Crisis Communications 101

Managing a crisis is more than a communications challenge -- it's a business challenge and an opportunity to change your culture. a16z's Margit Wennmachers and Kim Milosevich discuss crisis communications 101.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  In this Evergreen episode from April 2017, we dig into the basics of crisis communications with A16Z's longtime operating partner for marketing, Margit Wennmachers, and Kim Milosevich, the chief marketing officer of A16Z Crypto, in conversation with Sonal Choksi. This hallway-style discussion covers everything from making a plan before a crisis happens, to what actually constitutes a crisis, who needs to be in the war room, how to involve or not the media, and more. Because ultimately, every crisis is an opportunity for companies to change their cultures and become a better business.

• 0:38Sonal?

  Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A16Z Podcast. I'm Sonal. Today, we're talking about the tricky topic of crisis communications. And this episode actually builds on a previous podcast we did around the why, when, and how of PR or public relations for startups. Joining us to have the conversation again, we have Margit Wennmachers, who heads up marketing at Anderson Horowitz and previously co-founded The Outcast Agency, and we have Kim Milosevich, who is also at Outcast, is on the communications team here, and was formerly at Skype. In this episode, we're doing one of our hallway-style conversations because it's one of those topics that's seen through the outcomes only, but the process behind those outcomes matters a lot. And while it may seem obvious to those of us who are on the inside, it's a bit of a black box for those who aren't familiar with Crisis Comms 101. Both Margit and Kim are longtime veterans of PR

• 1:22Sonal?

  and have observed and/or participated in crises with companies of all shapes and sizes. But since the first golden rule of crisis management is to never talk about what happened, we can't share specific examples. So instead, we focus today, especially given recent news and political events, on the nuances and mindsets behind getting through a crisis, from identifying one, to fact discovery, to making a statement, to what happens after. So Margit's the first voice you'll hear, and she kicks off the conversation with the other golden rule of crisis management.

• 1:50Margit Wennmachers?

  The golden principle is to never waste a crisis. Because if something is happening at or to the company, that's about for customers, employees, or whatever the case may be. And then it's an opportunity to make the company better as a result.

• 2:03Sonal?

  Yeah.

• 2:03Margit Wennmachers?

  There is the layer of what are the articles? And what do they say today? And but there's the deeper layers, like, okay, so what is, what can we do to improve the company so that A, it doesn't happen again? And so that we come out better on the other side? And I think people think of a crisis often as a press thing. Versus a business thing and they're both.

• 2:24Kim Milosevich?

  Oftentimes, when companies think they may have a quote unquote crisis, it is more of an internal situation that needs to be handled. Of course, you always have to think about how you'd handle the situation should it become public, but it's it's many times all the things that you have to do before it becomes public.

• 2:41Margit Wennmachers?

  What got you in that situation in the first place, right?

• 2:44Kim Milosevich?

  Yeah.

• 2:44Margit Wennmachers?

  You definitely want to think about that. And in addition to think about, well, if we get sued and goes public, what do we say?

• 2:49Sonal?

  So you're you're guys are saying is it's not just something you kind of make go away.

• 2:53Margit Wennmachers?

  Also, so that's kind of hard to do, make stuff go away.

• 2:55Sonal?

  Right, there is media and people that hold you accountable, but the goal isn't just to like contain it, but to actually turn it to opportunities, what I'm hearing you guys say.

• 3:01Kim Milosevich?

  Yeah, I mean, I would be cautious about saying what opportunity can we make out of this because in some cases, there's maybe not an opportunity. So I know, Margaret, you talk a lot about what's the brand opportunity here. I think it's more like your brand is defined by how you handle these situations. Versus you taking a moment to say, how do we turn this into a brand opportunity?

• 3:21Margit Wennmachers?

  Yeah, I wasn't trying to be opportunistic. It's like, what is happening at the company that got us into this situation? And what can the company do to become a better company? The way you handle yourselves is very much determines how people feel about the the company overall and also this situation.

• 3:37Sonal?

  Well, this is great context because I would actually like to break down what is a crisis? I know that sounds like a very existential question, like what's a crisis? But how do you define a crisis? I mean, is a crisis that just because your CEO is freaking out about something and you're in charge of comms and you got to worry about it and that's good enough of a reason?

• 3:51Margit Wennmachers?

  Well, it's it's anything and everything that negatively impacts your business and how people perceive your business. So it can be getting negative press because of something, but it can also go all the way down like an oil spill, right? All of those are crises. It's not like your CEO or somebody having a bad day or somebody being annoying on Twitter. I think the thing that's often overlooked in a crisis that's very important is like, what's the culture around crisis? Because what happens is the proverbial S hits the fan, then there's fight or flight. And people often want to hide stuff. So you want to create a culture around when you're in a crisis moment, honesty and be Being transparent is prized and highly valued because you're not going to get to the truth otherwise.

