How to Save Face in a Crisis

This article was written by Mark Nowlan of Entrepreneur.com

Crises come in all shapes and sizes, from national crises that impact all types of organizations to industry-specific crises. Whatever the type, the way in which you manage a crisis can have a long-lasting effect on your business.

So what's a small business to do to manage a crisis effectively, especially considering they're not always predictable? Actually, you can anticipate far more than you think. A little forethought and planning can make even the worst crisis more manageable and improve your chances of successful recovery. The key is maintaining control.

Pre-Planning

Long before a crisis ever occurs, there are several steps you can take to ensure that you're ready to react at a moment's notice. To start, establish a crisis communication team. If you're a larger business, this team should consist of senior management, legal and communications advisors.

For smaller businesses, this "team" may simply consist of yourself and a PR advisor and lawyer you've established a relationship with and can call on at a moment's notice. These individuals will be responsible for creating and executing the crisis response and managing the situation as it unfolds.

All planning and communications -- internal and external -- should be dictated by the team. Nobody outside of the team should make any crisis-related decisions or speak on behalf of your business. Having a unified internal team is essential to maintaining control, which if lost, is difficult to recover.

Equally important to having a unified team is having consistent messages. While it's difficult to predict how to respond to a crisis that has yet to occur, it's possible to anticipate potential crises based on one's business and industry. Focus on known issues that could precipitate a crisis for your business or organization and create a written document that contains scenarios for eight to 10 potential crises.

Map these scenarios to action steps and specific messages, and identify who on your team's responsible for executing and delivering each. Importantly, prep a Q&A comprising the difficult questions you may not want to but will have to face, and the answers you'll need at the ready.