2020 – a new year, a new beginning. (Can’t believe how fast time is flying by) 20/20 is also perfect vision.

What’s your vision for 2020? Maybe it’s to expand your business, boost your industry profile, implement better employee engagement practices, find better work/life balance, enjoy the ride.

For your vision to succeed, you need be prepared for bumps along the way, especially ones that can damage your reputation and business before you blink. The bumps don’t have to be large crises like Boeing or Harvey Weinstein are currently facing. Sometimes small issues can be damaging, especially if they are not addressed in an immediate manner.

For example, a client recently faced unforeseen but problematic service outages, which spurred customers to become vocal on social media about their inconveniences. Although the outage only lasted a few hours, it served as a dam breaker and impetus for the online conversation to expand to discuss the company’s perceived continual poor customer service. Another client had an internal human resources situation become public, causing key constituents, stakeholders, employees, and prospective job candidates to reevaluate the company’s stability and viability. Certainly every client and business, and their customers and employees, face threats of data breaches and/or being negatively impacted by data and identity breaches at larger entities, such as Equifax or Twitter.

Every situation calls for a quick, decisive, and proactive response. Facts need to be disseminated. Clients, customers, members, employees, stakeholders, and key influencers need to be reached, engaged, and reassured. Media needs to be provided with current and correct information. Constituents on social media need to be calmed and their misinformation minimized. Delays of even just a few hours could cause deep harm to businesses and reputations.

Thankfully, I made sure our clients were prepared well in advance. We had solid, approved, and ready-to-go crisis communications plans to pull out and implement when situations hit. Full-scale crises avoided; small bumps remained small.

As you look forward in 2020, you need to develop a crisis communications plan for your company. The plan should seek to contain and minimize the damage and control the message before someone else (or the crisis itself) controls it. It should include these basics:

• It must identify all the possible scenarios that can impact your business negatively and have a plan(s) to address them. This plan needs to include not only the action steps but all the communications tools that might be needed, all pre-written and approved. Emails, website pages, social media posts, press releases, and more.

• It needs a leader. Someone who will lead the communications plan, but also decide when to pull the trigger.

• It must identify who will serve as spokesperson. It’s imperative to identify the one — and only one — person for this role. This designated person must be accessible 24/7 for the duration of the situation.

• The plan must articulate how to reach all impacted constituents with the right message and action plan. It must do so no matter what the obstacles are, such as interruptions in power, technology or unavailable executives. Specifics will vary depending upon industry and crisis faced.

Even if you have a plan, the execution of the plan and timing are critical. You need to know when the pull the trigger. Don’t jump the gun if there is no problem, but don’t delay either if there is one. Proper timing will help ensure you do not create another problem by botching the handling of the first. Then, follow through.

Like other business plans, your crisis communications plan must be updated regularly. People change jobs, technology changes, stakeholders vary, and all must be addressed in the plan. In addition, as new programs and products are rolled out, make sure you anticipate new situations. Always play the “what if” game. What if something goes wrong? What would we say? How would we disseminate the information? What’s our back-up plan?

With the right crisis communications plan in place, your 20/20 vision for 2020 can be the rosy one you are envisioning today.

(And, if you need help thinking about and/or developing this plan, we’re happy to help you!)