‘Show me the bodies’ – a review

There are only a handful of books that have gripped me so much that I read them within a couple of days. Few of those I have read so far made me so determined to continue to share my approach to crisis communication as Peter Apps’ book about the Grenfell fire.

It was just a few weeks after I had been faced with leading the police communication in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena terror attack when I saw the terrible images on television. I have followed what happened over the years including the media reporting of the public inquiry. But nothing prepared me for the real horror that is recounted in the book ‘Show me the bodies’.

For anyone working in crisis response and crisis communication it is an essential read and one that I will be recommending in training sessions. But I also feel it is a book that everyone should read to see the events that led to the deaths of 72 people. The book gives an insight from some of the survivors as well as those who lost loved ones. On more than one occasion I was as moved to tears.

On a professional level reading about misleading marketing talking about ‘charring’ rather than burning and the rush to get statements prepared rather than share vital details of occupants just hours after the fire made me angry. There is a distressing account of how families were left to sort themselves out after the most terrifying experience. And the heartbreaking words of a father who lost his five year old son.

The real horror is that the families still have not received justice. Just last week there were articles stating that the final report has been delayed and is u likely to be published until the summer. It will be more than seven years later.

I feel in Peter Apps’ book I have finally understood the details and why the families are continuing to fight for justice. Organisations and governments often talk about unprecedented and unthinkable events but they are not and as the book outlines there were many warnings and opportunities that were not taken.

‘Show me the bodies’ rightly won an award and should be mandatory reading for anyone working in public bodies and their suppliers. It has made me more determined to try and encourage a change where crisis communication is about people and not reputation.

Valuing trust in a world of fakes

There is a huge challenge for governments, organisations and businesses evident every day and that is the lack of trust that exists in society. It can often be overlooked as the damage to trust is not as tangible as the failure of an operational system, product or as has been seen this week an IT outage. But it is the most important asset an organisation can have.

If there is no trust then how can governments give people life saving advice when a disaster or emergency happens? How can the police expect that people will come forward with information about criminal activity? How will local authorities connect with residents and encourage them to change behaviour? How can health professionals get people to improve their lifestyles?

Public sector organisations rely on trust if they are going to be able to operate effectively. And when a disaster or emergency takes place trust is the one thing that is essential. People are less likely to listen and act on warnings that they don’t believe, or are concerned may be motivated by things other than preserving and protecting lives. The past few weeks have shown the significant challenge that this brings.

When I am running crisis communication training I now start it with a consideration of the impact of the trust deficit, and what it means to how we operate when the worst happens. There is no way we can achieve what we need to without understanding what people think of the organisation and how trustworthy it is. This is also an essential part of understanding what the reputation of an organisation is and how it is viewed. Trust is worth more than gold.

Conspiracy theories, concern, confusion and criticism will always be shared where there is a perception of a lack of trust. If an organisation felt to have misled, lied or manipulated the truth or the reality of a situation there will be a long road back. The same can be said of organisations that are in denial of the crisis that they may be facing. If you don’s see it the views will be as critical.

The trust deficit and concern about fake information is not going away. In fact, it is a situation that is only likely to become more entrenched as the use of artificial intelligence grows. My three top tips:

1. Value your trust rating and protect it as much as you can. It takes years to gain and seconds to lose.
2. Ensure you are building trust, tackling fake news and the impact of AI in your crisis response and communication plans.
3. Educate others about the importance of trust to the reputation of an organisation and what it is worth.

That photo and tackling disinformation

It was the photograph that was supposed to stop the conspiracy theories and provide reassurance about the health of the Princess of Wales. But it quickly became a lesson in how ‘warts and all’ is the best approach.

If you have missed the headlines. Kensington Palace released a photograph of the Princess and her children said to have been taken by her husband. It shows three smiling children surrounding their mother who is sat in a chair. Shortly after release three big media agencies put a ‘kill’ notice on it that warns agencies it may have r been manipulated.

Tackling disinformation may seem to be something of concern only to government agencies. There has been a lot of talk about it in the run up to the elections both in the UK and US. Disinformation affects us all and anyone working in communication needs to understand what it is and what they need to do in relation to it.

The first thing is always to avoid being the source of any part of fake news. Whether it is misinformation or disinformation communicators have to ensure they are not part of the problem. There is a growing body of academic research and information about what needs to be done to try and respond to these issues.

If you don’t think they are important subjects look at the World Economic Forum report on the top risks which has them at the top. Artificial intelligence has added to the concerns as a recent scary statistic had a more than 100% increase in AI generated fake news on X (formerly Twitter). This is everyone’s problem.

We all need to become more aware of what may be information that has been manipulated. So the media agencies may have been helping to shine a light on the problem. What should we do?

