so I wanted to start off by sharing with you an image of a sign that I recently came across online this sign is intended to be displayed in the emergency stairwell of a public building and it reads in case of fire exit building before tweeting about it it's comical I I think that probably to some point this sign was intended to be funny when it was created to some degree but it's quite realistic isn't it I mean it precisely depicts the society in which we live today we live in a world today where people all
of us we seem to have this insatiable need this urge to share everything that we experience as we experience it in real time to the Social Web and the downside of this is that this reality has created some major challenges for organizations and their crisis management for example a couple years ago there was a train derailment it was a passenger train and during the derailment some of the passenger carts toppled over many people were injured and some people even lost their lives in one of the carts that toppled over was a woman who fortunately was
unharmed but when she realized what had just happened her first reaction her first instinct was to grab her phone snap a picture share that picture with commentary to social media and then dial 911 for help her first instinct was to share her experience now let's think of the train company that before they even had the chance to assess the gravity of this crisis possibly before they even had the chance to learn that one of their trains had in fact derailed they were being contacted by the media because this image had now gone viral and people
wanted to know what happened when did it happen where did it happen why did it happen how many people are injured did anybody die This Woman's this one woman's instinct to share her experience resulted in amplifying the challenges that this organization needed to deal with needed to face throughout the crisis social media the realtime news cycle and mobile technology these things have come together and they've transformed the landscape for crisis management they've presented us with some major challenges such as the the speed the heighten speed at which we need to be able to respond and
communicate in real time today or the fact that everything today everything is public or the fact that this realtime news cycle makes it increasingly difficult for you to get ahead of the story before the story is already ahead of you and yet whether we like it or not these are today's crisis realities and and successful crisis management depends on your team's ability to manage these real-time challenges that this digital landscape presents to us in a crisis while simultaneously actually managing the actual crisis in real time successful crisis management today depends on your team's ability to
do this so then how do you arm your team with the skills and the knowledge and the mindset and the tools to successfully manage a crisis in this 21st century the reality is that in order to get ahead of the new cycle in order to position your organization as a voice of trust credibility and leadership in a crisis which ultimately is the goal in order to do that effectively crisis management today needs to in large part be instinctive rather than solely reactionary that just like the the lady in my train enrollment story whose first instinct
was to share her experience you want your team to instinctively know how to identify risk and opportunity you want them to instinctively know how to communicate when to communicate and where to communicate in real time in a crisis so if crisis management today needs to in large part be instinctive then the question becomes how do you cultivate these instincts these instincts are developed by choosing to be proactive every day we want to by being proactive we want to make these crisis realities work for us rather than against us Captain Chris shung from the Mountain View
Police Department in California says it beautifully he says that every single day Mountain View PD works both online and offline to take proactive initiatives to build trust and develop and and instill credibility with their stakeholders and he calls this building a bank of Community Trust and in 2014 Mountain View PD experienced a very serious internal crisis that was made public this crisis could have very well destroyed the reputation and The credibility of this organization of this Police Department as an authoritative figure within their community and Captain Chris Shan says that because of the proactive initiatives
his team had taken every day to instill this trust and and instill this credibility that when the crisis struck they absolutely needed to make a withdrawal out of this bank but there was still enough trust left over that because they had taken these proactive initiatives every day their stakeholders their Community knew in their hearts that this crisis was not a direct reflection on the police department as a whole and because they had taken these proactive initiatives every day their team knew instinctively how to communicate and where to communicate in real time throughout the crisis they
knew knew what their stakeholders expected of them and they knew where to go to make sure that their Communications were real time and were appropriate and as a result of all of this this crisis did not directly impact the reputation of this police department at all contrarily we could look at an organization like Anthem Anthem this Mega huge organization recently went through a very serious data breach at the start of this year that resulted in 80 million of their stakeholders confidential and private information being hacked and like we've already talked about today through different sessions
and like we've come to learn collectively this digital landscape this digital era presents a new risk these these data breaches and these uh it risks to every single organization this is a predictable risk and yet when Anthem was hacked it also came out that Anthem hadn't taken any precautionary measures leading up to to the crisis to do whatever was in their power to minimize this risk they weren't even doing things like encrypting their data and because this was a a preventable not a preventable a predictable risk this fact this inaction was seen as unacceptable by
their stakeholders not to mention because as a result of this hack 80 million of their stakeholders confidential information is now being sold on the black market and these people may just have to deal with the risk of identity theft for the rest of their lives so this inaction on anthem's part was seen as extremely unacceptable but now let's pretend that Anthem had adapted this type of proactive mindset into the very culture of their organization and thus into the very Foundation the fundamentals of their crisis management strategy they would have empowered their team to foresee a
risk like this and they would have taken proactive measures to minimize the risk to the best of to their capability and by adapting this type of proactive thinking and empowering their team to seek out opportunities they also may have said hey how can we take this initiative and use it as a as an opportunity to connect with our stakeholders they could have for example uh sent out a direct communication to each of their stakeholders saying something along the lines of we realize that in this digital era a data breach hack is a risk that is
unfortunately Ely leaves every single organization vulnerable but we also realize that you trust us with your information and we want you to know that we take your trust extremely seriously and that's why we've chosen to do X Y and Z to do our utmost to keep your confidential information as safe and secure as we possibly can now I'm not saying that had they done this that the hack wouldn't have happened but had they done this and the hack still happened to happen imagine imagine the reaction the benefit of the doubt that their stakeholders would have
