Crisis management

It was Monday morning in the study rooms. The external professor was running late (or so we thought) so we were just sitting in the study rooms doing a few emails, a cup of coffee in the hand, no rush. Then the phone rang! Weird, the phones in the study rooms normally never rings. They are used to call out. It was a journalist from BBC! And he wanted to know what we were going to do about the toxic material we had leaked into the river?!?! Huh, say again! What river? What material?

Then the other phone ring. We looked at each other very confused. It was a teacher from the local high school, who wanted to know whether they could still visit the plant despite the accident we had. School? Plant? Accident? You've definitely got the wrong guy, I am just having my morning coffee while waiting for the class to start. Leave me alone.

The phone rang again. Silence, confusion, more silence. Johan slowly picked up the phone, not knowing what to expect. It was the farmer from up the river who wanted to know whether it still was safe for his cows to drink from the river? Huh??? OK, this was not fun anymore. What was going on? Perhaps we should read the papers that had been left on the table in the room. 'You are the management team of Company XYZ..... accident...... possible leakage......'. We looked at each other in horror. For a couple of seconds the room went dead silent. Then we all jumped to our feet at once, two people went to the white board and started scribbling down the information we had, others started working on press releases and emails to the media, the employees, the customers, etc. Johan was immediately appointed spokesperson, a role we didn't envy him as he time and time again was fed to the hungry beasts (journalists) outside the door.

From there on it was just four hours of fire fighting. We were bombarded with phone calls, emails, sms'es from our boss and DVDs with news coverage from the local media. Protesters were hammering on our door and journalists were barging in at no warning. What a mess! What a Chaos! All extremely well orchestrated by crisis management expert Tom Curtin and his team of very, very real BBC journalists.

In the afternoon we saw the videos that had been made during the hectic morning, so we could hear what we really said. Ouch! We would have been slaughtered by the public if it had been the real thing. It was particularly fascinating to hear from the BBC journalists themselves, what they actually are looking for when they interview. In the afternoon it was wrapped up with a session on 'Brent Spar', very much an example of how not to do it.

Thorsten

There was real Swiss cheese fondue for lunch today....

...which was a big hit, as you can see.