be, have I got all the checklists I need, that will mean I can just have that confidence and that comfort to go. Have I done all these things? Is everything in place? Have I missed anything? Well, I’m not doing x because this scenario, you know, that I’m dealing with, doesn’t need it, but it just helps you. And I think some plans, the covid, the covid plan free. You know, if you when that came, the report came out the other week, and it had the 2019, kind of structure. It was so complicated. It’s a slide I use when strategies go wrong, because how were you supposed to know what anybody was doing at that point in time? And I think this is, this is sometimes it’s not, it’s not about being clever. Some plans, some approaches, some strategies might be incredibly clever and complex and but that isn’t going to help you. And the other thing, I think, is about bringing things up to date. And I think that’s not a comms thing necessarily, but about how the rest of the business understands how comms works, because it’s so different now, you know, not just with the AI, but with the way social media works, with the speed with which everybody’s, you know, onto things, with the polarization in society, all these, you know, the misinformation and disinformation. All of these things add to your complexity for your plan. All these things add to the problems that you likely to face. And yet, a lot of the time, you see people going, well, I can’t believe that’s the way they do social media, and that’s the way this happens when some when a crisis happens, but that’s the way it’s going to operate. There’s no point in being really frustrated about social media, because it’s there and it will be a problem for you. You know, we know that misinformation and disinformation is going to happen. It’s about being ready for it and planning for it. And I think that’s the bit that perhaps the wider organization and business wouldn’t need to get to understand, because otherwise they just think, oh, it’s about putting out media statements and sticking some stuff on social media, it’s a bad way.
Emma Drake 25:42
Yeah, it’s multifaceted, isn’t it? And, you know, Touchwood, I’ve not been in a major crisis situation like yourself. Deal with, I deal with lots of issues. So so, you know, low to medium level potential reputation impact. I probably put them in that camp. So always talking about it, always thinking about, well, what’s the outcome if we do this? That’s the voice of reason I bring to projects. But I can see, you know, even the recent riots that happened in the UK. I mean, we weren’t, we were actually abroad, and we didn’t really see much of it, but the there’s a pan panorama covered it. I think I caught a bit of it last night. I’m going to watch the rest of it on catch up. But that was really interesting, because it was the even once, like you said, we’ve, you know, doing social media, putting out statements, the police announced who the person was, who’d been arrested for those terrible for those listening that aren’t in the UK, there was a series of riots that stemmed from a really unfortunate stabbing incident, which was proved to be very random, not motivated by anything particularly but due to misinformation, lots of far right groups and other groups were took it as an opportunity to act inappropriately. And, you know, call it a terrorist slashed racial attack. And you know, if the police put out a statement and they put out social media, but the misinformation continued like the name of the person was completely wrong, and the the where the person was from, and everything. But the amount of, what was we talk about speed last night, they talked about the speed. They’ve never seen it on that scale before, the speed that that spread. And that’s quite scary, isn’t it, that that people can be motivated, that can actually could turn into action as well so quickly. And I know that’s a really complicated situation I’ve just described. I don’t suspect we’ll go into detail on it today, but my point was that it was, it was that sort of your point you’re making that just doing a statement and saying this and saying, no, actually, it was this person that we’ve taken this action the police force did, doesn’t necessarily stop the problem happening. She could be that social media can work, and
Amanda 28:06
that’s and it is a really interesting thing. I mean, you know, when in the past, have I been able I was on, you know, go on Tiktok, and you could literally watch where the riots were happening on a live stream, but from wherever you wanted in the country. That’s the reality. So back there, I mean, there was riots back in 2011 completely different, but I remember dealing with them from a policing side, and social media was heavily involved in lots of respects with it. So so there is a history of people being quickly motivated. I think the speed with which the rumor happens is something that the police, not unlike other organizations, haven’t really grasped yet. And I think part of the problem isn’t to do with the comms element of it is to do with the systems behind it. So there’s a bit of actually, do we need to change some of the way we structure responding to incidents and situations from a from an operational, you know, from a kind of response perspective, not just from a comms perspective, but I think from, you know, the thing I kind of really just kind of focus on, because there’s not a lot you can do in these circumstances beyond speaking first, speaking frequently. So it’s, it isn’t labor intensive. It’s more labor intensive. Now, crisis comes and at any point, because you’re and it’s and also, quite interestingly, it’s where the creativity needs to come in, because you’ve got to be saying the same thing, sometimes in lots of different ways, for a consistent period of time. I also think we’ve got to get better at taking people on a journey when a crisis happens. So, you know, sort of keeping that communication flow going, because you are not going to know everything at the start. You are not going to know everything in the first few hours, so don’t wait until that point in time when you. Have got perfect clarity, but start to explain to people, this is where we are, this is what’s happening. That’s a common
Emma Drake 30:05
mistake, isn’t it? Yeah, that is a common mistake. You’re right. Well, let’s just wait until we know what’s happening.
