What is a Crisis
A crisis can be a career ender or an opportunity to excel; it can also be an opportunity for the organization’s PR function to build credibility or destroy whatever had accumulated. When the crisis occurs, it’s too late to start planning for it. This is when all the months of prior planning and relationship building pay dividends. When a crisis erupts, you must already know and understand your media. Perhaps more importantly, you must have the confidence of the organization’s “dominant coalition” and be a member of it.
Following are some keys to being prepared:
Regardless of the source of crisis be it a natural phenomenon, human activity or inactivity, no matter what type it is destructive or not,it goes through several stages. The number of those stages differs, ranging between three and five. But the former are unanimous in that crisis management involves all procedures, initiatives and activities carried out “before”, “during” and “after” the crisis event.A key word in crisis management is “prevention” and concentration of primary intellectual, moral, social and technological efforts during the period before the crisis. The main goal is to prevent the effects which are negative for people.The skill of managing crisis focuses simultaneously on their prevention and the possibilities for their management once they have become a reality.