Be clear if you have adapted a photograph in any way or if you have used artificial intelligence. Openness and honesty remain two important elements of the foundation to successful communication and effective crisis communication. If the Palace had published a photograph where all the children weren’t smiling or where the background wasn’t perfect it would have sparked discussion but it would not have damaged trust.

Once you are seen to be guilty of manipulation, hiding information or trying to airbrush situations there is a long road back to regain trust. Everything you issue will be questioned and will have an air of suspicion around it.

This situation could have been avoided. But if nothing else look at what has happened and recognise the need to protect against disinformation and the damage it can do to your reputation.

Is crisis communication important?

We are living in a world of chaos and challenge. People have less trust in those in positions of power and authority. There are echo chambers on social media which is also helping to share fake news and allows people to operate with anonymity. The media are fighting to remain relevant to the fast pace of sharing information using technology. People run with their cameras towards disaster to film rather than running away. So with all this do we really need to think about crisis communication or are we all doing it on a daily basis?

It is an interesting question particularly as I spend my whole day working with organisations to ensure they are prepared and ready to respond to any problem that occurs. After the Covid-19 pandemic I had hoped that many organisations would learn and develop, ensuring their plans were in place and that they could move quickly for any future crises. In many cases this doesn’t appear to have happened. Many reports this week have said we are no better prepared for a future pandemic than we were in 2019.

Being crisis ready is incredibly important. We are all seeing how easily organisations can slip into a crisis and how damaging a poor response can be. Not having the right plans in place, and failing to have tested them, will be heavily criticised by a public with high expectations of all organisations and businesses.

PR and communication teams are really stretched in most organisations but this should not mean we neglect to develop or review the crisis communication approach, plans, policies and procedures. These plans now have to give us delegated authority to be able to respond immediately a crisis occurs, need to outline how social media will be addressed, and have to consider the response to misinformation and disinformation. An unbelievable statistic is that there is a 130% increase in artificial intelligence (AI) generated disinformation on X (formerly Twitter) and this is ahead of elections in the UK and US. There is also the issue of AI and how it is used and how the risks are considered.

There are many risks we are all facing from extreme weather events and cyber incidents through to the threats from internal staff behaviour the the culture within organisations. Recognising the crisis, responding effectively and building a strong recovery are within our grasp. But so are tactics such as cover up, confusion and gaslighting. Now is the time for PR and communication to take a strong ethical position on how crises are managed.

When we are living in a world of crisis and challenge I think it is even more important to take some time to consider your position and whether you really are crisis ready. As that crisis could be waiting just around the corner.

If you have any comments let me know. And to mark World Book Day the first person to email me at amanda@amandacolemancomms.co.uk after reading this will receive a copy of one of my two books – the choice will be yours.

Tough times, resilience and taking care of yourself

With every training session I do about crisis communication and crisis management there is one thing I always include – wellbeing and resilience. If we aren’t looking after ourselves how can we ever think we can care for others? In the past week I have spoken to a few people about the fact I have had counselling and coaching in the past. I don’t see it as a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.

In the past five years I have come to recognise the importance of noticing when I need some help and not being afraid to ask for it. I wish I had learnt this lesson a bit earlier as it would have made a huge difference to my life. After what has been a very challenging 18 months I have looked for some assistance again. This time I am having some life coaching sessions. When I mention it people are intrigued about what it is and why I am having it.

Life coaching is not like the Speakmans and other people that you may see on TV or working with celebrities. It is about looking at where I am and where I want to be. It is about looking at what matters to me in my life. It is about understanding how I can develop. I have an hour long session and so far it has been looking at my values and rating myself at how I am living them. I have also had to look at what gives me energy and what depletes my energy.

It is interesting to see how my values have changed dramatically from around a decade ago when I did a similar exercise. What is my top value now? Simple, it is compassion. It is what I want to show to others, and what I know I need to show to myself.

Why am I doing it now? I have found great benefit from grief counselling over the past 12 months. It has helped me to walk around the big hole in my life that has been caused by a number of losses. As my Dad always says some days we will fall in the hole but mostly we try to walk around it while acknowledging that it is there. Now, I need to start to rebuild my life and find what I want to do and where I want to be in the future. Life coaching gives me the time to reflect and someone to push me to go a bit deeper.

We all need a bit of help from time to time. Communication and PR is a tough industry to work in and when you deal with crisis communication take care of yourself should be a number one priority. Wherever you are this weekend take some time out to recharge and relax.

Crises, risk aversion and ‘cover up’

Something worrying is occurring in modern life. The Post Office Horizon IT scandal, now concerns about how Ofsted operate, and many other situations show attempts to hide problems and at the worst to cover them up. It started me thinking whether this is getting worse, is a new phenomenon or are we finding it out more because of social media. Are people able to air their problems to the world when organisations are not listening?

