“We are advocates. We are in the business of changing and molding attitudes, 

and we aren’t successful unless we move the needle—get people to do something.

But we are also a client’s conscience, and we have to do what is in the public interest.”

—Harold Burson^[1]

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”^[2]

—Mike Tyson

First, a Story…

Chicago. Late September, 1982.

Twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman had a lingering head cold, so after convincing her dad to let her stay home from school, she went to take a capsule of Extra-Strength Tylenol. Her dad watched her go into the bathroom, heard a cough, followed by something falling to the floor, and asked her if she was okay. Mary didn’t respond. He opened the door and found her on the floor. She was raced to the hospital, but it was too late—shortly after they arrived, Mary was pronounced dead.^[3]

Her parents were baffled, because Mary was otherwise a perfectly healthy middle-schooler. They figured she must have had a stroke.

The next morning, 27-year-old mailman Adam Janus experienced some slight chest pains and took a couple of Tylenol. He fell to the floor and died shortly after the paramedics arrived. Doctors told his family that he likely died of heart failure.

The Janus family had relatives visit to pay their respects. Adam’s younger brother Stanley, and sister-in-law, Theresa, were newlyweds. Stanley suffered from chronic back pain, and had a headache, so he reached for the bottle of Tylenol, and also offered some to Theresa, who also had a headache. Stanley collapsed shortly after, and by the time the ambulance arrived, Theresa had collapsed. Both died.^[4]

Chuck Kramer, a firefighter who responded to both calls from the Janus household, told the other paramedics, “Guys, this isn’t heart attacks. There’s something wrong.”

Kramer called Helen Jensen, a nurse who was the only public health official in the Chicago suburb, to help investigate. After hearing the story from members of the Janus family, she found the Tylenol bottle on the counter in the Janus home, and the receipt in the trash can. After pouring out the contents of the bottle—counting 44 capsules out of 50—she determined each person likely took the recommended dosage of two pills. Jensen concluded it must have been the Tylenol, but her conclusion was met with skepticism.^[5]

Authorities eventually connected the dots and discovered cyanide in the Tylenol, but not before six otherwise healthy people in the greater Chicago area had also died within a 24-hour span. During a press conference, the public was advised to avoid taking Tylenol until further notice.

An additional investigation found that tampered pills were purchased from a handful of stores in the Chicago area. The tainted capsules were produced by two different manufacturing plants, which meant the capsules were tampered with after they were on store shelves. It was, in short, an act of terrorism. Someone took the bottle off the store shelf, added potassium cyanide, and returned the bottle to the shelf to kill people and terrorize the community.

The manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, had a crisis on its hands. A leading expert in advertising said he didn’t believe Johnson & Johnson would ever be able to sell another product under the Tylenol brand.

He said: “There may be an advertising person who thinks [they] can solve this, and if [Johnson & Johnson] finds [them], I want to hire [them]…to turn our water cooler into wine cooler.”^[6]

Public faith in the widely used drug crumbled, and reports showed—within days—that Tylenol went from enjoying 37% of the market share to about 7% of the market share for pain-relief medicine.^[7]

It would not be enough to deny responsibility and blame the deaths on a random act of terrorism.

Johnson & Johnson halted all production and advertising of Tylenol. It issued a nationwide recall of every Tylenol bottle in every store, which created a loss of more than $100 million in retail value.^[8] It coordinated investigative efforts with the FBI and Food and Drug Administration. The company used paid advertising to print coupons in local newspapers to cover the cost of a new bottle of Tylenol. It also offered to replace, “free and without asking for proof,” any bottles that consumers may have thrown away.^[9] Most importantly, Johnson & Johnson announced that all Tylenol bottles would now feature triple-sealed, tamper-resistant packaging.