given them they would have recalled this communication they would have said you know Anthem told us that this was a risk they also told us what they were doing to minimize this risk and yeah it sucks that it happened but you know what we trust Anthem and we trust that they're going to take the right steps moving forward that power of the benefit of the doubt is something as you know that is invaluable in a crisis and it's by adapting this type of proactive mind set into the very culture of your organization and into the
very fundamentals of your crisis management strategy that is how you're going to cultivate these instincts give your team experiences Empower your team to take initiatives and to seek out opportunities and that is the secret to successful crisis Management in the 21st century and the good news is that this digital landscape although it presents us with so many obstacles and so many challenges in our crisis management today it also provides you with unprecedented opportunity we've seen a little bit about this throughout the talks today but if we just want to take mobile technology as an example
there are an estimated 7 billion people on this planet and a recent un study revealed that six out of the seven billion people on this planet have access to mobile devices six out of the seven billion people on this planet have access to mobile devices that's more people with mobile phones than have working toilets mobile devices the very tools the very technology that is currently in each and every one of your pockets right now is also in the pockets of each and every one of your stakeholders right now what kind of opportunity does that provide
to your crisis management to your Crisis Prevention to Communications if you start adapting this type of proactive and Innovative mindset there's some some really really great organizations out there that are actually leveraging the power of mobile technology in this digital landscape as their crisis preparedness and crisis management strategies are into them for example the National Weather Service we heard about them earlier but the national weather service has leveraged the power of mobile technology for their hazardous emergency alert warnings so say there's a region that's under tornado watch with the National Weather Service does is they
send out a text message an SMS to the cell towers in that region and those cell towers then geot Target every single mobile device within the vicinity so it doesn't matter if people are at home doesn't matter if they're in their cars doesn't matter if they're driving in to that region the second they're in that zone They cell phones ping to alert them that their the region is under tornado watch and to seek shelter and this proactive initiative so far has saved countless lives by giving people up to a 15minute head start start to she
seek shelter and it's not just government agencies BBC the BBC the world news organization at the end or the second half of last year 2014 BBC decided that they had enough of the Ebola crisis they decided that they wanted to help manage the world crisis of Ebola so what did they do they first armed themselves with the problem why did Ebola spread so quickly throughout West Africa last year a big part of the reason is that West Africans don't have access to the tools to the to the resources to the education that we're very privileged
to have access to in the western world and as a result West Africans were making themselves increasingly exposed to the virus without even realizing it this was a major major problem this was a major reason as to why Ebola spread so quickly throughout West Africa last year so armed with the problem BBC said okay so if education is the solution how could can we educate West Africans but how can we make sure to reach them directly how can we know that our initiatives are actually going to reach them are actually going to work they thought
about developing a mobile app but a mobile app takes time and resources to develop and to launch so they kind of exed that thought out and they said you know what let's turn our attention to see what West Africans use what do they use what do they use in their daily lives it turns out that West Africans as a community as a culture love this one app it's called WhatsApp for those of you who aren't familiar WhatsApp is a text messaging app that is freely downloadable to any smart mobile device and West Africans use this
app every single day to communicate with their loved ones throughout the day so BBC said you know what let's leverage that and they launched what they called the WhatsApp Ebola service this service was marketed to West Africans and it allowed them to opt in to receive up to three pieces of Ed educational information every single day on Ebola they received this information directly in their pockets firstly and directly on an app on a tool that they were already using in their daily lives and it worked West Africans began to subscribe to this service in the
masses and within just a couple of weeks BBC was being contacted by organizations from around the world from humanitarian organizations to government entities to their Media Partners from around the world all these organizations were coming to BBC and saying oh my goodness this is working this initiative is helping us manage the crisis of Ebola how can we help you how can we collaborate with you to push this initiative even further by adapting this type of proactive and Innovative mindset into the very thinking into the very strategy into the very culture of their organization BBC didn't
just succeed at helping to manage a world crisis but a world news organization managed to position their organization as a voice of trust credibility and leadership in a world crisis the advantages available to you that you know somebody said it earlier it's not about money it's not about money it's not about money you have tools in your pocket right now that provide you with unprecedented Communications and Emergency Management and crisis management opportunities and they are a ailable to you right now for free sitting in your pockets waiting for you to leverage them but in order
to do that we have to develop this way of thinking we have to encourage every single member of your team to proactively look for risk to identify risk and to proactively minimize it to look for opportunities to connect and build trust and credibility with your stakeholders so that you can fall back on that and use that to your advantage in a crisis and the good news is that this digital landscape with all of its challenges presents you with unprecedented opportunity to do that so I know that I'm the last speaker today and I'd like to
leave you with a last thought that goes for my talk but it goes for everything that we've heard already today throughout the day what's the one thing you could proactively do right now to minimize a current risk and remember that this doesn't have to be an overwhelming task or you know a restructure of your entire internal corporate culture being proactive simply means to choose to take one step in the right direction every day so what's one one risk that is currently lingering that you can proactively minimize right now and in doing so how can you
leverage that initiative as an opportunity to connect to build trust and instill credibility with your stakeholders and when you're thinking that through take the time I challenge you take the time to go and to identify where your stakeholders are where are they online and offline what technology what tools do they use in their daily lives where how do they prefer to consume their media because answering this question getting this information made just provide you with a unique opportunity to position your organization as a voice of trust credibility and Leadership and a unique opportunity for your
crisis preparedness and your crisis management thank [Applause] you