At a time when we have the ability to share more communication than ever before why are so many businesses and organisations putting the shutters down?

According to a bit of online searching the phrase was first identified being used in the 1920s although talk of hiding things had been noted for many years. It is also clear that since that time there has been a sharp increase in the amount of times it is used with just a small drop in the 1980s. As I was at school in the 1980s I am not sure why that drop happened.

The challenge at the minute is that there is a significant trust deficit. Organisations, businesses and experts are less trusted than before the Covid pandemic and I fear it is driving an approach of avoiding crises by trying to deal with them within the organisation or to avoid acknowledging them. Are businesses ensuring they are listening to concerns from staff about how they operate, and are they considering perceptions from those outside?

Building trust and confidence needs openness and transparency. It needs the recognition that there is a problem and a willingness to listen to people’s views and perceptions of the organisation even if they are opinions rather than facts. When this doesn’t happen the culture develops that the business is right and people just need to be told so they understand their perceptions ‘are wrong’. I have a particular frustration with organisations that attempt the ‘nothing to see here’ approach to issues or concerns. Even if you don’t think it is important others may and it is out of touch with the perceptions and external concerns.

I am sure these things have always happened. But in 2024 being honest and open, as well as publicly dealing with problems and crises is critical. The business may survive the crisis that has emerged but it can suffer a near fatal blow from a cover up or perceptions of a cover up. My three suggestions on how to address this are:

1. Be open and transparent when a problem, or perceived problem emerges
2. Accept when their are things that need to be changed or addressed
3. Keep listening to feedback with humility and a willingness to act

In short, if you have a problem, understand it and publicly demonstrate how you are dealing with it. Don’t wait for someone to call you out.

Crisis communication now rather than then

In the past five years the world has changed dramatically. Things that were acceptable in 2019 are now seen to be massively out of touch. The world post-Covid is now very different for us all, and so it should be for the organisations and businesses that we support with communication. It becomes even more critical to have changed and adapted when you are facing a crisis.

The way we communicate needs to be more honest, more human and more authentic than at any point I can remember. The way we communicate also needs to be more inclusive and to really understand what people need to know. Crisis communication plans need to be revised, training needs to be refocused, and exercises need to take a broader look at reputational as well as operational crises.

I was listening to the amazing Professor Lucy Easthope talking at a CIPR event this week and she referred to it as doing 2019 communication. Are you doing 2019 communication and crisis communication?

We are facing many more challenges with the uncertainty, conflict and pressures that exist in the world. This is at the same time as there is a trust deficit. If that wasn’t enough Transparency International’s corruption perception index that has just been released has the UK at its lowest position in 12 years. The report shows that the UK is viewed as more corrupt than Uruguay and Hong Kong. Effective crisis communication is about trust and confidence and against this backdrop the ability to gain trust in a crisis response has to be a top priority for all.

There is also a growing focus on the way organisations operate in light of a series of scandals and particularly the impact of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal. A lack of information is challenged as a cover up, and being slow is felt to be an attempt to avoid the issue or even gaslight people. This is the time when we need to have 2024 communication and to be ready for a crisis. Just having a crisis communication plan is not enough. It needs to be focused on the right things – helping people not protecting reputation – and be ready to implement at a moment’s notice. It needs to have been tested and for the team to know what it means.

During 2024 there are predictions of more cyber challenge, attacks on organisations, fake news, people establishing themselves as ‘experts’. If you are not considering the wider implication of the situation and your response to it, and communicating in an open and inclusive way, you will struggle to build trust and confidence.

I appreciate that PR and communication individuals and teams are busy but there is no time to delay as that next crisis may be around the corner and could find you back in 2019.

The power of the docu-drama

The Post Office scandal has become one of the top stories over the past week. It is understandable why this has happened because it is such a shocking situation. People being falsely convicted of offences, having their lives and livelihoods destroyed, and facing a cover up that meant the situation continued for two decades. Like many, I have been following the issue since the first convictions were overturned and I have been trying to monitor developments at the public inquiry. But it is a sign of the times that it is through the docu-drama that there now seems to be fast tracked action.

Ensuring that people are aware of what has happened is important and the ITV drama was able to bring home the human impact of the situation. But it should not require this to happen for the Government to look at what it can do to help with quashing convictions and providing compensation. Given the scale of this scandal it is something that should have already been underway.

Every crisis, emergency, disaster and scandal has a human impact. It is understanding that human impact that I stress in all the crisis communication training that I do. For those who have to communicate when something has happened, and that have to advise those in charge of the response, this is the most important thing. You have to understand the impact, what it means, what it looks and sounds like and what it feels like before you can communicate effectively.

