The perfect message won’t fix a bad decision

A crisis, employee backlash or controversial business decision can expose major issues inside an organization that a nice, or even sympathetic, statement won’t solve.

Shrita Hernandez, brand strategy and communications executive, says that communicators need to understand not just messaging, but risk, stakeholder expectations and how decisions get made to navigate this.

PR Daily spoke with Hernandez about communicating when leaders don’t have all the answers and why they need a stronger voice in organizational decisions.

PR Daily: How do you communicate when a situation is still changing and leadership doesn’t have all the answers yet?

Shrita Hernandez: To communicate clearly, you have to know the question you need to answer. A lot of times, organizations communicate in the middle of a challenge without being clear about what people actually need to know, understand or do. The message has to address that.

I believe in communicating early and often, but you still have to understand the issue and make sure you’re answering the question people actually have.

I also think not every difficult moment is a communications moment. Sometimes it’s a decision moment. Sometimes it’s a change moment. Sometimes it’s a moment to sit down and be silent, pull back and assess before you say more.

When the rubber meets the road, organizations often want a statement. They want a message. They want the perfectly crafted sentence. But sometimes what you actually need is a decision.

Communications can’t fix a decision that isn’t sound.

What should scenario planning look like before an issue begins affecting stakeholders?

The first thing is to understand where you want to end up. What outcome are you trying to achieve?

From there, identify several plausible ways the situation could unfold. Scenario planning isn’t necessarily about predicting the outcome. It’s about preparing for different possibilities and understanding the people and forces that could shape them.

You need to understand your stakeholder community, including their concerns, pain points and opportunities, as well as how those different groups are connected.

Who are the influencers? Who are the people you’ll need to have clear, direct, open and ongoing conversations with? Good scenario planning helps you answer those questions before the pressure is on.

Where do organizations mess up when what’s happening inside the company begins affecting or changing external reputation?

Organizations often go wrong when they assume internal communications will remain internal. Employees are also community members, customers, voters and advocates, so what happens inside an organization can quickly become part of its external reputation.

The problem becomes larger when employees hear about consequential decisions late, receive language that doesn’t match what they’re actually experiencing, or feel they have no credible way to raise concerns internally.

You need mechanisms that allow employees to express concerns, ask questions and have real dialogue.

Organizations sometimes see employees simply as the workforce. That’s a mistake because employees often belong to the very constituencies the organization is trying to reach. They may also be customers, clients, community members or other stakeholders.

Leaders should communicate with employees early, explain the rationale and trade-offs honestly, and create meaningful channels for response. Then they have to determine whether that feedback reveals something that should change in the decision itself.

How should communications, HR, legal and operations divide responsibilities during an intense crisis situation without slowing down the response?

You cannot wait until a crisis to develop a crisis-response infrastructure. That requires scenario planning, understanding what commitments you have made publicly, knowing your credibility and value claims, and periodically assessing whether the organization is actually living up to its brand promise.

You also need an interdisciplinary, senior-level response team that is assessing stakeholder impact and changes in the external environment before a crisis occurs.

As part of that process, you develop internal notification systems and clear decision rights. When it’s done well, you already know: Here’s what happened. Here are the people who may have concerns. Here is what we can address proactively, and here is how we will respond if the situation escalates.

Operations should own the facts and the operational response. HR should own employee impact. Legal should identify actual legal exposure. Communications should own stakeholder strategy, messaging and distribution.

What do communicators need to understand about how their role is changing?

Communicators are no longer simply messengers or intermediaries. We are central to how organizations understand, reach and motivate their constituencies.

Communications is essential to understanding what stakeholders need, want and expect, but also to helping the organization understand how to meet people where they are and bring them into the future with it.

People have said for a very long time that communications is changing. But now I’m seeing that change reflected even in the job market and in the demand for these skills. Organizations are recognizing that the work is bigger than messaging, visibility or engagement.

It requires a clear understanding of your environment, your place in it and how to communicate and operate within it so the organization can continue to survive and thrive.