Say you're sorry

Oh F***. You and your company are having a WFIO moment. There’s a horrible crisis and your constituents want answers – your investors, your customers, your team, the press.

What do you do? Well, first, you need facts. What actually happened? What’s verified? What’s rumor? Sometimes you can gather all the facts right away, sometimes it takes time. But you still need to communicate, even if you don’t yet have all the facts. So what do you say?

You start with a brief holding statement saying that you’re investigating. You do not speculate beyond the facts you have confirmed. You do not speak off the cuff. How many times have we seen CEOs say things like "This isn’t true, our company would never do this" or "I never touched her" only to have to walk back those denials within hours? Don’t be that person.

When you DO have the facts, you may need to apologize. If so, do it immediately. Do it gracefully, patiently, and consistently. Over and over again. Via every communications channel.

Next, take control of the narrative. Become the news source. Suck up your courage and share more facts. If you’re a straightforward actor who shares with your customers and the media as you both learn about the crisis, your reputation can be burnished by something going wrong - like the classic example of Johnson & Johnson with Tylenol.

What matters is consistency and openness, all the way through and at the completion of your investigation. Show that you can own your mistakes and forthrightly resolve them. Finally, describe your plan that will both fix what’s broken and ensure it never gets broken again.

People respond well to courage and honesty. A crisis gives you a chance to demonstrate both.

If you are the person on point to communicate during a crisis, you absolutely MUST practice. Yes, finding out what went wrong is a ton of work. Deciding what to say about it is a ton of work. But saying it well is ALSO a ton of work that needs your attention.

You don’t have time to practice because you’re in crisis mode? Yes you do. Practice in the shower. Practice on your commute. Get your team to hit you with the tough Q&A for five minutes before every media interaction. It’s worth the time.

If you don’t practice before you speak you can appear awkward and scared, which is murder on your credibility. If you fumble a critical question, you’ll look dangerously inarticulate and wishy-washy. This can kill a company. Or a stock price. On the other hand, graceful, clear, elegantly delivered apologies can make a company look great. You decide.