144: How to Prepare for and Bounce Back from Disaster with Edward Segal

At daybreak on May 7, 2021, an employee found a ransom note from hackers on a control room computer. By that evening, the company's chief executive officer was in the throes of a crisis.

Well, tonight the fuel is moving through the entire Colonial pipeline, but very slowly. Gasoline is still hard to find from Texas to D.C. because of panic buying when the pipeline was shut down for six days after a ransomware attack.

Colonial Pipeline did pay a multimillion dollar ra some to the hackers to unlock some of its data. We are deeply sorry for the impact that this attack had.

Welcome to the Confident Communications podcast. Helping communicators find the right response at the right time and deliver it in the right place. It is almost impossible for any company to fully plan for a crisis. Even Joseph Blunt, the CEO of Colonial Pipeline Company authorized a ransom payment of 4.4 million dol because he was unsure how badly the cyber attack had breached its systems. And even more ominous, how long it would take to bring the pipeline back.

One of the worst types of crisis.

A company can face is the one they are unprepared to handle. My guest, Edward Siegel is a crisis management expert, consultant and author of the award winning book Crisis 101 Ways to Prepare for and Bounce Back from Disasters, SC and Other Emergencies. On the podcast, he shares steps a company can take to ensure that they are as ready as they can be for a crisis. Take a listen.

Edward. It's a pleasure to speak with you because I always enjoy speaking with people in the same profession and especially people who have worked not only in association work. I think that could be very, that could be very difficult work. It could be very challenging work because you are negotiating a lot of things, but also with political experience and public relations experience. So, Edward, just, let's just get started here. Let's just jump in your past for a bit. Tell me about your political public relations career. Communications career.

Well, I got my start while I was really working in high school and early college where I would volunteer for my local member of Congress because I was really interested in politics and I had an opportunity.

Pardon, what state were you in?

Where was this?

California. Los Angeles.

California.

Torrens, Gardena, Inglewood area, for those who are familiar with Southern California. And it was my first opportunity to get my feet wet in politics. I had even in high school, I had done work, volunteer work for the speaker of the California State Assembly. His name was Jess Unruh and he was the politician who came up with the phrase that money is the mother milk of politics. And I Learned a very lot about politics and communications. I think, like I was 15 or 16 years old, and I literally would work. We would put a PA system on top of a friend's car, and we'd drive up and down the streets and I would speak into the microphone, praising the virtues of the candidate and urging people to vote. So that was my first foray into politics and political communications. One thing led to another, did work for other politicians, and I was put on the staff of local member of Congress as a district representative. That led to one thing or the other. So it's been a very interesting career in politics and great training for my later work in public relations and certainly for crisis management and crisis communications.

There's nothing like grassroots communications when you are on the ground to really learn how to communicate effectively, you know, with. With clarity, and also to get your message across. So, Edward, what would you say from your work back then that still resonates today? Because so much has changed, I assume with technology. If you were putting a speaker on a car back in the day when you were communicating, and here we are now in a time of social media and digital media, what still resonates today all these years later?

Well, some things are still. Although the technology has changed, the key lessons I learned that are still relevant today, lesson number one is have a message, know what that message is, and make sure you're tailoring your message for the right audience. If you're saying the wrong things to the wrong people at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, that message will work against you and not for you. So have a message, tailor the message to the right audience. And just as then, when I up and down the streets with a PA system on top of a car, use the right technology to reach the people, then a PA system, and driving up and down the streets with a message, that was the way to reach a lot of people then. Now, of course, we have the equivalent of a PA system on top of a car, and that's social media. But again, then, as now, you need to customize the message for the medium, know who you're trying to reach and communicate in a timely, effective, strategic, effective method. Otherwise, you're wasting your time.

