One thing you hear as a communications professional is that every organization needs a crisis communications plan. When I was making my way up the leadership ladder, I heard this a lot, and at first, my idea of what a crisis communications plan should be was based on my extremely limited understanding of plans in general. I thought that plans specified goals and objectives (outcomes you wanted to achieve) and strategies and tactics (things you were going to do) to achieve your desired outcomes.
The thing I failed to realize then is that a crisis communications plan can’t really get specific about very much of anything until people at your organization a) agree that a situation IS a crisis; and b) agree on why they think a response is important and who it will benefit, both internally and externally. Clearly, a crisis is something that could affect your organization’s reputational capital and functions in ways that could threaten its continued existence, but there are many, many different types of crises. What if the crisis is external to your organization, like a natural disaster? What if the crisis affects many of your employees’ well-being and mental health, but is unrelated to your organization’s core line of work? (Like a horrific event of violence against a group because of their race, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation when your organization works on, say, environment or educational reform?) What if you don’t actually have consensus at your organization that an event or series of events even constitutes a crisis? (There are many in this country who believe that Trump and Musk are attempting a complete and illegal destruction of the Constitution and an authoritarian take-over of our national government but there are many who don’t believe that, including, it seems, all Republican members of Congress.)
What I eventually came to realize is that a crisis communications plan, for organizations, should and could get specific about a few things but not much else. So what every organization really needs is a crisis process, in other words, that outlines who makes the decisions about whether a crisis merits or demands an organizational response, who has input into those decisions or needs to hear about them, and who and how will implement those decisions. In other words, crisis communications plans should outline decision trees and how staff will be informed or involved in the decisions that get made.
Here’s one example of how I learned how essential the decision-making piece is – at a job in my distant past, an esteemed colleague of mine in senior management with a background in public health asked me if I would facilitate a tabletop exercise for senior leaders on how our organization would respond to a pandemic. (Tabletop meaning, we got the details of a pandemic disaster scenario and in a conference room we had to go through the motions of figuring out how we would respond.)
I know, right? So prescient! This was decades before we experienced the real thing (although it was decades after the influenza epidemic). But actually, these types of scenario planning exercises are fairly common for many organizations, particularly those in the health and disaster relief fields.
As the facilitator, I was given the details of the then-fictional pandemic and my job was to keep on sharing more details as they became available, while asking various leaders what their responses and recommendations might be. And what we all learned, from that exercise, is that we needed to have much greater clarity around who was empowered to make certain decisions – like whether to continue our operations, for example, with a minimal staff complement. (This was before the days of remote work.)
Now, with respect to our current crisis – I DO believe we’re in the midst of one, and I think the Democrats and progressives and disenchanted Republicans are fumbling on how to respond – I would like to offer some suggestions on the questions and decisions organizations ought to be considering regarding their stance and work on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But first, a few background thoughts: As someone who has been around the block many times in the social sector (a sector that encompasses government, nonprofit, and philanthropy, as well as others), I know that many, many organizations in both the public and private sectors, during the past few years, went through a process of deepening their commitments and their work on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI, although I hate the acronym when I suspect that people don’t know anything about what the letters actually stand for). Much of this work was taking place before George Floyd’s murder but there is no doubt in my mind that DEI work took on a greater urgency and purpose once the nation witnessed such stark and horrific visual evidence of our country’s legacy of racial injustice.
Now, these same organizations that willingly and in good faith deepened their DEI-related commitments and work and communications are facing a President who has no regard for the rule of law and whose megalomania, regardless of his deranged incompetence, is enabling an entire regime dedicated to, among other things, promoting white supremacy and racial hatred. For organizations that lack access to good legal and communications resources – which is many small- to medium-sized nonprofits and foundations – this is a time of paralyzing uncertainty and fear.