Finally, these announcements were not made at a single nationally televised press conference, as might be expected. Rather—under the guidance of Harold Burson and the Burson-Marsteller PR agency—Johnson & Johnson executives opted to have 30 different press conferences, linked via satellite, with reporters from the largest regional markets. A technological feat at the time, it also served to localize the story and guaranteed front-page coverage of the story around the country.^[10] It didn’t hurt that the CEO of Johnson & Johnson praised the media for its role in helping disseminate information.^[11]

By September of the following year, Tylenol was once again the most popular pain reliever, and it was “almost as if nothing ever happened.”^[12]

And remember that “leading expert in advertising” who made the “water cooler into wine cooler” comment? The advertising agency responsible for Tylenol shipped him a water cooler filled with wine.^[13]

Nearly a half-century later, Tylenol remains as popular as ever, but the so-called Tylenol Murders remain unsolved.^[14]

The Takeaway

There are many incorrect ways to respond to a crisis. Johnson & Johnson navigated the crisis so well that its approach is widely regarded as one of the first “textbook” responses to a crisis.^[15] By incurring a significant expense of removing existing products from stores, and giving away future products, the company exceeded expectations in a public manner. It was transparent in its actions, and successfully restored public trust in Tylenol.

A crisis is a defining moment for any organization, and it puts a spotlight on ethical behavior. In most cases, publics may not care that much about the cause of the crisis, but they will care about how the organization responds. It’s one thing to have feel-good mission and vision statements—it’s another to follow those when the going gets tough. When it really matters: Are you the organization you claim to be?

Introduction to Crisis Communication: Problem or Crisis?

Public Relations and Strategic Communication involves building relationships with key audiences by cultivating an appealing personality, image, and reputation. A crisis threatens to upend that work.

So, what is a crisis?

A Crisis is defined as a specific, nonroutine, unanticipated, and uncontrollable event—or series of events—that jeopardize relationships with key stakeholders and threaten the goals of an organization.^[16]

Breaking that definition down, the symptom of a crisis would be described as acute rather than chronic; it doesn’t refer to the gradual degradation of a public image over months or years. It’s sharp, dramatic, and specific. It’s not part of a day-to-day routine, so a crisis generally disrupts normal business operations.

It’s unanticipated, which means that the organization is caught off-guard. “Unanticipated” is not the same as “unexpected” or “unpredictable.” To anticipate something entails acting in advance of that occurrence. For example, a data breach is common enough that an organization may not be completely shocked that it could possibly occur—rather, steps have not been taken regarding a potential breach, so it’s an unanticipated event. In that sense, a crisis is “risk manifested.”^[17]

It’s also uncontrollable; it defies a quick fix and easy solution, and is an “all-hands-on-deck” moment that demands additional time, resources, and strategic thinking to resolve. Finally, it places stress on relationships with critical stakeholders, resources, and audiences that are essential to an organization achieving its goals.

When each of those factors are at play, the crisis is underway. A crisis threatens the values, goals, and resources of an organization.^[18] Anything less than a crisis is a problem—and it may be a significant problem—but it can be handled without putting everything on hold until it’s resolved.

Some of the more common crises are related to public perception, sudden market shifts, product failures, top management changes, cash shortages, industrial relations, and adverse international events.^[19] There are also crises that are not organizationally based events, such as regulation or deregulation of an industry, or even a natural disaster—but the organization itself is not viewed as responsible for the act.^[20]

Crises may be unpredictable, but PR and Strategic Communication Professionals should know that the best time to plan for one is before it even starts. This chapter focuses on crisis communication as it relates to protecting an organization’s image and relationships with key audiences before, during, and after a crisis.  It expands upon different aspects of ethics and relationships, as well as elements of storytelling and persuasion.^[21]

Blame Narratives, Counter Blame Narratives & SCCT

Crises tend to start with an exigency or situation marked by urgency. Due to the unpredictability of this event, publics, stakeholders, and news media tend to focus on who or what caused the exigency. As such, one way to understand a crisis is that it can be viewed through the lens of a blame narrative.