Well, and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to bring you on the podcast to speak to you about communications. And it's interesting when you're mentioning how you don't want to say the wrong message at the wrong time. I mean, it's the counter of my mission statement of creating the right message at the right time. And Delivering it in the right place, whether it's on the top of a car or whether it's through Twitter. You wrote the book Crisis 101 Ways to Prepare for and Bounce Back from Disasters, Scand, and Other Emergencies. That's such a great title. Anytime I see the word scandal in any piece of content, you got me hooked. But one of the, one of the pieces in there, in your chapters, you had talked about, you know, how ready are you for a crisis and it's. And how important it is to find out before it's too late. Edward, before we get into your thoughts on that, do you find in your work now that most people are prepared for a crisis or not?

The answer is no, which is one of the reasons why I wrote why I wrote the book. Studies have shown that only 50 or 60% of companies even have a crisis management plan. And even if they have a plan, it's not likely that they've updated it anytime recently. And even if they've updated it, it's not likely that they have even practiced it or held drills or exercises to make sure it will work when necessary. So I wrote the book for four basic those who want to prevent a crisis, those who want to prepare for a crisis, those who want to manage a crisis, and those who want to recover from a crisis as soon as possible. So the book has a lot of practical advice based on my experience and Importantly, more than 100 case studies, many case studies that looks at the good, bad, and sometimes the incredibly ugly ways companies and organizations have responded to a crisis. And another reason I wrote the book is that it's always better to learn from the mistakes of others than to make those mistakes and learn it yourself. And I wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to learn the best practices for dealing with and communicating a crisis and help them avoid making mistakes and learn from the mistakes of others so they're ready for when, not if a crisis happens for their company or organization.

With over 100 case studies in the book, can you think of a good, a bad, or ugly crisis that stands out?

Well, a good crisis, it depends on whose side of the crisis you're on. There's no such thing as a good crisis for a company. They're all bad things. But I think there are better ways and worst ways to respond to a crisis. I think one of the worst ways was what happened to Boeing a couple, three years ago when not one but two of their aircrafts crashed. And the lessons from that. And that's actually the first mini case study in the book is that they did not respond the best possible way. In fact, it took quite a while for them to even apologize for the crash of the second aircraft. When Congress got around to holding hearings into the disaster, many officials actually blamed the pilots for the crash. And this was before a full, thorough, comprehensive investigation had been done into the two disasters. As it turns out, Boeing actually knew years ahead of time that there was a problem with the software system that the pilots used to navigate the aircraft. And blaming the victims is never a good strategy when it comes to managing a crisis, but that's what they, and actually a couple members of Congress actually did, was to blame the victims. So the lesson is don't in any crisis, don't point fingers, don't cast blame, don't make any assumptions, wait until all the facts are in before you do anything or say anything. And as soon as you know there is a problem, do something to help prevent it. A lot of crisis situations can actually be prevented. And if you have an early warning system and some early indication that something might be wrong or something might go wrong, don't wait for the bad things to happen. Investigate and do what you can to mitigate or prevent the problem from getting any worse.

I remember that case. I think anyone who works in our business of course, remembers the Boeing case. And what stood out to me in that case is when former CEO Dennis Muilenberg, when he changed course dramatically. It's, you could almost pinpoint the moment that they hired a crisis team to come in and that's when he created a statement and he placed it on the website and they made a video. It was, they brought in some digital ready crisis firm that said, no, you need to change course quickly and turn it around. Yeah, I agree with you, Edward. So let's then dive into information that you did have in your book, the 10 Rs of Crisis Management. Let's go through this list and describe what the Rs are that can ensure that you are ready for any type of a crisis.