• 4:35Sonal?

  What you're saying here is that you have to have this baked in before there's an actual crisis and that's also baked into your culture. Like you can't just suddenly manufacture out of the blue these values of transparency and openness.

• 4:46Kim Milosevich?

  Yeah, and I think urgency is another really important one, having that baked in before you go into a process like this or have to face a tough situation. It's like how quickly we all going to get a room to figure this out, move forward, respond to emails, get together and do meetings. Who needs to be in the room? That needs to be sorted out beforehand. And then what level of urgency are we all holding ourselves to, to quickly come together and take this seriously and make those decisions? Because that right there could really make something a lot worse.

• 5:16Margit Wennmachers?

  I actually think there's a tricky bit beforehand. Sometimes people don't actually know when they have a crisis on their hands. So how do you actually know this is a crisis? Oftentimes when the communications folks get involved, like, you know, there are 13 people who have been watching something.

• 5:33Sonal?

  Yeah, before it actually happens.

• 5:35Margit Wennmachers?

  A large oil spill is fairly obvious, but there's a large gray area of what constitutes a crisis. And that's why I think it's important to have all the key player, your executive team, have an antenna for, oh, this, this could be bad and call it so that the process can kick in.

• 5:54Sonal?

  So you're right, people might silently be observing things for ages, but they don't speak up, they don't think it's big enough, there's not enough coordination. Like, what's a right place for that conversation to happen?

• 6:03Margit Wennmachers?

  Well, hopefully the comms person has, is a first-class citizen and is part of the management team and you, and you bring awareness. You overhear things, it's like, this could actually be a really bad thing, let's dig into that. And you just, you know, constantly make a part of the conversation.

• 6:18Kim Milosevich?

  Yep. I think just staying fairly paranoid is probably a good thing in this situation.

• 6:22Margit Wennmachers?

  Stay paranoid.

• 6:22Kim Milosevich?

  You know, a lot of companies may Discount how high profile something could get like, hey, nobody cares about us. We're really small. This is something every company goes through. This reporter who's asking these questions will go away if we don't respond. Look, we live in a fairly heightened environment now, especially in tech.

• 6:40Sonal?

  And just to break it down for why, why do you think that is?

• 6:43Margit Wennmachers?

  Tech has become a power center.

• 6:44Sonal?

  Right.

• 6:44Margit Wennmachers?

  And it has a big impact on the world, however you view that.

• 6:48Sonal?

  Yeah.

• 6:48Margit Wennmachers?

  And I think that's, that invites more scrutiny and rightfully so.

• 6:51Sonal?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Kim Milosevich?

  Yeah. And a lot of these, you know, you look at Facebook, for example, Google, I mean, these are communities that are much bigger than countries.

• 6:58Margit Wennmachers?

  I'm saying Facebook is bigger than the Vatican, the Catholic Church, probably.

• 7:01Sonal?

  And some people even argue they have more power than governments.

• 7:03Kim Milosevich?

  Right. It's something that we're all using every day, so incredibly important. Look, these young companies, they're raising a lot of money.

• 7:09Sonal?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Kim Milosevich?

  These founders are getting an immense amount of responsibility very quickly and very early, a lot of times before they have a chance to build their leadership skills and handle a lot of these situations.

• 7:20Sonal?

  It is often sometimes difficult to distinguish signal and noise, but regardless of whether it's coming from media or, you know, the blogosphere or other sources.

• 7:30Margit Wennmachers?

  Your employees, your customers.

• 7:32Sonal?

  It could be anywhere. There, if there is a signal is what I'm hearing. So the identification of a crisis, that something is wrong.

• 7:37Kim Milosevich?

  Yeah. Recognizing it. But then from that point on, take it seriously and then get those right people in the room.

• 7:42Margit Wennmachers?

  My mantra, never waste a crisis, often is the impetus for people to actually build the crisis plan and the process and whatnot. Ideally, you do, you do that before and you have the right culture in place. So if a crisis happens, like what will we do? They're sort of like modeling out, what are the different scenarios? What is the process? You want all that predefined, so you're not coming up with like, who needs to be included and this, that and the other.

• 8:07Sonal?

  So let's talk about the very first moment, like you, there's a crisis. It could be a really bad media article that's slamming your, your marquee product line. It could be whatever you define as a crisis. What's the very first step? Kim, you mentioned a room. Like, do you actually book a room and talk about it?

• 8:22Kim Milosevich?

  You might not be able to get all those people in the same room and it might not all be people within your one company.

• 8:26Sonal?

  And is it a war room?

• 8:27Margit Wennmachers?

  I mean, like, people call it a war room, but oftentimes it's a dedicated phone number because everybody lives virtually.