Blame Narratives began with the ancient Greek notion of Kategoria (an accusation or charge), in which an accuser lays out an alleged act and set of facts to support the assertion. The story includes protagonists, antagonists, and a plotline with a sequence of events that assigns blame to an individual, and asks the audience to adopt the accuser’s viewpoint.^[22]

In essence the same thing happens in a crisis, as a prevailing narrative establishes two elements. First, an act occurred, which is offensive. Second, the accused is responsible for that act. Both elements must be viewed as true by an audience for the organization’s reputation to be put at risk.^[23]

A Counter Blame Narrative—or a persuasive defense—must therefore address both of those issues.

A key part of Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) is that a crisis response should be proportional to the level of responsibility an organization has for the offensive act.^[24] It is appropriate to focus on responsibility for the crisis as an audience-centered approach. At the same time, the focus might prioritize reputational threats to the organization over the actual damage to publics in a crisis, who may have had very real harm done to them.^[25] For that reason, it’s useful to adopt an Outward Mindset^[26] that emphasizes the importance of ethics and building durable relationships.^[27]

Crisis Responses: Image Repair Theory

In a crisis, an organization has a range of options that basically come down to one or more of the following responses: “We didn’t do it;” “It wasn’t our fault;” “It wasn’t that bad;” “We fixed it;” and “We’re sorry.”^[30]

Here, we’ll dress up those ideas a little bit, and refer to the five general approaches as Denial, Evading Responsibility, Reducing Offensiveness, Corrective Action, and Mortification.^[31] Within those categories are a couple dozen different responses, so in the interest of time and space, we’ll cover those in some quick bullet points.

Denial^[32] (“We didn’t do it”)

Denial refers to responsibility for the act. It’s not denying something occurred, or denying a crisis exists—it only addresses the notion of blame.

• Simple denial
  • We’re not responsible for the act.
• Shift the blame
  • Another person, group, or organization is responsible for the act.

Evading Responsibility (“It wasn’t our fault”)

When denying responsibility for an act is not feasible, there are four basic ways to reduce the burden of that blame.

• Provocation
  • The act was justified, because it was in self-defense.
• Defeasibility
  • There was a lack of information and/or lack of control in the situation.
• Accident
  • It was a simple mistake, done without intent.
• Good intentions
  • We inadvertently did something bad while trying to do something good.

Reducing Offensiveness (“It wasn’t that bad”)

Reducing offensiveness does not address responsibility for the act; rather, it addresses the severity of that act. There are a handful of ways to minimize the negative feelings that stakeholders and audiences have regarding a situation.^[33]

• Bolstering
  • Strengthen positive feelings toward the organization by reminding the audience of past good deeds
• Minimization
  • The act is not as offensive as claimed: It’s not that big of a deal.
• Differentiation
  • Distinguishes the act from a similar, less desirable action: Doing so redefines the act as less offensive
• Transcendence
  • Places the act in a different, more favorable context that emphasizes a different value
• Attacking the Accuser^[34]
  • Directly
    • Calls into question the credibility of the accuser, or source of the accusations by name
  • Indirectly
    • Attacks the “statements, actions, policies, or associations of the accuser” to reduce their impact^[35]

Corrective Action (“We fixed it”)

Corrective actions involve a promise to correct the problem and to make changes to prevent something similar from occurring in the future.

That promise must be followed by substantive actions that live up to that promise, or it risks compounding the issue further

Mortification (“We’re sorry”)

According to Kenneth Burke, mortification involves a sincere apology where the accused admits responsibility and asks for forgiveness. From an ethical standpoint, if the accusations have merit and the organization is the culprit, it’s tough to argue against mortification.

On their own, the words “I’m sorry,” or “We’re sorry” do not constitute mortification. When offering an apology, first consider what you’re apologizing for, to whom the apology is owed, how to apologize, and when to apologize.^[36] It’s been suggested that an authentic attempt at mortification includes:

(a) taking responsibility;

(b) emphasizing the harms caused;

(c) asking for forgiveness

(d) admitting a lack of excuse or justification;

(e) confessing feelings of shame or embarrassment^[37]

Even if all five of those elements are not present in a response, emphasizing some of those aspects can result in the audience accepting the apology as authentic.