Well, I wanted to boil down the advice in the book and make it as easy as possible for people to remember the advice and recommendations in the book. And so that's why I came up with the 10 Rs of crisis management. And the first R is risk. It's really important to identify the risk triggers that could cause a crisis for your company or organization. Now, of course, some risks, such as tornadoes, floods or other related events might be more likely for your area. Depends where you live in the country or around the world. Other Things such as allegations of sexual harassment lawsuits, and even more increasingly, ransom attacks. They are universal and they can happen to anybody at any time. So some risks are to mitigate and others you just have no control over. The next R is to reduce or reduce the steps. Take the steps that are necessary and prudent to lessen those known risks. Some of those steps can be as basic as following common sense accounting procedures, for example, in order to prevent fraud or forgery. Other steps would be more extensive and more expensive, such as providing appropriate training or retraining to your staff so they know how to respond to a crisis or prevent a crisis in the first place. The next R is ready. It's absolutely essential to have a crisis plan in place and ready to implement at a moment's notice when it's needed. And because one size is not going to fit all crisis situations, have a plan B, C or D and maybe an X, Y and Z to deal with every possible contingency so that you're as prepared as possible. If the basic plan doesn't work, then you could roll out the contingency plans immediately and not miss a beat.

Edward, let me ask you about a crisis plan. Do you feel that companies can create their own crisis plans or should they outsource?

No. You really need help and you really need guidance. In fact, I have a basic crisis management plan template in the book and available for free on my website for those people who enter the right code, where it has dozens of information and data points that people need to fill in the blanks as much as possible before they have a crisis. And then once that crisis breaks, they fill in the blanks for the information they know or update the information they have. And then, of course, you need to practice it. Having a plan and not practicing it is almost like having no plan at all. You have to make sure it works, and the more you practice and test it, the more confident you'll have that it will work when it's needed. And part of having a plan and testing it is having a crisis response team in place before you're needed. That team should come from all members appropriate parts of your organization, depending, of course, on how large your organization is. And they should be. The ones who are intimately familiar with the plan are practicing it on a regular basis and and just as importantly, make sure they can work well together. If you've got 10 people on your crisis management team and three of them don't get along with the others, you've got a problem, you have another crisis. That's right and in any crisis, you have to make sure the plan works properly. And also all members of the team who are responding to the crisis can work effectively as well.

Okay, so we have risk, reduce and ready. So that sounds like we're in the prep, you know, heavy into the preparation phase. What is the fourth R?

Well, the fourth hour is to rehearse. As I just said. You have to practice a plan to make sure it will work when necessary, that all members of the team can work together. And the more they practice implementing the plan, the more prepared they will be if and when they need it.

Okay.

All right, next, next R is redundancies. Have the backup and contingency plan in case they are required. As I just said, the plan A may not work. So you may need B, C and D and X, Y and Z. And the more plans you have, the more you've tested it, the more confident you'll be that everything will work when necessary and you won't lose a beat changing plans and adjusting immediately to the crisis at hand.

Okay, after redundancies. After redundancies.

Yeah, after redundancies. Okay.

Ironic we're being redundant. So what do we have after redundancy?

Back up, back up, back up.

What's next?

Next would be research all the information you can about your crisis, including details about what happened is happening now or that you expect to happen. You know, knowingly the who, the what, the when, the where, the why and the how of any situation is critical before you can respond. And not a scattershot way, but strategically, effectively and efficiently. Now, of course, in any crisis, you're not likely to know everything. At the same time, some information about the crisis might be more readily available than others. But update your plan and the more you know, fill in the blank so you're prepared and facts changed. So make sure that everything is updated with the latest available information. The next R is to react. Know in advance what will trigger your crisis plan and who in your organization has the authority to to activate it and respond accordingly. Now, of course, different crises might are possible. So you have to know what trigger is going to cause you to implement each one of those crisis situations, response situations, and which one of your plans you're going to implement. And again, it comes back to practicing practice reacting to the worst case scenarios. And the more you practice, the more comfortable you are, the more likely it is that when you implement the plan, it'll go smoothly and effectively.

Edward, can I ask you a question? You mentioned worst case scenarios. Do you ever work with your clients to find the not so worst case scenarios, because any crisis is a crisis, as you said. But do you have them uncover some smaller issues that could turn into a larger, significant crisis?