Amanda 30:12
Yeah, it is understandable, because I think people want this, you know, I talk to apart, I get involved with the emergency planning society in the UK, and emergency planners are very much about, you know, surely we wait until we’ve got the information, then we sort out what we’re going to say. And it’s like, it doesn’t work like that anymore. That’s, that’s very old. That’s about where I was, 1999 when I joined the police. You know, that was, that was, that was the easy way. You know, we have all the information we can control what time it comes out, and what we say and all the rest of it, that isn’t the world we’re in now, and that isn’t the world we’re going back to in any, you know, at any point in the kind of near future. So it is about being ready to move quickly, to take people on that journey, to ensure the information you’re giving as as accurate as you can, but not expecting that you know you’re going to have all the information in the early stages. The Americans quite good, in some respects, at doing very early press conferences. So the Baltimore bridge collapse, they did a press conference with the mayor and the emergency services really quite quickly. And I think, you know, yes, that’s a chat. It’s a massive challenge. And I can see emergency services, oh God, can never do that, but that’s kind of where we need to be, because also, the world’s a small place. Now, you know, we watch what’s happening like that in America and go, why don’t why have they not done that in the AO, why don’t they do it in other places? So I think there’s, there’s a kind of shift that if we’re going to get better at doing crisis communication, if we’re going to keep on top of where we are with things, a shift across how we look at it in lots of respects. And, you know, a very boring phrase, but what I’ve used a lot is delegated authority. There’s that bit of what, how can you, how can you and your planning, prepare and get delegated authority? So when that is emerging really quickly on social, you can react, and you’re not having to go through 2345, layers of approvals, because that’s what does people and I say what really poor, as I would call it, you know, crisis responses, and I can guarantee that behind it are teams that are really frustrated because they are curtailed, or they’re not able to move as quickly, or, you know, there’s a proven mechanism needs, like four people to agree, or, you know, they’re designing a statement by committee. So I try never to be massively critical, because you don’t know what goes on behind the scenes of what’s happening. So I think, yeah, you know that delegated piece is part of that planning. What can I do before you do declare that this is a critical incident or a crisis for the business, because I’m going to need to do that if I’m going to have any chance of being out there and and, you know, managing the the wave, the tsunami, of kind of focus and comments and response that’s going to happen
Emma Drake 33:06
100% Yeah, it’s really interesting. So, I mean, once you’re in a crisis, you’re in a crisis, you’re already in the crisis, aren’t you? So you’re naturally, you are reactive. So if you haven’t got the building blocks in place, you know that’s that’s where the the lack of strategy is going to come to bite you on the backside, isn’t it? Because once you’re in the Yeah, once you’re there, you’re firefighting, aren’t you? So I mean, this is sort of leading towards your new book a little bit, isn’t it? In that the preparation piece and the sort of organizational approach to how they think about reputation is actually really important, isn’t it? Because you like to think in an ideal world. You by the time you get to a crisis, people like, Okay, we reckon. We recognize what’s going on. We’re going to be really quick. We’re not going to put blocks in front of you. We agree that it, you know, the comms should lead certain elements of it, not the lawyers. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s actually, really, it’s actually, kind of the most important bit, isn’t it, really, if you think about it. So thinking about this sort of advance, and nobody touched about, you know, writing a plan and running through scenarios and that sort of practical application of the crisis, but what? What’s the sort of people listening, you know? What’s the sort of things they can start to think about, actually, what they should be doing if they want to create a plan. There’s probably some other bits they need to be doing before that starts. Yeah. I mean, the first without giving all your book away, obviously,
Amanda 34:39
no, that’s fine. I you know, I’m very passionate about this, and I will talk about this. I could talk for hours. I’ll try not to knowing your risks. You’ve got to know your risks in the organization that you’re working in. What are the things that they’re concerned about? What are the where are the weaknesses? Where are the potential problems on all fronts, reputational, operational, etc. And I think it’s really under. Hand in that which we’re in the ideal place to do, to be fair, because, you know, we see the finance details, the HR details, the business planning, the information, you know, the customer service fee, but you do get to, kind of hopefully see all those things. So knowing that, knowing your risks, and looking at the kind of data that you have, what do you know about these risks. What do you know about? You know, the trends and the issues and the things that are on the horizon. Horizon scanning is really important as well, seeing those problems emerging. And comms pre are people pretty good at doing this? Because we’re always kind of looking at the what else is going on in the world that I need to know about. You’ve also got the history, and again, can be quite challenging, because the the you know, things can go back way before you were in post or you joined that business or organization, but you got to understand the history of how they’ve responded to crisis in the past. Was there any legacy issues in relation to that, any holdover of any problems, things that people perceived about the business back then that they don’t know? And that’s why, you know, I throw a challenge to businesses and organizations, comms teams to go, do you know what your reputation is amongst your kind of amongst key groups, key audiences, key kind of contacts at any point in time. Because it’s really difficult when you have a crisis to then assess, is it really having a significant impact if you don’t know where you were in the you know, before, before things happened. So I think all those things really help. As well as looking at best practice. Another thing for me is it’s, it’s looking at when things happen to other organizations, even outside of your industry and sector. Have a look at what, what’s coming out from it. So, you know, the covid