One potential drawback—depending on the circumstances—is that claiming responsibility may expose the organization to legal action. Even though it may be a common human response to say “I’m sorry,” before using mortification in public, consult with senior leaders and lawyers.

To summarize Image Repair Theory, “Denial and evading responsibility address the belief component of the attacks. Reducing offensiveness concerns the value involved in an attack. Corrective action and mortification attempt to create new beliefs to repair the image.^[38]

Alternative Actions: Creative Responses to a Crisis

The list of actions in the preceding section is comprehensive, but not exhaustive. A situation will often demand that an issue is addressed directly, but there are occasions where a more creative solution is the best approach. Other ways of handling a crisis include what we’ll refer to as inaction and indirect action.

Inaction—not responding or not communicating—is an active choice.^[39] In some cases, it may be the best course of action. The interview in the next section is with Chris Thomas, the head of a nationally renowned agency that specializes in crisis communication, and he explores that idea a bit more. For now, bear in mind that inaction is a conscious decision that might be a prudent option.^[40]

There are also instances in which addressing a crisis head-on is less than ideal, but rather than inaction, you opt for indirect action and find a “side door” that gets you where you need to be. To lend a sense of what the heck that means, here’s an example from Bernays:

“A nationally famous New York hotel found that its business was falling off at an alarming rate because of a rumor that it was shortly going to close…Few things are more mysterious than the origins of rumors, or the credence which they manage to obtain. Reservations at this hotel for weeks and months ahead were being canceled by persons who had heard this rumor and accepted it implicitly…

[T]his rumor…had no foundation in fact…[D]enial…would accomplish little. The…only way to overcome the rumor was to give the public some positive evidence of the intention of the hotel to remain in business. It happened that the maître d’hotel was about as well known as the hotel itself. His contract was about to expire. The public relations counsel suggested a very simple device.

‘Renew his engagement immediately for a term of years,’ he said. ‘Then make public announcement of the fact. Nobody who hears of the renewal or the amount of money involved will believe for a moment that you intend to go out of business.’

The maître d’hotel was called in and offered a five-year engagement. His salary was one which many bank presidents might envy. Public announcement of his engagement was made. The matire d’hotel was himself something of a national figure…The story was one which immediately interested the newspapers. A national press service took up the story and sent it out to all its subscribers. The cancellation of reservations stopped and the rumor disappeared.”^[41]

First: Bonus points if you know the name of any maître d at any hotel in town—so let’s just acknowledge that times have changed. But this anecdote is classic Bernays: Instead of issuing a straightforward denial that could have given life to an incorrect rumor, he unearthed a creative solution through indirect action.^[42] Put another way, he used the side door. In the 21st century, there are ways to use the side door to address a crisis ranging from leaking information to the media or using social media to send information to influencers. Rather than issuing an official response, the idea of indirect action is to have key publics or stakeholders address the crisis in an unofficial way.

Experts Talk Back:

Three questions with Chris Thomas, president at Intrepid Agency in Salt Lake City.

Intrepid offers a range of strategic communication services, and specializes in crisis communication, having represented hundreds of clients. The firm has worked with multiple Fortune 500 companies, and Thomas is perhaps best known for his work in the Elizabeth Smart ordeal. He also serves as judge of the “PR student of the year” contest in Utah.

Things have changed drastically in the last 20 years, and I mean drastically. Breaking that down a little bit, changes in the media change crisis communications as well.

We used to have reporters for every major beat, and now most journalists are generalists: They cover everything. We had journalists 20 years ago who had been in the industry for 30 or 40 years and really practiced their craft. I mean, I was a journalist initially out of school, and still have great respect for the few that are still around that really, really do their job. Not that they aren’t—I just think they’re stretched so thin.

So, we now have fewer journalists doing more, who are younger, with less life experience and less journalism experience. And so, years ago in a crisis situation, oftentimes it was—you know, we still try, but—we could sit down with a grizzled, veteran journalist and have a really detailed conversation because they understood the industry, they understood how business works, and we could really help them to understand the issue, how our client was involved with it, and how they were addressing it.