In other words, I feel your pain, colleagues and allies. And I know that figuring out what you can do or say about your DEI commitments and work is especially stressful when you are in a decision-making, or decision-facilitating, role. (One of my biggest lessons from my time as a senior leader is that people will treat you as if you can wave a scepter and simply issue decrees but in actual fact, you are still bound to work with your staff, your peers, your boss, and the board. If you don’t feel those obligations to collaborate and listen before doing, then you are likely a really terrible leader.) So in the midst of this particular crisis, I offer the following questions you should be considering when it comes to all of your work and communications related to diversity, equity, and inclusion:
- What can you legally say and not say about your current DEI work? A smart colleague, Joy Portella of Minerva Strategies, shared what I thought was an excellent article from Harvard Business Review containing guidance on this question. I know that many communications professionals are not fond of parsing their messaging and language to comport with the advice of lawyers but now is the time when lawyers and communicators – the latter meaning, especially public relations experts, who are a different type of communications expert than, say, the person who is leading media-based advocacy campaigns – should be operating in absolute lockstep with each other.
- What is your organization’s appetite for risk and visibility, as evidenced by its history and consistency regarding its core organizational values, the composition of its board, and the relationships between the board and senior leadership, and the senior leadership and staff? I have worked with organizations that are terrified of ANY publicity and backlash and I have worked with organizations that are the opposite of that. And it is not easy to change these pre-existing conditions in a short period of time. You need a great deal of trust and openness at all levels of the organization and in many places I’ve worked at or with, they have either not invested in creating that sort of culture or are not interested in having that type of culture, period. So you see angry, disheartened employees begging their respective organizations to speak up, take a stance, do something – and the board and senior leadership simply don’t see the point. In short, for your organization to stand strong on advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, everyone needs to have everyone else’s backs.
- What is your actual capacity and experience to communicate about your DEI work during a time of great uncertainty and mounting threats from the federal government? I have said this more times than I can count, and written about it here and here: your messaging on why you think your values and work on diversity, equity, and inclusion matter is not simply a matter of putting words to paper. It helps if you are an organization with an established track record of communicating loudly and proudly about your DEI values and work (in the corporate space, that would be Ben & Jerry’s, or Costco). It helps if you have an organization that is both horizontally and vertically integrated or connected – so for example, if your communications people work with various experts and internal teams to craft a strong and clear series of messages about your organization’s DEI work, you know that there are also relationships and structures in place to ensure that the messages will be clearly understood and well-implemented across departments and functions.
I think that the above questions are essential ones to consider for any organization grappling with what to say or not to say about DEI these days. However, I want to point out the obvious: knowing the questions is not the same thing as knowing the answers. The above questions often involve painful, sometimes grueling internal soul-searching at organizations and also, you can’t please everyone. If your organization does answer the above questions and decides on a course of action, I guarantee you that there will be at least some number of internal and external constituents who are disappointed by the response. Finally, I think that many organizations lack the internal capacity to actually structure and facilitate these sorts of decisions. Most jobs are overflowing with responsibilities that are focused, metaphorically speaking, on keeping the trains running on time. If you do have the budget, I would hire expert facilitators and advisors to work with your organization on these decisions – you can hit me up for recommendations. But sadly, I know that many organizations simply don’t have the budget and just want the magic set of bulleted talking points that will somehow protect their work and keep them out of trouble.
My great hope is that many organizations will rise to the occasion and stand strong on the good work they have done to advance progress on matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion. There is so much good that has already come from that body of work – hiring and recruitment policies opened up and were more transparent, especially about salary ranges. People have felt more welcome to join industries and fields from which they were excluded. People were given safe spaces in which to learn, interact, and speak up.
At the same time, I recognize the increasing number of calls to action that many people in my feeds are demanding as a response to this crisis we’re in, calls for less silence and more action and leadership and resistance. This call resonates with me on many levels. And yet as someone who has worked across a wide variety of organizational spaces and cultures, I know that it is one thing to know what feels right to do as a group, as a population, as a country. It is another thing to actually implement it in a way that feels doable and aligned with your organization, your leaders, and your experience. I am sending all of you struggling with these questions at the moment so much courage, love, and strength. And I encourage you to connect with each other in safe spaces to both share advice and guidance and also, to simply be in community with one another. It helps.
Minna Jung Consulting 