Imagine yourself as a top executive in a company hit by a major crisis in the last 72 hours. First, and most importantly, there may be severe damage where you operate.

Your customers may experience interference, income decreases. The environment may be damaged irreparably.
Some of your employees and contractors may be hurt, or worse.
Your investor will be angry, and the board blames you.
At the end of the first week, it is likely that your organization will face dozens of lawsuits.
Very likely, at this initial stage, you will realize that facts that can be verified are few and far between. There are many opinions and rumors. You will have little or no knowledge of the extent of physical or financial damage that affects your company.

You don’t even know which team members you can count on. Some of them may be involved; others may be operationally inexperienced, not familiar with political realities, or temperamentally unsuitable for new situations – filled with good intentions but not sure what role to play.

Admitting the Faults

The first thing you have to do once the PR crisis is happening is to acknowledge the mistakes made by the company. Do not keep quiet or give a slow response, because this will make the customer angrier. Form a special internal team to deal with the media, both offline and online. This team will analyze keywords, articles, and conversations, on social media intensely to find out what is the public response to the problems that occur and their impact on your brand.

Regaining the Control

Standard rules for how organizations operate can be quickly torn apart in a crisis. Informal networks established by trust and calling for help can dominate the formal organizational reporting structure.

Those who had previously opposed the status quo could quickly become vocal, triggering regional warfare and delaying action. Some key executives may be directly involved and cannot lead a response. Managers can begin executing a series of activities that are not coordinated with the best intentions but incomplete or inaccurate information. No longer able to build consensus, they end up with a massive organizational structure that has dozens of decision-makers around the table, with the result that efforts become vanished and disconnected.

Reassuring the Stakeholders

In the first phase of the crisis, it was scarce for technical, legal, or operational problems to be resolved. At this stage, the most pressing concern might be to reduce anger and extreme reactions from several stakeholders when taking the time for legal and technical completion teams to complete their work.
For example:

1. Emergency financial packages may be needed to reduce pressure from suppliers, business partners or customers.
2. Paying goodwill to consumers might be the only way to stop them from defecting to another brand.
3. Business partners may require financial injections or operational support to stay motivated or even feasible.
4. It may be necessary to respond to the concerns of regulators immediately.Flirting and sometimes it is desirable to make big moves. However, it is often challenging to design interventions that produce real positive results, whether from business or legal perspectives.

What usually functions is to determine the total exposure and milestones of stakeholder achievement. After that, you can design specific interventions that reduce vulnerability.…