The Crisis Management Memo

Tell it all and tell it fast in a crisis

In our media training and crisis management workshops, I usually show a slide with the simple phrase, “Tell it all and tell it fast.”

I came across that phrase probably 25 years ago when I was first getting into the crisis management business. The words graced a page of the first crisis plan I had ever read. Although very basic, that simple sentence has helped guide our firm in helping organizations cope with crisis situations for a very long time.

With some major crises in the news recently, I was wondering if the folks at Toyota and Johnson & Johnson might have benefited from that simple sheet of paper.

Although Toyota was initially praised for its unprecedented actions in halting the sale of cars that may be dangerous due to sticking accelerators, the talk seemed to change rapidly to “why didn’t they act more quickly?” A similar complaint was lodged against Johnson & Johnson, once praised for its swift and deliberate actions in recalling tainted Tylenol in 1982. Now with customers complaining of “moldy” medicine tablets – including Tylenol – the Food and Drug Administration and others are saying Johnson & Johnson should have acted sooner in recalling the drugs.

I have always interpreted the “Tell it all” phrase to mean that in a crisis, an organization should release as much information regarding the crisis to the public as fast as it can. That doesn’t mean holding back information that the company thinks might not ever become public. When under the media’s microscope, it is unlikely that few corporate secrets will remain secret, anyway.

And while organizations will probably never act as quickly as the media and their consumers would like, they need to act as quickly as they possibly can.

Reporters will always be asking the prosecutorial question: “What did you know and when did you know it?” If you can’t answer the question, “We acted as fast as we could, once we knew there was a problem,” then in the court of public opinion, you didn’t act fast enough.

Just reviewing some of the newspaper and internet comments on the Toyota crisis, it seems much of the public feels Toyota knew about its problems long before it ever announced actions to cope with it.

In an environment in which the media and much of the public is skeptical of big business to begin with, a crisis is not the time to create suspicions that you are dragging your feet on coping with the problem.

Tell it all and tell it fast. It is more than just a phrase. It is what organizations need to practice to the degree they can in times of crisis.

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