Part 1
Zaremba (2010) points out that “crisis is any unanticipated event, incident, situation, or development that has the potential to damage or destroy your organization’s reputation”. (P.234) This definition indicates two attributes of crisis: unexpectedness and destructiveness, so effective communication is crucial to manage a crisis. The Nuance Group, a successful management consulting company, with a reputation of experienced and highly educated consultants, was facing the crisis brought by its great “reputation”. As a consultancy, it’s their profession to market themselves. A glossy brochure with specific introduction of consultants’ information, which is the highlight of the company’s reputation, is a fabulous method to market
In the plan, they need to identify the stakeholders and decide the sequence of communication audiences and what information should be released and how to release information.
3. Communicate with internal stakeholders
There are two steps to communicate with internal stakeholders. One is to announce the fact of the issue to internal staff members in first time and brief them the company’s crisis management strategies to make sure that all staff will speak with one voice to the outside. From my experience as a PR, all information is in the confusion in the first 48 hours. Not only will outsiders speculate what happens, but also internal staff members will be confused by the crisis and loss heart to the company, so it is crucial to guarantee that all information spread to the outside are consistent and employees know the fact clearly. Rumor can ruin any success. Face to face, as the richest media, can deliver the information from superior to subordinates powerfully and get feedback immediately. The other thing is to separate internal staff members into employees with fake bios and employees with true bios and people who are irrelevant to the issue. For consultants who have embellished their biographies, they need to be arranged to apologize to all their clients and be punished. For consultants who did not do this, they need to be informed the company’s attitude to this issue and be awarded for their integrity to set an example. This is also the process to