Yes. Part of what I do is to get to know the client as much as possible to have the conversation. They are intimately, of course, with their organization and they have often had a bad experience or problems or internal situations that they will share with me. And we just talk about, you know, from the day to day things. What are the things that happen? How does your organization run? What are the little things that you think have happened in the past that might have caused a problem? Of course. I am the former CEO of two trade associations myself, so I have firsthand experience about what can happen with an organization from a management perspective. Sometimes I have these heart to heart conversations with members of the board or the CEOs or senior members of the staff. And it's always a good conversation to have. And we talk about the little things that might happen that could go wrong and the big things that could happen and cause even more of a crisis for the organization. So those conversations, getting to know the client, their business, it's absolutely essential so I can do a better job of advising and counseling them.

Oh, good. And certainly, I mean, being a CEO and you were in, were you at the real estate association?

I went to two realtor associations. The Marin County Association, Realtors in Northern California, about an hour north of San Francisco. And then for a couple years I was a CEO of the Greater Los Angeles association of Realtors.

And so certainly you, you learned the nuances of understanding impending crises, but also how to internally communicate with that. If you were dealing with a board, you were dealing with your members, you were dealing with internal staff. So as a CEO, I think it's a proving ground for being a good Communicator. I find CEOs sometimes are the best communicators out there.

Yes, they have to be. And they have to get along with various internal and external audiences. I think I had a board of directors that I think was 15 or 16 people. They were all volunteers. And dealing with volunteers is its own art form because they don't get paid for their work. It's very great. So many organizations have people who are willing to step up and volunteer their time and their expertise, but you have to know how to deal with volunteers and you have to know how to deal with your staff. That's another skill set. And of course, depending upon the size of your organization, you might have hundreds, or in my case, thousands of people who are paying their dues to be members of the organization. So you have to give value for your dues paying members and be very sensitive to the issues and problems that they're going through and the crisis situations that they may have that could affect their organization or the crisis that the organization is having and how it affects their members. The common thread in all of this is communications. You have to reach out the best possible way to communicate to the people who are being affected or might be affected. You have to keep them posted about the progress in dealing with the crisis. And importantly, after the crisis is over, you have to assure them what you did and the steps that you've taken and how that will help prevent the crisis from happening again.

Yeah, and so you mentioned number eight, which is, which is reach out, which I find in my work as well. The obstacle for people to reach out is there is fear and worry that too much information might get out or they want to cover other aspects of the crisis that they're dealing with and they're not quite as open as they can be. So in your list, when you mention reaching out, you're talking about doing it in a timely fashion. You want to do it immediately. But also, anyone who is impacted by this crisis deserves to know what is happening, correct?

Yes. Full disclosure, full, immediate disclosure is absolutely essential. People have a right to know all the information that you know about a crisis. You have to couch it in terms, of course, that you're comfortable and confident that the information they're getting is accurate and up to date. You simply cannot speculate or guess about information. People will understand if you don't know the answers to the questions they have about a crisis. But you have to give them absolute assurance that you will tell them as soon as you know. And part of reaching out is to use the communications methods that they are using to reach out to them, whether it's direct messaging or text messages or email or an FAQ on your website or a phone tree to reach out to people, or all of the above. But you have to know how your members get their information. And if you're dealing with the public, you have to know how they are getting their information. If it is a crisis situation that affects the public or large members of the community, then you need to reach out with, for example, news organizations to get the word out. There might be some community or neighborhood blogs that people use in their community to keep up on what's happening. But you should know all of this ahead of time, and that's part of having an effective crisis communications plan. That plan should have baked into it information about how to reach people, the contact information, the websites, the passwords, everything you need immediately to reach out and keep people informed about, about the crisis and update them as necessary as a crisis unfolds. And then after the crisis ends, be very honest with them about what caused the crisis and the steps you're taking to help ensure the crisis is not repeated.