• 8:32Kim Milosevich?

  So.

• 8:33Sonal?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Kim Milosevich?

  Legal. You need to have legal. That's incredibly important.

• 8:36Sonal?

  Isn't it dangerous to have legal in the room?

• 8:37Margit Wennmachers?

  No, that makes the conversation privileged, which protects you.

• 8:40Sonal?

  Okay, so explain that to me.

• 8:41Margit Wennmachers?

  If there's a lawsuit, for example, and you get deposed, right? If you're in, if you're in the conversation with your lawyer present, that's a protected conversation.

• 8:49Kim Milosevich?

  That also means any email conversations that happen, there has to be a legal person on those emails. I mean, first, it should be a phone call to legal to help them understand, brief them on what's going on, bring them into the loop, and also get their advice on how we should be handling this. Some of these companies are still fairly young and maybe they don't have a general counsel yet. So you're also bringing in external counsel. And sometimes it's a combination of both.

• 9:11Margit Wennmachers?

  Sometimes you need a particular legal expertise, say in a patent case or whatnot, right? So there's legal, there's the key stakeholders.

• 9:18Sonal?

  And who do they typically consist of?

• 9:20Margit Wennmachers?

  Depends on what it is. If it's a personnel matter, for sure HR is involved, right? If it's a customer matter, the person in charge of customer success for sure is involved. But that kind of depends on what the flavor of it is. And then it's very important that the people in the room can actually make decisions.

• 9:39Sonal?

  Can this, should the CEO be there?

• 9:41Margit Wennmachers?

  Yeah, unless the CEO wants to outsource the crisis.

• 9:44Kim Milosevich?

  Or unless the CEO is the problem.

• 9:46Margit Wennmachers?

  Well, there's that.

• 9:47Sonal?

  Okay, so the other people in the room are usually decision makers. They should be empowered to have decisions.

• 9:52Margit Wennmachers?

  Or the people who like fix the problem or were first aware of the problem, or have the technical expertise to understand the problem and present it, right?

• 9:59Sonal?

  Yeah, but what if people, I mean, come on, these guys are building startups. What if they're too busy? Like, can't they initially outsource some of that information gathering phase?

• 10:05Kim Milosevich?

  Look, if it's a crisis, it's something that fundamentally impacts their business. So you need to have the most senior decision makers involved. Of course, this is going to change if you're talking about a Google-sized company versus a 200-person company.

• 10:18Margit Wennmachers?

  Right, it could be like the person that runs AWS versus, you know, the CEO. But let's say Netflix went down. I think Reed Hastings would want to know and care and do something about that.

• 10:28Kim Milosevich?

  Right, and then you have to be able to move very, very fast. So even things like, what is the first response that we put out? Let's say we put out a quick thing on Twitter acknowledging that we're working on it. Like, that needs to be done pretty quickly. There's a whole other audience there that you have to be considering, which is policymakers. You know, are we in a highly regulated industry? So that puts a whole other spotlight on you and you have to be incredibly buttoned up. You know, people are watching you. Maybe we need to communicate to them before we communicate to the public.

• 10:58Sonal?

  The question I have is there's a lag often between when you have the facts. And when you know what the truth is and when you're just information gathering and you have an initial response and then an actual response. So kind of walk me through the micro and macro of that.

• 11:10Kim Milosevich?

  The fact gathering phase can often be more complicated than you would think.

• 11:14Margit Wennmachers?

  Sometimes people are not, you know, you don't get the full version the first time around. Some people don't know because they've been told something by someone else and then it can take a long time to actually gather all the facts because in some cases there's lots of different parties involved. Sometimes the parties aren't speaking to each other. Everybody has sort of their agenda or her feelings. So it's just hard to figure out, okay, what's the actual truth? Sometimes when you're in our position, it feels a little bit like you're being handled a ball of yarn and then you start pulling.

• 11:45Kim Milosevich?

  You gotta unravel it and figure it out.

• 11:47Margit Wennmachers?

  And then the other facts come out and you have to sort like what's actually true versus not. And it's sort of this long drawn out process where if you are on the other side handing out information, just hand over the entire sweater. Like share everything that could possibly be relevant. If you have all of the facts, then you have all of the good, all of the bad, all of the potential problems. And then you can really do a comprehensive job of improving what is wrong, either culturally or legally or product wise or whatever else, right? So just put it all out there and then the business can do what the business needs to do. The people can move forward the way they need to do. And then the PR person can represent the right level of information correctly.

• 12:31Sonal?

  But the underlying values that I'm hearing is first, like first, to really trust your PR person, like your comms crisis person, like tell them everything, even if you don't think it bears on it or doesn't because they're the ones who have to knit it together.

• 12:42Kim Milosevich?