Look at what has happened from outside of the organisation. Don’t just accept what people inside the business are telling you. It is why access to responses, not just on social media, is such a vital part of effective communication. Ensure you are listening to those who are affected and I mean really listen.

There is another issue for me which is that communicators need to challenge the approach, response and communication if they believe it is failing in some way. This is incredibly hard to do as in some cases you are putting your job on the line. But blindly trying to protect a business’ reputation is a quick way to cover up and being ethically compromised. Sadly, many organisations will be involved in group think and it needs alternative voices to be heard. There is a huge challenge for communicators to be able to influence when the organisation is under pressure.

The docu-drama should not be the only way to get things to progress when a crisis or scandal has happened. Institutions including the government, police and regulators need to ensure they are responding fully and appropriately as soon as these situations develop. There priorities should not be driven by media and public interest alone. I am sure there are many other situations that need to have a spotlight put on them but I hope they don’t all have to try and secure a docu-drama to move forward.

Being ready for that moment

As someone who works in crisis preparedness and response you can imagine that I spend a lot of time extoling the virtues of testing and being ready for the moment something happens. If you needed convincing look at the fire on the flight landing in Tokyo yesterday and the fact that all 379 passengers and crew on the Airbus 350 managed to escape.

It was a credit to the crew and the passengers that they were able to get out of the plane before the fire spread destroying it. How many times have you been on a flight and have paid little attention to the safety briefing that is provided? But as it is given before every take off I am sure you would be able to replay a lot of it verbatim. Flight crews also spend time running through how to evacuate and how to deal with crises that may happen.

All businesses and organisations should look at this approach and make sure that they put adequate time into testing crisis plans and ensuring that everyone is able to respond quickly. It means people understanding what their role will be, which may be different to the day-to-day tasks that they undertake. Regardless of what your risks are being ready to respond quickly and effectively can mean the difference between minimising the impact of what has occurred and finding your reputation under threat.

In high risk businesses like air travel and emergency response there is a recognition that being ready for a crisis can save lives. There are also many debriefs and public inquiries that have highlighted how improvements could have been made if more planning and preparation had been carried out. With the challenging and uncertain times where we may all face cyber attack or the impact of extreme weather it is vital all business and organisations test and exercise their plans.

If you are making some plans for 2024 add in at least one test of the organisation’s approach to managing a crisis, and ensure that communication is a key part of that test and not just side-lined. Whatever happens you can be sure that effective communication is a vital part of the response.

The images of the plane ablaze were shocking but the fact all 379 people managed to escape is an important lesson in being ready for the worst. Sadly five people died on the coastguard flight and my thoughts are with their families and friends. The investigation into what happened will bring important information about how to avoid similar situations in the future. We need to wait for that report to understand more.

Five thoughts for 2024

It is the time of year when there are lots of predictions and resolutions being discussed. I have a dislike of the whole New Year resolutions approach as they feel like we are setting ourselves up to fail. Filled with the aftermath of Christmas we set ourselves unrealistic goals and then are disappointed when a couple of days in we have broken them. If they work for you then great but you will be in the minority.

I am also not a huge fan of the long lists of predictions for the coming year. It feels sometimes like we are going to be in the self fulfilling prophecy situation. We tell ourselves the next year will be tough, or will bring specific situations and then we look for the evidence that supports what we have said. So, instead of those approaches I am going to give five points that I think PR and communicators need to consider in the year ahead.

Take them as you see fit and if they help then great and if they are irrelevant then ignore them.

1. Prioritise your own training and development – when budgets are under pressure the money available for training is often the first thing to get cut. Whatever happens you have the ability to ensure that you remain focused on your own training. Keep a development plan and make sure that you find ways to build your skills as you feel necessary.
2. Build resilience by downtime and balance – we seem to have forgotten a lot of the lessons from the Covid years, but we all need to find a balance in our lives. Resilience comes from being able to weather the difficult days and not feeling depleted the whole time. Taking time away from work and doing other things is essential.
3. Stop comparing yourself to others – this is one that I am going to keep telling myself on a daily basis. We all have a different story and it is our story. Looking at what others are doing is fine but comparing yourself is wasted energy. Have the confidence in taking your own path wherever you work.
4. Test out your crisis communication plans – always an important thing to do but so often put at the bottom of the ‘to do list’. Make 2024 the year that you do some form of test to see if your crisis approach will work, and to find the gaps before you have to use it at speed.
5. Life is hard so have some fun – the past five years have been a huge challenge for me and for many. It is easy to become so focused on work and making it through difficult times that we can forget one of the most important things to our wellbeing – having some fun. Whatever you do that makes you laugh, gives you time to unwind and destress make sure you find time for it in the year ahead.

Wishing you a prosperous, safe and above all enjoyable New Year.