Edward, let me ask you before you reveal the final two Rs in your list, you've been in this business for quite some time. You've just been in the business of leading and communicating. I have for a number of decades as well. What would you say in terms of this, this idea of disclosure and revealing information? Like I even working in Washington D.C. in the early 90s, I remember a time where people could be closer to the vest with the information. They didn't have to reveal as much because we didn't have the communication and technology that would kind of force our hands. Have you noticed a big change in the understanding that people need to be more forthright quicker than a number of decades ago where you could get away with revealing less?

Oh yeah, no question. And I think one of the reasons for this, for the change, is that it is so much easier for people to find out what's happening or even, or worse to try to guess. And that's another important reason why you should always disclose what you know as soon as you know it. If you don't tell people what they should know or might guess or get from other sources, you can actually put yourself in a worse situation and being perceived as covering up or lying, hiding the truth. And the more it looks like you're not being honest and forthright with the people, the worse you are going to look. I call it the crisis management rule of holes. Whenever you find yourself in a hole, stop digging, digging and get out. And too often, when people aren't being forthright and honest with people about a crisis, they keep digging and digging themselves into that hole and they get out of it. But then of course, there's what I call the second rule of holes for crisis management. And that's after you get out of the first hole, don't dig yourself into another hole or fall into it again. And too often people will just get out of one hole and dig themselves another. So it's really important. And that's why reaching out, being honest and communicating effectively, and forthright, full public disclosure, tell people what you know, how you know it, and keep them posted at every step of the way. That will rub off in a good way, you'll be perceived as credible, honest with the public. And if there's any silver lining to a crisis, it's that if you handle it the right way, your image and your reputation will improve. If you screw up or try to hide things, you're just making things worse for you and your company or your organization.

I'll extend your metaphor. Your whole metaphor is if you do dig a hole, what will happen? And if you keep lying and covering, the public will dump the dirt back on you and bury you alive and you will never recover and escape the hole. All right, speaking of the last two points, number nine Talk about the recovery.

Nine the ninth R Recover Know how you would bounce back from a crisis? From my perspective, planning your recovery from a disaster or scandal or emergency is just as important as planning your response to it. You need to get back to normal operations as quickly as possible, and a recovery plan will help you to just that. But you should have a definite, specific recovery plan. You need to know the criteria, the goals, the milestones, the timelines that are necessary in order to get back to where you want to be in a planned, coordinated and logical manner. You need to approach the crisis carefully and strategically, and you need to treat your recovery the same way. And the 10th R is remember, keep in mind the experiences of others who have already gone through a crisis. What can you do to repeat their success and avoid their mistakes? There is no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the best ways to respond, manage and recover from a crisis. And that's another reason I wrote the book. There are plenty lessons that you can learn from that I cover in my book. If you pay close attention to news reports and case studies about how well or sometimes how poorly others have managed their own crisis situations. If you were in their shoes, what would you have done? And by doing this game, role playing and gaming for what other people are doing for their crisis. That's another way to help keep you at the top of your own game and to practice your crisis management skills. And frankly, that's another reason I enjoy writing my my stories that I cover for Forbes.com I write lately almost on a daily basis, crisis situations, people and organizations in the news, how well or poorly they are responding to that crisis and what you can learn from their successes or failures. So if you take these 10 Rs to heart, you know from risk to remember, you can do a great job of being as prepared as you can for a crisis. To prepare for it, prevent it, manage, and to Recover it as soon as possible.

Edward, thank you for sharing your list and reminding people there's another R. I'll add to your list that all businesses, all organizations are vulnerable to a crisis. Even if you plan, you're still vulnerable to a crisis. But if you have a plan in place and if you follow a list like these 10 Rs, you can mitigate a crisis. And if something still happens, you can.

Lessen the damage from it.