  And they're often going to be your voice publicly too, because PR folks are the ones who are taking all the calls from the media. They're representing you and they can't represent you well or accurately or fairly if they don't know what the facts are.

• 12:55Sonal?

  And the other value besides trust is this openness I'm hearing because I think the instinct, what I think of therapy as an analogy, what's the point of hiring a therapist if you're not going to tell them the truth and you're just sharing the same lies you lie to yourself without talking to them about it? No, I'm serious. Like if you think about it, like a crisis feels like a moment of therapy with you and the CEO.

• 13:11Margit Wennmachers?

  And not to minimize it. If there's a problem at the company, you know, I think people assume that people lie, but people do also sometimes lie to themselves.

• 13:20Sonal?

  Exactly.

• 13:21Margit Wennmachers?

  Because what is really going on is sometimes very hard to face.

• 13:24Sonal?

  It's a psychological thing.

• 13:25Kim Milosevich?

  Well, they often are feeling attacked. You know, it starts with, let's say, a claim somebody's come out to make about your company. It could be a lawsuit from another company. It could be a story that's coming out and, you know, trying to do an expose on the company or make a claim. And so, you know, you immediately are put on the defense. These founders, these CEOs, it's their company, it's their baby. So, yeah, I think it's normal for it to become a heightened emotional situation. And with that, it's gonna come some therapy. And there's a bit of detective work that needs to get done. And some of the folks involved may not understand what information is most relevant to what you're dealing with. And so you have to ask really smart questions.

• 14:05Margit Wennmachers?

  Our job is to ask all those paranoid questions to figure out like, okay, that's normal to you, but that's not normal to the regular world.

• 14:12Sonal?

  Isn't there sort of a phenomenon here? And I've noticed this in particular with tech folks, and I've worked with those kinds of folks for a long time as well, is that there's this sort of belief of truth as what's in code and what sort of like the sort of neutral idea of facts. There's a surprise that perception can be reality.

• 14:28Kim Milosevich?

  Well, you also have to think about the current environment and what's going on. Like, what are the media paying attention to, chasing? So, you know, we all experience Theranos. We all experience sort of what's been going on with Uber recently. There was benefits last year. There are, you know, these companies that go through these big media cycles. And so that's very much on people's mind. And so when you can see maybe similar patterns or...

• 14:50Margit Wennmachers?

  Yeah, they become reference points, right? Is this like that? Sometimes these comparisons, you just get lumped in.

• 14:56Sonal?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Margit Wennmachers?

  And it is unfair. Where companies, they're just mostly very specific situations.

• 15:01Kim Milosevich?

  Yeah, I find it most often happens to maybe companies that are misunderstood or maybe haven't done as great of a job with their, their story. They might get lumped in because people just don't understand it as well.

• 15:12Margit Wennmachers?

  So it's like spotting that. And then the process kicks in. And there was this other loop that you identify the crisis, you do the quick huddle, and then you have these daily or hourly phone calls. And just know that usually every one of those calls... They spin up another set of activities. Yeah. So for example, you have a product problem. Well, should we do a recall? Right? And then somebody has to go into like, well, what's our inventory? How many products are affected? How much will that cost us?

• 15:40Kim Milosevich?

  And do we have all the right people together to help us figure this out? So in some cases, you may need to hire a crisis firm. These types of folks are very accustomed to actually jumping in very quickly.

• 15:50Sonal?

  What are some of the tips you have for thinking about crisis firms versus regular PR firms? It's like, what's the difference? I mean, do you do a Google search like crisis PR firm? How do you find these people?

• 16:00Margit Wennmachers?

  Google search, yeah, names will pop up, but that business is so discreet. It works purely by referral.

• 16:06Sonal?

  Yep.

• 16:07Margit Wennmachers?

  And if you work with them, then you know, like, oh, they handle this and they handle that. But like, they can't talk about their work. So it's

• 16:12Sonal?

  Yeah.

• 16:13Margit Wennmachers?

  Purely a referral thing.

• 16:14Sonal?

  They can't put all their clients on their website necessarily. So there's the identification of the crisis, a quick huddle with all the key stakeholders to quickly figure out if there's an initial response. And then there is the getting everyone together to actually talk about the what? And the fact gathering phase.

• 16:29Margit Wennmachers?

  Right.

• 16:29Sonal?

  And then there's how do we

• 16:31Margit Wennmachers?

  Right.

• 16:31Sonal?

  Respond after we've done the fact gathering? What happens if fact finding takes too long and you need, you feel this urgency to respond?

• 16:37Margit Wennmachers?