Now, so often there’s such a lack of background and understanding, and such speed to get the story out online. It’s often hard to have those conversations because crises usually are gray; they’re not black and white. And so being able to explain the nuance is really important. So that’s really difficult. The other thing is social media has made it so incredibly challenging because just about anyone can be a journalist now, and just about anyone can take that megaphone and go out and parrot to the world, whatever they want to parrot.

It’s really interesting because things that weren’t news in the past are news now, and things that probably should be news aren’t. So, you’re dealing with just this weird thing where—and this probably doesn’t work with what you’re doing, but there was that Bizarro World episode of Seinfeld years ago. It’s kind of bizarro world now. Like, how did we get here?

So, from a crisis standpoint—I mean, we’ve managed more than 300 crises in the last 20 years through different industries, and I can’t say we’ve done everything, but we’ve done a lot—and we get a call, one of the first things we’re often doing is going to social media. Right off: What’s on social, and how is it being portrayed? I have so little control over what’s going on on social; it’s really difficult from a client standpoint in that, yeah, there’s a thousand people that are being reached by this message from this nut, and you’re going to amplify it by responding to them. And so, you have to just be very selective on how you respond online. And you have to be very smart about how you do it.

One of the big mistakes a lot of crisis communications folks make—I think it’s important for your students to understand—is that the first place they used to go is to the media. Now, I think it’s social media, and it’s responding to those, instead of taking a step back and being strategic: Who are our audiences, and how does this impact those audiences? And how do we make sure that we are communicating with these audiences?

I can’t control what’s going on on social media, but I can have some control over my board, over my customers, over various people. So how are we going to communicate proactively or reactively with these groups? And sometimes the public response is pretty minimal compared with what we’re doing with each of these audiences where we have an influence…There are many, many audiences where your communication with that key audience is much more important than what you say publicly.

Well, you bring up something we talk about all the time with our clients, and that’s what we call “breaking into jail.”

Crises are emotional—very emotional—and the way in which you manage them best is to take the emotion out of it and look at it rationally. So, we do a lot of psychology work where it’s like, “Okay, I know you’re really pissed. And I know most of this isn’t true, or that it’s having a significant impact. But we’ve all got to take a deep breath here, and we’ve got to look at this rationally and responsibly.”

And it’s nice coming in as a consultant: A lot of the companies that hire us, whether it’s legal counsel or it’s communications, because we’re an outside party who has significant experience, their top executives listen to us. So being able to go in, and from our experience, say “Hey, if you respond to this—and I feel we have this conversation a couple of times a month—if you respond directly to this, right now you’ve got 60 comments and 150 people engaged, and it’s going to increase probably 10- to 20-fold. And it’s not going to increase the way you want it to increase.

Now when it hits a certain point, it makes more sense. The other thing I often like to do too is just “everything depends.” Everything. There’s not a set formula. Some of it’s from experience and collaboration and figuring out what the repercussions are.

It’s the same thing with the audiences—are we going to be proactive or reactive with a certain audience? Do we need to reach out—are we that concerned? Or are we going to make sure that all of our frontline—all the people who interface with these audiences— know what is going on?

Sorry, I’m going to go off on a few tangents before we bring it back. Internal is the most important audience in most crises, and it’s also the most overlooked. Research has shown that most people in an organization where there’s an issue, they want a general idea of what’s going on, and instructions on what to do if they’re confronted with it. If you can answer those two questions—of course, everybody wants to know more than you’re able to tell them, but it’s like: “You’re not communicating anything with us. And I’m getting a call from our customers, and I don’t even know what to tell them.” It puts them in a really demoralizing position. That’s why you see with serious crises generally, there’ve been studies done that show it has a significant impact on retention. So, that internal audience is making sure “what do we say?” We don’t want to alarm people too much, but we also don’t want them to be caught off-guard, and who do we tell, who don’t we tell. It’s very surgical, usually. Occasionally, you’ll have what we call a red-level crisis where it’s just nuclear, and at that point it’s very different, but usually everything is very, very surgical in how we respond to it.

