So what is a crisis and what involves crisis communications? A crisis in the classical sense is when something happens to you or your organization that could fundamentally threaten its existence. And fundamentally threaten your public perception with key stakeholders, the public, regulators, other people who care about you and where you care about them. So for example, if you're an oil company or a natural gas company, and you have an explosion or a leak of a oil, an oil tanker, that's a classic example of a crisis. But it doesn't have to be that you could be a one person consulting firm, and all of a sudden their obligations that you have misused funds for a client, that can be a crisis for your organization. A crisis involves something bad that's happened, or people are going to be scrutinizing you and it could forever change their public opinion of you.
You If you have some sort of fire explosion at your factory, and all of a sudden, all the reporters are there and you're refusing comment, you're saying No comment. That's a huge, huge problem. If you're a political figure, and you're indicted, and all of a sudden, all the cameras are on you, and you're not responding, you're saying No comment. You've already flunked your crisis communications, you're sending a signal to people that you are guilty. Therefore, you're dishonest. Therefore, you are not someone they should ever put their trust in.
A crisis can happen to any organization at any time. And these days with everyone running their own blog, YouTube channels, trade publications, websites that follow your industry, you cannot escape media scrutiny. Maybe it's not NBC or CNN coming to interview you but the people who follow your industry and care about what you do in this Well, they will be asking questions, you have to be ready for that. Now I crisis communications situation is not just if you missed quarterly estimates by 1%. And all of a sudden some people are upset. It's not a run of the mill news story.
It's not a run of the mill event. It is a big event that could fundamentally change people's perceptions of you. Because so many organizations depend on the goodwill of the public, their customers, their clients, regulators, zoning officials, if all of a sudden, everybody doesn't like you, if they feel you're untrustworthy, unreliable, they can make mystery for you. They can change your tax structure, they can change your zoning, they can simply not patronize your business. That's why when you're dealing with a crisis, it's completely different than a run of the mill media opportunity. If you're holding a ribbon Cutting for a brand new factory or a brand new office building, and you're not perfect or you make one sort of message, answer off a little bit doesn't really matter.
It's not going to be the end of the world. But if it's a crisis in the whole world is looking at you, and they see some disaster, perhaps an oil spill, and you say, well, it's not that big a deal, or I want my life back, or something that really strikes people as Cavalier as perhaps unsympathetic, mean or unresponsive, that could destroy your reputation. It could destroy your career, you could be fired, you could lose your business. If you're a publicly traded company, you could lose billions of dollars in market capitalization. So that's why it's so critically important that you plan for a crisis how you're going to respond to a crisis for now. No one knows the future.
No one could look into a crystal ball. tell you exactly when certain workers are going to be injured next year. We hope that doesn't happen. But what we do know is if you're an organization that's really doing its job, you need to prepare for a crisis you need to prepare for how you're going to communicate to the world. That's what this course is about. And I'm going to give you more and more very specific steps on how you need to prepare for crisis and why you need to prepare because the stakes are high.