  Crises are schizophrenic because you do need to show that you're on it. But I think people often over rotate on having the statement. I actually think the way to think about it that's more important is, okay, so people have a certain understanding of your company before the crisis. And when it's all said and done, what do you want them to think about the company after the crisis? And you do get some time. And then can you put it behind you where people go like, oh, that's VW. They cheated on their emissions testing. And this is what happened. And now I can buy that car again. That's the, that's, and that can take a while.

• 17:19Kim Milosevich?

  Yeah, I would say though, that a big claim is levied or a big accusation is made. There is, I think, a kind of a reasonable time in which the company needs to respond.

• 17:30Sonal?

  So strike the just right balance of response and urgency.

• 17:33Margit Wennmachers?

  Yeah, it was more of a yes and. It's not like you go. Quiet in the time that I'm just saying in the arc of history, do you actually get to end or does it permanently tarnish your reputation?

• 17:41Sonal?

  Yes, exactly.

• 17:42Margit Wennmachers?

  People that just don't think about that enough?

• 17:43Sonal?

  Right. Don't over rotate on the response at the expense of actually trying to figure out what it is. I'd love to get your guys' thoughts on the right way to do this because you guys have said in the past, like, own it, own your narrative. And I agree, that's a good thing to do. But it feels like people are now sort of automatically playing this playbook. Like, you just automatically issue an apology.

• 17:59Margit Wennmachers?

  I just totally fricking disagree. And VW did none of that. They went through the legal process of how much they need to give their customers back. They could have saved themselves some time.

• 18:07Sonal?

  So you're saying apologies are actually not as obvious as I think, as I think they are?

• 18:11Margit Wennmachers?

  Well, I, I, I don't think that every company just automatically apologizes. I mean, I think some companies wait for like bad cycle number five to go like, all right, I may have to, you know, and then some apologies are just shitty, right? So, yeah, I think Ben, I forget who, where this quote originated, but like, when you eat shit, don't nibble.

• 18:34Sonal?

  That's a Ben quote.

• 18:34Margit Wennmachers?

  So if you, if you're going to own it, which if you actually screwed up, you should.

• 18:40Kim Milosevich?

  And I think that is actually one of those things you do need to take time to understand what the facts are.

• 18:46Margit Wennmachers?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Kim Milosevich?

  And what actually went wrong? And what are you apologizing for? You don't want to, I think, rush that too much because number one, you want it to be thorough. You want it to be accurate and you want it to be genuine. You know, talking about how do you react to the situation? I think this is where you really have to go in and consider like, who are we as a brand? What is our voice? How do we normally communicate with people?

• 19:09Sonal?

  Should it be kind of similar to how you respond to everything else? Should it have a special feel?

• 19:13Kim Milosevich?

  Well, those are all the things that you have to figure out because each of these situations is going to be so incredibly unique. But are we people who blog a lot? Do we have a really vocal community and we're talking to them all the time? Are we stealth and we actually are rarely out there ever? You know, would it be really setting a huge precedent for us to write when we've never really talked about what we're doing up to this point?

• 19:33Sonal?

  I mean, I hate to ask this, and what's a playbook for owning it?

• 19:36Margit Wennmachers?

  Do it properly. Do it not with all the words that, you know, are usually used. We regret the error, blah, blah, blah.

• 19:44Sonal?

  Yeah, sort of like this third person remote.

• 19:46Margit Wennmachers?

  Sounds like, no offense to the lawyers, sounds like some lawyer wrote it to protect you while you're apologizing. Like, actually do it. This is what happened. Here's how we're fixing it, you know, on and on and on, right? And then with a heartfelt apology, right? That, that. It's, you know, you can't expect, so if you don't do it properly, there's this cognitive dissonance, right? Where you're one company, then you have this weird other language and I don't actually understand what happened, but you keep wanting me to buy your stuff. It just doesn't quite add up then.

• 20:15Sonal?

  Yeah, I mean, the example that pops into my mind is Amazon. They had a huge outage and they never have an outage. And they did like a very detailed, to your point, very factual, like, here's what happened. There was a cascading error. It went from this system to this system. I did read it carefully. I don't remember them actually saying like, we're extremely sorry for this. But they did say something to the effect of we, that we care about you and this is very top of mind for us.

• 20:37Margit Wennmachers?

  And, you know, the thing that that example shows was also appropriate for the reader, developers, technical people, right? So it's just really hard to do any hand waving to a community like that and go like, you know, trust me, it's not going to happen again. Salesforce actually has, was a really good example way back in the day when I was still at Outcast. They had some outage from that. That was way more common then, because, you know, we weren't all as savvy at it as we are now. And what they did, they went full transparency. They put up a site and it was a permanent website and you could just see what the status was. And people calmed down because they could just go to that separate site.

• 21:17Sonal?