report had some important elements around comms, the post office stuff has got lots of comms information, things that come out of it. And, you know, the Grenfell, there’s some of the Grenfell report out the duo soon, and that will as well. So I know people are short off time, so I’m going to but there are lots of people like myself, like and there are other kind of crisis comms people who are trying to disseminate some of this. So just keep an eye on what people are putting out and talking about, because it might help you to not have to read it. One of the you know, report onto the Uvalde, this Rob Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, which came out, I think, earlier this year that, for me, is, is has a whole chapter on public information, 44 recommendations, and it’s almost a how not to now, I can tell you, you know, go and read that and look at how not to do it, but you be like, actually, have I got time to read a great big, you know, chunk of information in a huge report. But then, you know, there are two or three times I’ve put out things about this is what’s in it that you might need to know. Things about being inclusive, looking at how you speak, looking at the language, thinking through the practicalities of the communication, and how you’re going to operate it. Schools have got quite good at lockdowns and how that operates, but there’s still so much more that we need to think about in terms of, you know, businesses that might need to lock down, how you might need to kind of get that kind of mass messaging out in different ways. So, yeah, so for me, that it’s, it’s trying to just factor that into part of your kind of assimilation of information that you do on a day to day basis, and the same way that we’re doing it for AI, aren’t we? We’re all looking at who’s got information about AI, and what is it saying, and how is that going to work, and how does that factor in for what it means for me? So I kind of see that we should just really be doing it as part of that, and hopefully not taking up too much extra time, which I know people are short of,
Emma Drake 38:37
yeah, and it’s tricky, isn’t it, but there are, there are, you know, people you can lean on for help, and there are, like, you say, resources you can, you know, lean on. We’ll put the links for some of the things you mentioned in in the show notes today to make sure people can capture some of that information. Actually, I actually have a link to your website on from my website, I believe as well. So where I talk about it, I tend to, you know, because I’m not the expert on it. So, you know, I’m doing it for people, helping people with some of it, but I’m, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s good to point other resources or further reading, a deeper reading for, you know, further reading for these things. So, so yes, it’s, that’s, that’s a skilling up piece, but I kind of think as well, you know, it saves you time, and a lot the long run, doesn’t it? It’s like any kind of planning, and I’m always saying this, you know, if you plan, if we, if we approach this the right way from the outset, it will save you time, money and resource in the long run. Because, you know, that’s no different for crisis comms, is it? It’s however we approach, you know, whether that’s a campaign or whether that is a strategy of any sort, approaching it the right way. The you know, is is really important for those reasons, and taking that little bit of time out. You know, a lot of teams have away days, or they have time where they’ll focus on the team, and this is something that they could build into that potentially, if they may. Members of CIPR, PRCA, or any other member body. You know there’s, there’s resources you can read and listen to as part of CPD, for example. So you’re learning learning as well. So, so I think, I mean, we’ve covered quite a lot, actually, I wonder if there’s we’ve covered, yeah, we’ve covered, covered loads, haven’t we? What I like to do is leave people with sort of three things that they can if we’re going to do something, if people listening have really not thought about this at all, and, you know, want to start thinking about it and take those initial steps, or suggest it internally, or just take those initial steps. What are the what are the three things they should really think about doing? Amanda, oh,
Amanda 40:42
so this is going to sound very kind of, as you would imagine. So the first thing is, Have you got a plan? And if you haven’t got a plan, can you, can you do one? Don’t worry about it being, you know, all encompassing, but just having something that says, when we know there’s a problem, this is what we’re going to do about it, and then hopefully, at some point you’ll be able to test it, I think, understand where your audiences are, where your communities are, understand who’s important to you, and all the information that you have on things like that should help to drive how you approach a crisis. And then the kind of final thing is, if you’ve got some things in place, or if you’re putting that work together, make sure people are at the center of it, because that’s the most important thing, and that’s the bit that often through nobody’s fault. But we get focused on the process, or we get focused on doing X, Y and Z, but focus on who’s affected by this. How are they affected? What does it look and feel like to them? And that includes internal in terms of staff that may be caught up in incidents or involved or connected to, as much as it does customers, people outside in different ways. And I think you know, if we can get better at getting the external kind of affected people’s voice into what we respond to and how we deal with things. We will do better responses, you know, because we can then go back as comms people PR to go You’re the, you know, the action that you’re planning to take in relation to x incident is going to cause this additional concern or problem, and, you know, sometimes that stops organizations taking a step that will be potentially damaging. So, yeah, so I’m not sure that’s quite a lot more than three things, but, but those mean that my sort of three things,
Emma Drake 42:34
not at all. I think there are three really good things. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s always just good to leave people with some thoughts and and I think they’re really good thoughts to leave people with today. So So thank you, and thanks so much for coming on the podcast. It’s been great chatting to you. And I’m sure your book will be a resounding success, which is out on the fourth of November in the UK, perhaps slightly different dates worldwide, but I’m sure we’ll include a link to that information today. So good luck with that. But thanks for coming on, Amanda. It’s been fascinating talking to you. Thanks
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