Crisis communications plans are abundant. Crisis communications strategies can be Googled and put together by nearly anyone from an intern to a 40 year industry veteran, and they mostly look the same - identify stakeholders, identify a spokesperson, triage the issues, etc. So what's the secret sauce that 99% of crisis communications plans don't have that let crises spiral out of control and cause PR disasters?The answer is simple (remembering, of course, that simple is not easy) and comes to us from the United States Armed Forces:
Full Mission Profile
This is an expression that means a full dress rehearsal, an execution of a plan as if it were real. If you were an energy company, for example, you'd want to simulate a massive power grid failure and treat it as though it were happening for real. If you were a fast food company, you'd want to look at past cases of massive crises and run your crisis plan as though it were happening to you, today, such as an employee posting incredibly inappropriate, brand-damaging videos online. If you were a pharmaceutical company, you'd want to run through something like the 1982 Tylenol scare.Most crisis communications plan rehearsals, if they occur at all, are executed haphazardly and half-heartedly. Teams sleepwalk through the plan book, executives absent-mindedly nod their approvals while checking their phones, and a whole bunch of people tend to say, "I don't have time for this. I have real work to do" - actions and reactions that would never happen in an actual crisis.When teams in the Armed Forces execute a Full Mission Profile, they behave from beginning to end as though it's the real deal. In some situations, the soldiers on the ground doing the work may not even be aware that the mission is an exercise only. After the exercise is done, the teams regroup for an after-action report that looks at lessons learned to be applied to the next Full Mission Profile so that the team is fully prepared and experienced in what can go wrong in an actual situation requiring their participation.Why go through with this? Unlike a discussion-based crisis communications plan, a Full Mission Profile reveals the small (or not-so-small) operational hitches that naturally occur in any situation. These unforeseen errors and mistakes can accumulate and eventually cause a crisis response to be counterproductive. For example, an account manager might find during the exercise that they're missing some contact information for one of the clients that normally wouldn't be an issue, but during a crisis would be essential. A team might be given a scenario in which key resources they're accustomed to, such as Internet access, are unavailable. Only a full rehearsal would give them the chance to truly get creative and work around a major obstacle like that.When you next approach your crisis communications planning, try out a Full Mission Profile and see how well it reveals the problems in your PR and communications setup - before an actual crisis happens.
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