  Well, I was just listening to a podcast we recently did where one of the machine learning startup founders described how when it comes to machine learning and AI, it feels like a black box a lot of people. And so you kind of want to actually intentionally give transparency to how the algorithm arrives at a decision or how it works. And I think this problem will come more and more as you have a lot of tech that's obscured to people and they don't know quite who to blame.

• 21:37Kim Milosevich?

  Well, I think this is where it's really important what your record is up to the date that the crisis happened.

• 21:43Sonal?

  And this goes to the culture point you were mentioning earlier.

• 21:45Kim Milosevich?

  How well have like you articulated what it is that you guys do, who you guys are, what you stand for? Have you built relationships in the media? Do people feel like you've been fourth, right? Like, have you built that trust? If you don't have much of that, you're going to be in a much, much worse place because people are coming from a lack of understanding and they're probably going to assume the worst.

• 22:10Sonal?

  Has access to top notch PR and comms people. I mean, they might be starting out, they might have a very junior person working with them. How do they sort of get that sort of trust and currency if they don't already have it?

• 22:22Kim Milosevich?

  You know, it might just be trust with their community. It doesn't necessarily have to be like through PR or media. But how much are they talking directly to their customers? Like, what is that language that they're using directly through that product to handle things? So when we talk to people about building their brand, it's also like, how do you build yourself a really strong brand that can withstand some of these crisis situations? Where you can maybe come out on out of it like better for it versus like even more in a deficit.

• 22:49Sonal?

  Yeah, the analogy that I think we've, we've talked about internally is like karma points.

• 22:53Kim Milosevich?

  Yeah.

• 22:53Sonal?

  You know, the bank.

• 22:55Margit Wennmachers?

  Yeah, that's sort of in my head. Like you, you basically have a bank account of goodwill, right? You have credits and debits. And if you, if you don't build up any credits with your community, whether they be customers or employees or investors or press or whatever, and then you actually screw up. You're instantly in the red and that's just really hard. That's a much bigger hole to dig yourself out of.

• 23:17Sonal?

  I mean, honestly, the recurring theme that keeps coming up over and over and over again is it really does go all down to culture. So I heard you on the apology. What are some other things?

• 23:24Kim Milosevich?

  Somebody's got to be monitoring what's going on. Like, what are your customers saying? What's happening on Twitter? If you have a big community on Reddit, what are they doing?

• 23:32Sonal?

  How do you do that in a constructive way, though? Because I can't imagine it's very constructive while you're trying to figure this out. You already have all this information, these information streams coming to you. Do you have like an hourly report, a daily report? Does everyone look at it at once? Do you send a report to the people, all the stakeholders? Does someone gather it? If you're in the middle of a crisis in a war room, you can barely check your phone. How, how do you, I mean, kind of break it down for me like tactically?

• 23:53Kim Milosevich?

  That's why you, you have to have this core team that are in your either virtual or real war room, who are, you know, all communicating with each other very clearly on here are what our touchpoints are going to be. So in this situation, we need to check back hourly or we're going to get back on the phone all at four. And here's what we're going to have figured out by then. And then here's who's in charge of this monitoring. Here's how these reports are going to be going out. We're going to come back at this time and figure out, okay, based on that, here's what we're going to do.

• 24:21Margit Wennmachers?

  There's also this element of some people do really well in a crisis and some people do not well in a crisis. And some people. Like a very good at listening to like this is what the community is actually saying. And some people like need to put their blinders on. A lot of the ability to manage through is sort of the ability to deftly manage, read the room, read the signals, understand who is good at what, who can handle what, to get to the outcome that you need to get.

• 24:53Kim Milosevich?

  One of the most important parts of this whole crisis scenario is what happens on the internal communication side. It is so important to be talking to the employees about what's going on. Ideally, they know if it's a big story that's going to break, they know about that story before it breaks. And they understand, you know, where it's coming from, maybe background, the real story, if it's different, what have you.

• 25:15Sonal?

  How do you guys feel about, we're all seeing this tension between communicating and then leaks. So like, what's the right level?

• 25:20Kim Milosevich?

  Depends, there's so many situations.

• 25:22Margit Wennmachers?

  It's situationally very, very specific. I will also say, you ought to start internal communications cadence very early on. Don't wait for the crisis. You want to have built trust with the employees because let's say there's a lawsuit. Your company all of a sudden is in a lawsuit. You feel it's completely unfair, but like you are very much shackled. The lawyers are telling you this pending litigation, you can't afford it. You can't afford a leak, even if you are doing an all hands meeting and there's nothing written down, you know, stuff could be recorded, people could leak it anyways, you just can't say anything. If you have established trust with the employee base beforehand, they will have faith that you're doing the right thing for the company and that you would be more forthcoming, were you able to.

• 26:07Sonal?

  That's great.

• 26:08Margit Wennmachers?