You are correct on Forbes. You are prolific with your writing in the strategy, leadership tips and ideas that you share. And I like how you, you write around current events, this, this rip from the headlines crisis strategies around that. So where would people normally find that? Is it on Forbes.com yeah, they go.

To Forbes.com and Forbes has various newsletters and categories. You click on Leadership, scroll down to Leadership Strategy or just go to the main Forbes page and you can click in my name and my page will show up right away. And you know, speaking of organizations in the news, people might remember just the recent crisis with Colonial Pipeline. And they did a good and sometimes not a good job following my 10Rs. As soon as the crisis happened and they knew they had been hacked, the company quickly, within a matter of minutes, shut down more than 5,000 miles of pipelines. So they did a great job of responding immediately, but they did not do such a good job of reducing the risks. It came out in the news coverage afterwards that the company spends $40 million every year on cybersecurity. That's the good news. The bad news is that they had no crisis plan to deal with a ransomware attack. And that's exactly what happened to them. So I don't know if they're following my 10 Rs probably not. But anyone who wants to learn from the successes of what Colonial Pipeline did or others in the news, keep these 10 Rs in mind when a crisis happens, go through the checklist, see how well they did. And this is another great way to have a continuing education for crisis management and to be prepared as possible to prevent, prepare and recover from a disaster or scandal when it happens to your company or organization.

Edward, you had mentioned from your book that there was a template that people can find online. Where would they go online to download that template?

Well, they can go online to my website@public relations.com but to make it as easy as possible, if they just want to reach out to me and I'll be by email and I'll be glad to send them the word template that they can use to customize it it's a great way to prepare. Even if they have a crisis management plan in place, they could use my crisis management plan template as a reality check against theirs. If they're not happy with their own, they're free to customize it. Or if they see parts of mine that they think would help them, they're welcome to use it that well. So all they have to do is send me an email at my name edwardsegelcommunicationsmail.com and I will be glad to respond and send them a Word document of my crisis management plan template and.

I'll be sure to include that in the show notes. And Edward, I have one final question for you. When were you Savvy NAB Public Relations.com.

That was many decades ago, right when the Internet was becoming a thing. I had a friend who knew I was in public relations and he just wanted to give me a heads up about the importance of getting a domain name. I said what is a domain name and why would I possibly care? And I think I got publicrelations.com for the outrageous. It seemed like an outrageous amount of money at the time of $35. Oh my God. I didn't want to spend that kind of money, so I'm really glad I did. My only regret is that I did not get public relations.org or all the other variations that came out. But I've used public relations.com over time. It's been a great domain name and when my book came out last year, I figured why not use a domain name to help promote my book. So if people want to learn more about my book, they can go to publicrelations.com There are links to my other columns on Forbes.com and information on how to buy the book and links to buy the book on Amazon, which is also available as an ebook, or independent bookstores. Just go to the links and you can buy the book where you like to buy your books.

Well, Edward, thank you so much for sharing your insight and more importantly, those 10 Rs of crisis management, of risk, reduce ready research, rehearse redundancies, react, reach out, recover, and remember. So thank you for this unforgettable interview about crisis management and preparation.

Thank you Molly. It's been a joy being with you and I hope everyone out there, I hope they don't have a crisis, but I hope they take steps now to be ready for it just in case they have it. They do have it in the days ahead.

My thanks to guest Edward Siegel for reminding us about the importance of crisis preparedness. Your indestructible tip Fail to plan, plan to fail.

Every company should have an up to date crisis plan. For more information about Edward, you can.

Find him at the enviable URL publicrelations.com There you can download his free tip sheet how to ensure the success of your speeches, presentations and publicity campaigns. You can also find him on Twitter wardsegel and read his thought leadership on Crisis Management on Forbes.com Hey, I want to hear from you. What do you want to learn on the podcast? Is there a particular topic you would like me to discuss or do you have a question question you'd like to ask? I am here to serve.

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Thanks for listening. Bye for now.