We’re always asking the question, too, with social: “Who is this influencing? And are there things we need to do to communicate with them? I’ll go on one more tangent.

I had a client we worked with that’s very well-known. If I said the name, of course you go “aha.” But for confidentiality reasons, I’m not going to mention them. This was 10 years ago, so it’s a little dated, but they were involved in a significant story that was on the front page of the Salt Lake Tribune. It was pretty ugly. And they hired, at the time, Dan Jones and Associates to do a survey. So, they surveyed 500 people that day regarding the situation—and this is when people read the paper a lot more than they do now. Less than 5% of the people they called knew about the story, and of the people who knew about the story, it was about 20% who cared about the story. So, if you break that down, it was 1-2% of the population that was concerned with it. So that was something that was used a lot. A lot of money was spent on that research, but it helped guide a lot of what was done from there on out: Is this impacting 5%? Are we just amplifying it by coming out—is this a one-day story? Is this a three-week story? What do we do, and how do we respond to it?

So, I think we’re even more siloed now than ever before. And it’s surprising how often people don’t know about major news events, let alone crises. And the only way they know about them is if we let them know. So again, it’s hard to answer that question, but some of it is from experience. A lot of it is circumstantial, and some of it’s just from feel. One of the most important things I always tell people in crisis communications is to listen to and trust your gut.

First and foremost, experience is key. Experience is everything. I recommend, even as a freshman, starting to get experience. The more volunteer opportunities, internships, shadowing—anything you can do to learn—is going to help you get ahead and is going to provide opportunities because that’s how you build a network.

It’s kind of rare to see students now that are proactive, and saying “Hey, what do you do, and how do you do it? Do you have an internship where I can shadow you?” And I get that it’s scary to ask for that. It’s rare to see students at PRSA events where there’s opportunities to learn firsthand.

So, I think it’s really important to work with a variety of people as a student before you graduate, and have a portfolio with at least two or three pretty solid, different internships or volunteer opportunities that you can demonstrate—because that’s what I look for in an interview. I don’t care about your grades. I usually don’t care too much about where you went to school. I really care about what you’ve done, and your initiative, and whether or not you can come in and contribute to my organization.

The other thing I would tell you—and I think this is a huge mistake I’ve seen in recent years—is once you get the job, treat those first two to three years as a graduate course in communications. Don’t treat it as a job. And I know this from experience because this is what I did: I got a job at an agency, and I would spend my lunchtime, my after-hours, and weekends. And I wouldn’t re-do everything, but I was the small guy doing the grunt work, and I would be in the meetings where they were talking about this proposal they were developing, or the release that’s being written, or whatever it might be. And I would go off on my own and write the release, or write the proposal, and then I would compare it with what they did, and quickly someone found out what I was doing, and I soon had a mentor that was like, “Oh, bring it to me, and let me look at that.” I put a lot of extra time in, but it paid huge dividends.

What I’m seeing a lot of right now is getting into a job, and then six or seven months later, you want to jump somewhere and want to do something else. There just isn’t this stick-to-it-iveness…It really takes a couple of years to get everything you can out of that, and if you do that, you build this foundation…But I think so often there’s kind of the short, immediate focus versus really looking at the long game. And the students who are looking at the long game and getting really good experience in those first two to three years, and are sticking in a place are 10 times more valuable 5-to-10 years into their career than those who are jumping around.

Best Practices

A recurring theme when speaking with practitioners is that to be successful in Public Relations and Strategic Communication, you need to remain current—not just on best practices in the field while executing tactics, but remaining current on news and information.

