Speech is silver, silence is golden. According to this proverb, saying nothing is more valuable than saying something, even if the something itself has value. As a crisis management expert, I believe those are backward, and I’d add one more phrase to the proverb: rapid response is platinum.
Speed is the key differentiator between good and great crisis response. You want your side of the story included in the first versions of any news stories about the situation. These likely will be the most posted, shared, quoted, and referred to versions of the story for days and weeks to come. Here, silence is more like lead than gold.
However, in the early stages of a crisis, you may not have very much to say. Information can be scarce, and the situation may be changing quickly and dramatically. There is a natural tendency to want to know all the facts before issuing a statement, but you don’t have the time to gather them.
Enter the holding statement.
A holding statement is a pre-prepared tool that enables you to respond rapidly to media inquiries without needing to overcome the information gaps that will otherwise slow you down. The key word here is pre-prepared. Yes, before it happens. Aside from inserting some specific details (date, location, etc.), you have already crafted it, gotten it through the necessary approval process(es) and have it ready to go before the crisis happens.
Why is this so important? It makes you fast. You can reply immediately to media requests as those early stories are being written. This is true even when you have no specific or new information to convey. Why? Because there are always things you can say even when you have nothing to say.
There are three essential elements that need to be included in any holding statement:
- Acknowledgement. You must state that you are aware of the situation. Confirm that it happened. Include the time, date, and location of the incident if that information is relevant. If you cannot confirm that something happened, state that you are aware it might have happened and you are seeking confirmation.
- Empathy. This is critical. People will be experiencing loss or interruption because of the situation, regardless of what it is, so own it. You care about your employees, your customers, and your community, right? Say it and then show it. You may be providing resources or contact information for affected people, so communicate those. If you ought to apologize, then apologize. (Note to legal counsel: an apology does not equate to admitting legal responsibility – it’s just a decent, human thing to do.)
- Commitment. People expect you to be taking action. You are, right? Then broadly explain the steps you are taking. Commit to making it right, if appropriate.
The content of a holding statement should convey that you are taking the situation seriously, you care about those who were affected, and you are acting responsibly.
Other elements may be desirable, such as indicating a workaround or immediate remedy for those affected, where people can go for updates, a point of contact for the media, appreciation for first responders, or acknowledgment that law enforcement is on the scene. These will depend on the situation and the kind of business or organization you are.
Here’s an example of a holding statement for a fictional streaming company that’s experienced an outage to its services.
“We are aware of the outage that is affecting streaming of our on-demand music services via the Our Music Rocks app, [acknowledge] and we apologize to our North American fans who are unable to rock out to their favorite music channels at this time. [apology, empathy]. We are working hard to restore our service and won’t stop until all our music channels are back online for our fans’ enjoyment. [commitment]
In the meantime, fans can access their favorite music on our website for free until we restore our streaming channels. [remedy] We will provide updates on our website and on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok at @ourhandle. [where to go for updates] Please direct any media inquiries to our communications team at 1-800-555-1234.” [information for the media]
Aside from who is being affected (“our North American fans”), everything else in this holding statement can be planned for, written, and pre-approved for use.
Holding statements should be prepared for all of the risks that are either likely to occur at some point (outages, accidents, data breach, weather problems, etc.) or are fairly unlikely but would have a high impact on the company (active shooter, natural disaster, protest, etc.). A company should already know what risks they face, and most should have plans to handle them operationally. If your company has a plan to deal with a particular situation, you should have a holding statement for it.
To be truly useful, any holding statement has to be issued as quickly as possible. You can fill in the blanks of a holding statement template very quickly only to then have its issuance slowed down because of a sluggish approvals process. Thus, holding statements not only need to be pre-prepared but also pre-approved for use.
Pre-approval can be hard to accomplish if executives would be reluctant to approve things in advance or Legal might be squeamish about signing off on fill-in-the-blank templates.
There are a couple of ways of overcoming this that I have found to be effective. First, educate senior leadership and legal counsel about the purpose of holding statements and their intended use. Show them a recent news story where it’s clear that a holding statement was issued by another company. Then show what that story would look like if it said instead, “The company did not return calls for comment” or, worse, “The company declined to comment.”
Second, go through a “what if” exercise with the leadership team and legal counsel in which they are tasked with drafting an initial response statement. Keep track of how long it takes, then show them one you’ve pre-prepared. I’ll bet it looks a lot like the one they just spent an hour writing. You may very well hear them say, “We should have these” for other situations. Now go create holding statements.
Crises happen quickly, but now, instead of a blank sheet of paper, you’ll have a template that you can quickly populate with critical information. Instead of routing it through a potentially lumbering approval process, you’ll have a statement that’s already been approved so you can get it out the door very quickly.
Rapid response is platinum. Pre-approved holding statements make rapid response a whole lot easier, enabling everyone to focus on recovery as quickly as possible.
PS – Click here for an easy-to-use template for drafting your own holding statements
Kith facilitates crisis preparedness workshops that will help your company attain the clarity, trust and speed you need to respond confidently – no dithering! – to any crisis. We’d be happy to have a conversation about how we can help your company be ready to chart an effective course to reputation protection.
