Until you’ve led a team or firm through a crisis, it’s difficult to know what to do much less how to do it. If you’re an employee of a firm facing a crisis, chances are you feel like a helpless occupant of a car watching from the backseat as it careens out of control.

In my experience, very little time or gray matter is spent in most organizations on cultivating crisis leadership skills much less preparing the broader organization to navigate a crisis. Given the world we are all working and leading in, the failure to prepare at all levels for a crisis is a potentially costly oversight. Just ask former Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO, John Stumpf.

Organizational Failure is Amplified when Top Leaders Flail:

In case you missed Stumpf’s pitiful attempt at crisis communication (and leadership), I suspect you can easily find video clips of what should be required viewing for every member of top management in every organization. Stumpf won the lottery for that famous classroom ethics filter of, “Do you want to see yourself and your firm in the newspaper as a result of this decision?” He made every paper and news source when Senator Elizabeth Warren easily gutted him as well as Wells Fargo management in front of a Senate committee. If awards were given for the worst performance by a top leader under pressure, Stumpf would be a lock this year.

Of course, Stumpf’s problems with crisis leadership did not start on television or in the newspaper. The invitation to the soiree with the Senate committee originated years earlier in a series of bad decisions compounded by decisions that…well…that compounded the implications of the bad decisions. According to the internal records, this emerging crisis of credibility and corporate malfeasance was screaming to be addressed long before any blood hungry senator sensed an opportunity or an easy kill. The firm had ample opportunity to contain and eradicate the problem, yet management failed up and down the organizational chart in spite of ample internal whistleblowing.

Crises Today Come in Unpredictable Sizes and Flavors:

Navigating the fallout from ethical lapses made public is one form of crisis. Others range from financial misfortunes, and strategy flops, to major initiative misfires, workplace violence, unexpected acts of nature (say for example a tsunami wiping out your supply chain), to the public suddenly learning that your flagship product has an annoying habit of bursting into flames. Or, what about your airbag safety devices potentially killing your customers? That’s one of my personal favorites. (The bold advice from many of the automobile manufacturers who failed to have a Plan B for a mission-critical life-safety part is to park your car until they can get replacements from the poster child of a firm that got this crisis thing wrong, Takata.)

Preparing the Organization to Survive a Crisis:

The variety and volume of crisis opportunities are staggering, and recent history sadly is instructive in how easy it is to massively misfire in the face of a crisis. The implications of misfires range from fines to lost opportunities to billions lost in market capitalization. In some instances personal safety of customers is the issue, and poor corporate response amplifies the risk.

The behaviors around scenario planning and risk identification and response development are highly relevant here, however, before selecting tools from the risk-brainstorm or risk-response toolboxes, a framework for mandatory behaviors is in order. A set of “Commandments for Crisis Leadership” seems to be needed to guide not only top leadership but overall organizational behaviors.

10 Starter Commandments for Acceptable Corporate Crisis Behaviors:

  1. Role planning for crisis scenarios shall be a mandatory part of organizational life—governed by the philosophy that everyone in an organization has a role to play, regardless of the nature of the crisis. Everyone.
  2. Knowledge of crises must emerge quickly from the boardroom and executive suite.
  3. Communication and solution development are the two priorities and resources must immediately be deployed to focus unceasingly in these areas.
  4. Communication from the top of the organization must be immediate, constant and clear.
  5. If customers or external stakeholders are involved, communication must be immediate, constant, clear, and meaningful.
  6. Communication that focuses on covering the collective corporate rear-end shall be effectively outlawed from all channels.
  7. Quality problems must be assumed guilty until proven innocent. See also the points above about communication.
  8. Denial of problems—especially when it comes to quality issues satisfies just one audience—the lawyers. The cost of dealing openly and transparently with the root problem and those impacted, pales in comparison to the brand damage and market capitalization hit you will suffer if you let the threat of litigation guide the crisis response.
  9. If the internal dialog smells like hubris it is, and the odor must be immediately eliminated.
  10. Even the hint of smoke surrounding a potential ethical lapse shall be treated as a full-blown 4-alarm fire internally. No ethical lapse shall be left to smolder.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I look forward to additions to this list from readers. While I suspect it is incomplete, the thinking and actions of too many firms is dangerously incomplete. Let’s learn to deal effectively with the reality that “stuff happens,” and it is our responsibility to deal with it quickly, safely and transparently.

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