How do you maintain trust and credibility with your customers and clients during and after a crisis?

Timeliness is key. Inform stakeholders as soon as you are aware there is a crisis brewing. You may not know all the facts yet, but share what you know. If you've been banking credibility, this is a time to make a withdrawal. Communicate early and often, updating assumptions with facts as you get new information. When you don't know something, say you don't know but articulate the steps you're taking to find out an answer. Let folks know when they can expect to hear from you. Don't be unreachable as you work to resolve the issue.

Give a clear picture of the situation literally. Utilize resources to cummunicate and illustrate important information. Not all people take in information at the same pace so when you employ multiple ways to convey what is happening and has happened more if not all will grasp it more effectively. Make it so all stakeholders can read, hear, and see what's going on.

- First reports are usually wrong. There is an important distinction between taking time to understand before communicating or acting vs. being slow to share needed information. - In the absence of official/authoritative information being shared, your Stakeholders will fill in gaps in knowledge with (usually pessimistic) assumptions. Push communication is the best remedy. - As the situation develops and new information becomes available, continually ask the question "Who else needs to know?" - In the face of a crisis, integrity doesn't bind us as an Organization or as Leaders to share everything (discretion is needed), but everything that IS shared must be true and accurate to the best of our current understanding.

- As a Crisis Recovery Team, we can have the best plan and best execution, but if progress and plans are not communicated routinely, we won't realize the trust-building benefits. - Communication and collaboration requirements will change drastically, as we move out of the urgent initial stage (requiring nearly continuous flow of undeveloped information) into less-urgent, deliberate iterations of plan, execute, assess. The key to success in managing communication/collaboration in the evolution is to purposefully adjust frequency, format and content in response to current requirements.

- Agile methodologies offer a very useful approach to learning through a crisis, not only at the end but along the way. - Call it whatever you want, but do the daily SCRUM: a) What did you accomplish yesterday? b) What are you doing today? and c) What are your obstacles? - Don't let the reactive nature of crisis recovery strip your Team of it's usual, deliberate habits of learning in-stride. Add a "d" to your daily SCRUM: d) How can we as a Team execute better today than we did yesterday (communicating, managing stakeholders, driving actions, etc).

- I love the quote: "[the honorable person] swears to his own hurt and does not change," meaning that even when keeping your word is costly, you keep your word. - Covey's "The Speed of Trust" would suggest that relationship rebuilding is largely a product of our Team's conduct all along the way in recovery- what we exhibited of character and of competence.

- Anticipating and having a play book for likely scenarios is a community expectation for responsible Organizations, especially where consequences to the public are possible. - Even with a great investment of time and effort, your Team won't anticipate every eventuality. The core goal should not be to have a play book for every possible scenario, but a mature, exercise-proven framework to respond to a variety of scenarios effectively.