First: Prevention is the best cure. When you’re scrolling through your newsfeed with the organization in mind, you’re low-key engaging in environmental scanning. Environmental scanning is the process of actively seeking information regarding relevant relationships and events that might help a company move forward.^[43] It’s quite similar to a situation analysis, but may instead be thought of as an ongoing refinement of your understanding of that situation. This is sometimes referred to as “issues management,”^[44] and the rationale is that by being proactive, issues can be identified before they evolve into a problem—or a crisis. Environmental scanning is an early warning system that can warn of potential danger.^[45]

Once the crisis has arrived and a response is required, it’s helpful to follow the following five guidelines^[46],^[47],^[48],^[49]:

• React quickly
  • Establish monitoring tools and a response team.
  • Pause scheduled content, and focus on crafting content that’s relevant, shareable and understandable.
• Inform internal publics
  • Often a “forgotten audience” during a crisis, employees—especially those who interact with the public—need to have a sense of what’s going on, and what they should do. Some employees and crises require more details than others.
    • For employees, hearing bad news about their employer from a media report erodes trust within the organization.
• Be consistent and coherent
  • Focus on a key message—what you want the audience to remember—build around that, and return to it.
  • When you take a stand on something—unless you’re completely, demonstrably wrong—stand tall. Because “reversing course, hoping to placate the angry mob…often…simply angers everyone—supporters feel betrayed; opponents feel victorious, and everyone walks away feeling badly about the brand in question.”^[50] A quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln reinforces this: “Be sure you put your foot in the right place, then stand firm.”^[51]
  • Speak with one voice: Whether it’s a spokesperson or an online team, everyone should be working from the same set of facts and conveying. the same message.
• Focus on relationships
  • Keep stakeholders and key audiences informed: Their support will be needed during and after the crisis.
  • Know who you can go to, whether it’s a preferred member of the media to pitch a story, or a colleague or mentor for advice.
• Learn from the crisis
  • It can be tempting to walk away and try to forget the crisis. Instead, do a “post-mortem”: Evaluate the response and how it could have been improved. Questions to ask include:
    • Were our actions consistent with our values?
    • What did we anticipate—and not?
    • How did employees perform?
    • What lingering effects are there from the crisis?
    • What are the next steps?^[52]

Lemonade from Lemons

A crisis is bad—but it doesn’t have to be entirely bad. In a crisis:

• Heroes are born: If you know how to survey the landscape and respond appropriately, the executive team can understand first-hand your importance to the organization.
• Change is accelerated and latent problems are faced: The crisis may involve a “smoldering” issue rather than a “sudden issue.”^[53] An organization may finally address a problem and make much-needed changes.
• People can be changed: There’s a dual meaning here. First, people can learn from and improve at what they do. Second, if they can’t—or won’t—they can be changed for someone who is a better fit.
• New strategies and early warning systems develop: After going through a crisis, everyone emerges with a better sense of how to better navigate the situation and when to intervene.
• New competitive edges appear: The organizational changes prompted by the crisis can result in a competitive advantage, compared to other organizations that have not been tested or forced to change.^[54]

Summary: Putting it All Together

A crisis is an extreme event for an organization, but it’s also “part of the natural organizational process, purging elements of the system that are outdated and inappropriate, and creating new, unexpected opportunities for growth and change.”^[55]

Harold Burson, who counseled the Johnson & Johnson executives throughout the Tylenol crisis, was named by PR Week as the most influential PR person of the 20th century. Burson’s quote in the epigraph of this chapter—about being the conscience of a client, and doing what is in the public interest—was more than cheap talk. He would always advise leaders to “get the bad news out quickly and fully,” and refused to take on clients who weren’t candid.^[56],^[57]

A crisis poses threats to an organization’s values, finances, resources, and relationships. It can pose an ethical dilemma with the added pressure of public attention and a time crunch. The way in which that crisis is handled has lasting effects, so take a moment to map out the strategy. Remember, “it is possible to fail in many ways, but succeed only in one way,”^[58] so “be quick, but don’t hurry.”^[59]

A crisis can also be an opportunity. For that, we’ll give Burson the last word: “I have long believed that people have certain opportunities that come to them in their lives, and if they recognize them and handle them properly, it could be a defining moment—a moment in your life that changes your life forever, and usually for the better.”^[60]