  Right, so that is just important to establish, you know, way before you hit a problem.

• 26:12Sonal?

  It's also, quite frankly, a baseline, like a truth barometer. It's like a lie detector test. Like, is this person telling me the truth from the previous conversations or are they talking really weird all of a sudden?

• 26:20Kim Milosevich?

  Yeah, how do we normally do those all hand meetings? How do we normally email? Who do those things come from? How are these, like, what is the culture of our company and how is that so far shown up in how we communicate?

• 26:32Margit Wennmachers?

  And there is, there is very much a reason to do the opposite. If you want a signal to the company, look. This is a, this is a big moment for the company. This is a make it or break it moment. You might want to use the opposite tactics.

• 26:45Sonal?

  Which is?

• 26:46Margit Wennmachers?

  You know, if you do an all hands meeting, you might want to do an email and saying like, everybody drop what they're doing and show up right here to signal, you know, shock and awe, right? You just need to understand what the, what the regular framework is and whether you want to use that regular framework or you want a counter program and signal, you know, a big moment that way.

• 27:05Sonal?

  What's the point of that, though?

• 27:06Margit Wennmachers?

  Not hiding.

• 27:06Kim Milosevich?

  We may not be able to answer all of your questions, but we at least want to hear them. We want to bring people together.

• 27:10Sonal?

  It feels like a rumor mill, fertile ground for rumor mill because everyone then peters about and just like goosebuses about it afterward.

• 27:16Margit Wennmachers?

  People are going to talk.

• 27:17Sonal?

  Do that anyway.

• 27:18Margit Wennmachers?

  And then you can say like, like, I can't comment on this part, but like, that doesn't mean you have to hide, right?

• 27:22Sonal?

  Right, and it's also just like you said, it's just that you care about them. You care enough to bother.

• 27:26Margit Wennmachers?

  Exactly.

• 27:26Sonal?

  So let's say you've done this, you know, there's two phases we've described. You have this information gathering phase, a fact finding. You've been updating either publicly or internally, all these different factors. And now we're in the actual response phase, like the formal response you might issue. So let's just go back now to the last phase, which is after the crisis.

• 27:43Margit Wennmachers?

  I think you divide this up in phases and I'm not even sure that actually worked because it's all one sauce from beginning. And sometimes you don't even know that it's over because there's always one other shoe that can drop.

• 27:56Sonal?

  You think you're done, but you're not out of it.

• 27:57Kim Milosevich?

  It morphs, there's more revelations.

• 28:00Margit Wennmachers?

  You get a new phone call and you're like, oh shit, really? I mean.

• 28:03Sonal?

  Is there a way though where you kind of get all the information on the front?

• 28:06Margit Wennmachers?

  No.

• 28:06Sonal?

  End of it, you know, never that, that you guys are just both like vehemently, that's not possible, that's not how it works.

• 28:10Kim Milosevich?

  It's impossible to control. And that's why to Margaret's point, some people are better in those situations than others. Communications people are very comfortable in those situations because we're used to not being able to control.

• 28:22Sonal?

  I was about to say, I would drive editors.

• 28:23Margit Wennmachers?

  We're, we're in the ultimate, you're in the grayest of all gray zones, yet in the public light.

• 28:30Kim Milosevich?

  And honestly, if it's public sometimes, you don't still know yet what all the facts are and who all the players are.

• 28:35Margit Wennmachers?

  Stories get written and they can be wrong. They can be missing half the stuff. They could be really an inaccurate focus. It's just, it's a gray area. So there's no phases.

• 28:44Kim Milosevich?

  And then there's the story that is out there externally and really trying to understand, okay, so this is how it's being perceived based on the information that they have. So how do we handle that part of it? And how do we factor that in?

• 28:59Sonal?

  And how do you factor that in? Like then, do you then think like, okay, now we need to correct the record and give them the reality? Or that's okay?

• 29:06Kim Milosevich?

  Well, there's a part of like, yes, you gotta get the facts out there. You have to make sure you have all those facts first. And then you also have to figure out like, what's your argument? Like, how do you piece it all together? What are those important facts to piece together for people?

• 29:20Sonal?

  So what do you tell the reporter on the other end? More importantly, the question, this is the question I wanted to get at. What do you think about going off the record and telling the real backstory and then certain things on the record, off the record? How do you manage that?

• 29:30Margit Wennmachers?

  Well, so it takes two to tango. Some folks are very open to off the record commentary. Some folks are not.

• 29:36Sonal?

  Do you advise it, though?

• 29:38Margit Wennmachers?

  I do, particularly when I have a trusted relationship. Here's where we're coming from. And also, here is why we are not commenting publicly.

• 29:46Sonal?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Margit Wennmachers?

