Does the CEO or CFO being led off in handcuffs constitute a corporate crisis? What about an overnight financial collapse spurred by some very bad accounting news? They do, and they highlight the realities of a corporate world in turmoil – you should expect the unexpected and be ready to respond instantly.

In any crisis, communications is key. That is truer today than ever before because corporate reputation is such an enormously important factor. There are tried-and-true rules that are worth reviewing, and some new realities that demand understanding.

What constitutes a crisis? Anything that significantly disrupts business is a crisis.

An important preparatory step is to list and anticipate possibilities. Imagine what could happen (this is where pessimists rule). The bigger the list, the better prepared you’ll be. Unfortunately, what winds up happening is usually unanticipated. Still, having an exhaustive list will allow you to extrapolate faster, better, smarter when something happens.

The second step is to have a crisis plan. This seems like planning for the unplannable, but really is building the necessary infrastructure.

• Have a crisis team at least loosely structured that can be called together on a moment’s notice. At a minimum, it must include the CEO, the communications manager (or outside resource) and, today, legal counsel.
• Make sure your team is cohesive. The time to find out communications and legal don’t play well together is not in the thick of things. They must cooperate in a crisis.
• Have a designated spokesperson and make he or she is trained. Because corporate reputation is driven by the CEO, and crisis put reputation at risk, the CEO is the natural choice. According to a recent PR Week/Burson Marsteller survey, 85 percent of CEOs recognize that it is “very important or absolutely vital” that they be the spokesperson.
• Have the communications basics ready to go. This includes corporate background materials, media and other stakeholder lists, and communications technology (duplicated off-site, in the event a physical calamity renders the workplace inaccessible).

With that minimum preparation (some companies have comprehensive written plans, conduct drills and rehearsals, and more, while most don’t even do the above), you can anticipate “the call.”

Actually, three things in life are certain – death, taxes and the fact that a crisis happens no more than five minutes before the first media call. Too often, the media call arrives before the bad news.

When it happens, there are always a few cardinal rules to follow.

• Get the facts. Until you know exactly what’s happened or is happening, say nothing. Recanting what you said raises suspicion that you cannot afford.
• Communicate as much as you can as fast as you can. Silence in a corporate crisis seems like ineptitude at best, a tacit admission of guilt at worst.
• Do the right thing. Express concern for anyone affected (without admitting fault or guilt), promise to fix the situation, and keep the greater good in mind, even if hurts the company in the short run. When a plane goes down and an airline grounds its other planes pending inspections, that’s the right thing.
• Stay on top of everything. Keep gathering facts, stay in touch with sources of information and those requesting information, control (or at least be cognizant of) what is coming in and what is going out.
• Communicate with all key stakeholder groups. Start with employees and never neglect vital audiences such as board members, suppliers and vendors, elected officials, and community opinion leaders. Expect everyone to be talking about you, and make sure they know your story.
• Leverage the opportunity. Corporations get few chances to be in the spotlight. Use this opportunity to communicate and demonstrate company values. Recruit supporters to speak on your behalf. Enlist the interest of those who rarely pay attention to you. In technical terms, this is called making lemonade out of lemons.

These are the tried-and-true rules of crisis communications. They form a solid platform for communicating during any crisis, with a couple of twists. Those twists, based on the realities of today’s corporate environment, are the need for speed and legal eagle collaboration.

Thanks to CNN, news is now a 24/7 endeavor with a gigantic “news hole.” More things are news than ever before and news moves faster than ever before. That means crisis communications includes a need for speed surpassing anything that has gone before.

It is a fact that the first media inquiry often arrives before the bad news itself. I know of several companies that first learned of a crisis from the media. When the media call, they want material right away. And they will continue to want updates promptly and, depending on the severity of the crisis, constantly.

Today, it is probably a very good idea for communications professionals to keep laptop computers loaded with background materials and templates, as well as databases of contact information (or personal digital assistants with the contact information), ready to go anywhere at any time. The best response is often to go where the crisis was or is and work from there. Don’t forget to make sure you can print, fax and e-mail.

The second big change in crisis communications is that it must be slowed down to allow legal review and approval. That creates several dynamic tensions that must be managed.

• The CEO must decide how to balance legal and communications counsel. Ideally, he or she will have a sense of how to strike that balance before the stuff hits the fan.
• Attorneys want to say little and take their time, communications professionals want to say too much and do it immediately. In a crisis, where you must say as much as you can as fast as you can, close collaboration between the two camps is the only option.
• Attorneys must take primary responsibility for content, communications professionals must take primary responsibility for form. What is said is a legal issue; how it is said is a communications issue. Using legalese makes it seem like you are hiding the ball. Crisis communications demands clear, concise, lay language.
• There are two courts in which a corporation can win or lose – the court of law and the court of public opinion. Both are more critical to surviving and thriving after a crisis than ever before. Again collaboration between legal and communications is the only option.

All that being said, the reality is that any crisis hits like a bomb. It is destructive, disorienting and destabilizing. At least from a communications perspective, following the tried-and-true cardinals and keeping in mind the new realities is the best way to minimize the damage.