A Crash Course in Crisis Communication

Lorenzo Bevilaqua, ABC via Getty Images; Stephen Nowland, NCAA Photos via Getty Images

At a conference in 2011 I was talking with several higher-education administrators about who we thought were the most successful college presidents. Graham B. Spanier of Pennsylvania State and Lou Anna K. Simon of Michigan State were both mentioned. Now their legacies have been eclipsed by the one thing they did not immediately and aggressively stop: the harming of innocent young people.

Contrary to what you may have read, they fell not just because of a sclerotic bureaucracy, poisonous local sports cultures, CYA attitudes among administrators, or bad advice. They fell because they failed to pay heed to the essentials of crisis communication.

Here are some tips for avoiding their fate:

Appreciate how fast issues and news develop today. Colleges are known for the glacial pace of their decision making. Often that makes sense. A four-year curriculum should be vetted thoroughly before it is rolled out to thousands of students, and no worthwhile strategic plan can be conceived, written, and trotted out overnight. Woe to the dean or president who rams through major changes without getting buy-in from campus constituencies.

But those norms are fatal in a crisis: Events speed ahead of decision-making processes and protocols. In this era of internet and social media, colleges no longer have days to respond to a crisis; now, a student tweet can get viral attention and grab news headlines before the standing committee on student activities or the president’s cabinet is able to meet. At the same time, a reporter covering the event may shoot a text and, if a response is not received in minutes, post a story saying, “The president was unavailable for comment.”

Differentiate a real crisis from routine. Identify what actions, remarks, and events deserve immediate attention. A task may be important (finalizing the draft of a new strategic plan) or even urgent (a major federal grant proposal to be submitted by midnight). Each of those tasks might seem crucial, but they’re not crises. Is anybody in danger of being harmed? No? Then maybe it’s not a crisis.

The Nassar Scandal and the Crisis of Michigan State’s President

Within a year the university lost two chief executives — Lou Anna K. Simon, sank by the scathing, heart-rending testimony of the sports doctor’s scores of victims, and John M. Engler, whose interim presidency ended amid a backlash over his bare-knuckled tactics.

• With Criminal Charges Dismissed Against Michigan State’s Ex-President, Sex-Abuse Accountability Hits Skids Again
• Michigan State’s Ex-President, Who Faces Criminal Charges, Will Retire With a $2.5-Million Payout
• At Michigan State, a Disruptive Presidency That Few Could Muster the Will to End

For presidents at both Michigan State and Penn State, hearing that someone affiliated with the institution had been accused of harming children or young people should have precipitated a crisis mode: Drop everything, summon a team immediately, demand information, and act to protect people from harm. Above all, don’t use jargon or euphemisms. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse: It’s that simple.

Develop an intel monitoring system. You might think that a crisis would be easy to spot, yet too often college administrators appear hapless, flat-footed, and out of touch. Last August, when a large group of alt-right demonstrators marched on the University of Virginia campus, many students and faculty members knew (and worried about it) days beforehand, yet university officials were caught by surprise.

The lesson: College leaders should learn from the example of many major corporations that have invested heavily in hardware and software to monitor the media in real time, manage pattern analytics, and more. Most colleges can’t afford 100-person social-media analytics teams, but they can monitor social media for trigger terms that provide early warnings that something is up.

Insist that anybody can leap the chain of command in a crisis. Communication is two way. I have a policy with the faculty, staff, and students in my college that I want to be the second person in the building to know anything is amiss. If anyone wonders, “Should the dean be aware of this?,” the answer is “Yes.” The results are admittedly spotty; there is tremendous inertia among most of us to report problems upward.

Moreover, I am just a dean; the reluctance of, say, a maintenance worker to call the president to tip her off about a serious problem in a dorm is understandable. At both Michigan State and Penn State, a “you will get in trouble for reporting trouble” attitude seemed pervasive — a true prescription for catastrophe. The antidote is for leaders not to insulate themselves. If presidents spend their days talking only to board members and vice presidents, they can’t be in touch with what is really happening at their institution.

Prepare a plan for every type of crisis; review, revise, and rehearse. Crises do not restrict themselves to business hours. Leaders who have little time to respond to a sudden crisis cannot start from scratch. Corporations and the military develop contingency crisis plans (including communication templates).

The major crises that can happen on campuses publicly or internally are well known, so leaders should be preparing a playbook for each plausible hypothetical and agree on a course of action. They should reconsider and amend it every few months; when a crisis happens, they will have a choice of plans. And part of that planning should be to ensure that the bureaucracy suppresses its default mode.

During the sentencing hearing for Larry Nassar, one victim said her family was still receiving bills for his services. A good crisis-communication plan — not to mention attentive leadership during a crisis — would have stopped that outrage long before.

Know when to go public and when to keep it private. Crisis communication is not conducted solely by press release. In the Michigan State and Penn State cases, what should have happened first was internal crisis-mode communication. The president hears about serious, horrible allegations. She or he should not let the usual committees and lawyers look into it for five months — or five years. Rather, the priority must be to assure that no one else comes to further or new harm. And subordinates must be held accountable.

When going public, do not be led by events. Crisis communication demands that you get ahead of the story. When a public response is necessary, the message must fit the facts, not confuse them. That’s where planning pays off: A slow response can itself become a hot-button issue. Cite plans for action, but do not necessarily draw conclusions yet. As James C. Garland, a former president of Miami University, in Ohio, wrote recently, just because somebody is demanding a certain type of response does not mean that’s the correct one. I feel the need to state what in the past was a cliché: Sometimes the accused are innocent; sometimes overreaction is worse than delay.

For leaders who want to save people from harm and uphold the honor and reputation of their institutions, not to mention keep their jobs, now is the time to plan for crises to come. They must emulate the best practices already in place in other industries that are intended to prevent crises or resolve them faster, and never hesitate to take charge of the situation — in word and in deed.