  Right? Lots of very legitimate, very ethical, good reasons not to go on the record. There are a million shades in every, every story worth reporting has a million shades of gray in it.

• 29:59Sonal?

  So what happens if people don't believe you?

• 30:01Margit Wennmachers?

  You've got a problem.

• 30:04Margit Wennmachers?

  When you get arrested, something like that, your lawyer doesn't actually want to know kind of whether you did it or not, because their job is to defend you. I actually like to know really what happened, because once you lie to the media, you're basically fucked.

• 30:18Sonal?

  So never lie?

• 30:19Margit Wennmachers?

  Just don't.

• 30:20Sonal?

  Ever.

• 30:21Margit Wennmachers?

  Don't, because...

• 30:22Sonal?

  Better not to say anything? What do you do then? Do you say, no comment?

• 30:24Margit Wennmachers?

  You can decline to comment. You, you can...

• 30:26Sonal?

  I plead the fifth.

• 30:28Margit Wennmachers?

  You can say like, I can't help you with that one. If you lie, you've just screwed yourself. Because the whole point is to get through this crisis and have customers, employees, and media believe that when you say something, that they can buy the product or take the job. And once you break that, like with media, it's basically irrecoverable.

• 30:53Kim Milosevich?

  Well, and they're just gonna find out.

• 30:54Margit Wennmachers?

  Well, there's that.

• 30:55Sonal?

  Right.

• 30:56Margit Wennmachers?

  Also, there's an ethical component to it. Obviously, right? There comes a point when you're in our jobs, I was just like, you know what? You guys do that, I have to be out of here. And that is in tension with the other component, which is extremely equally important, which is loyalty. Because you don't want to ditch, you know, a friend or a company or a brand just because the going got tough. That happens to everyone. But there is a line and every person has to decide for themselves, what is that line?

• 31:25Sonal?

  Is there such a thing as a difference between a personal crisis and a business crisis?

• 31:30Margit Wennmachers?

  No.

• 31:30Sonal?

  When you work for a company?

• 31:31Kim Milosevich?

  I think this is like the biggest thing that I think founders in particular have to go through. If you're a CEO of a large company, you get it. You know, there's no separating you from that company. It's maybe harder for some of the earlier stage tech founders to have to go through and realize is that they think, okay, this is this very personal thing and I don't want it to affect the company. So I will go deal with this personal thing on my own. And they don't necessarily treat it like a company crisis early enough. And then they have to learn the hard way when it becomes a full blown.

• 32:01Sonal?

  Right, because you're saying there really is no division between the two.

• 32:04Kim Milosevich?

  There is no division and especially if you're a founder, CEO, you and the company are essentially the same. And even if the focus, let's say of the stories are on the personal issue, guess what? Your company is going to be mentioned in every single one of those stories. So it becomes a brand issue for your company regardless.

• 32:20Sonal?

  Yeah, we talked a little bit about like immediately at the end of a crisis. If there is an end, any thoughts there?

• 32:24Margit Wennmachers?

  Yeah, so post crisis isn't actually not a moment in time. A lot of people look at like, are the stories stopping? And consider that the end. If the company actually did something wrong or has an opportunity to improve, whether it's been portrayed fairly or not. The end of the crisis is really once you've worked through all of that, right? Have you improved your privacy policies? Have you shipped a new phone? Have you, you know, have you improved employee morale or culture or whatnot, right? And that takes a much longer time.

• 32:55Kim Milosevich?

  Oh, one thing actually that is important to point out here is others in the company, they want to feel like, okay, we're out of this crisis. So when are we going to tell our comeback story? What do you guys counsel? Yay or nay? Should people do this? Don't rush it. I think that is- You're not saying don't do it at all. You're saying don't rush it. I think that's probably one of the biggest mistakes that companies make is by trying to do it too early when they don't have enough progress or milestones or growth to show that they have started to turn around. And they may put their CEO or spokesperson out there a little too early. They're not quite ready for that turnaround story. What you end up with is a story that is maybe 80% of rehashing the past, 20% of where you're going in the future. You want that flip.

• 33:38Margit Wennmachers?

  I really feel for the CEOs and it's, there's no amount of talking that gets them to really appreciate this. There may be 150 stories that are all very, very critical, rightly or wrongly, no matter what. There's one turnaround story. It's just, you only get one of those. Isn't it a little cheesy to say like, hey, look at how we've improved? No, look, if you, well, what would you like the company to do is just quietly improve and like no one, the customers shouldn't know. That's quite unfair. And the bar is pretty high for getting one of those. Trust me, they, they tend to not get written unless they're deserved.

• 34:16Kim Milosevich?

  It was a quick wild tour through crisis PR. Thank you for joining the podcast.

• 34:19Margit Wennmachers?

  Thank you.

• 34:19Kim Milosevich?

  Thank you.