Argggh! It's a crisis! Don't panic.

I went on a crisis communications course the other week. It was in London and, amusingly, I was late due to the fact there was a security alert on the train I was travelling on. For a minute I thought it might have been part of the course - in which case I was very impressed with the 70 odd actors and stunt train that must have taken ages to set up. Yelling "I know you are all actors, you can stop pretending" was a possibilty, but I held off just in case it was just coincidence.

Anyway, the course itself was where you are given a crisis situation and you have to work out how you would communicate it. The case study was of an explosion outside our offices in Leeds. Of course, an explosion in some parts of Leeds could be very significant - causing millions of pounds worth of improvements.

They kept adding in more detail and heresay and gossip in the form of emails and phonecalls and we had to keep our head. In the end it turned out the whole thing was done by terrorists who worked for our company. My idea that it might have ended with the villain being the helicopter flying, parachute trained priest who then becomes Pope was clearly not the right outcome. It is the main thrust of Dan Brown's Demons and Angels though - and that's all you need to know about that film.

Of course 'crisis' means a lot of things to a lot of people. On the train on the way back I thought up some other possible crissisis, crisees, crisi..oh, you get it, and the main ones I came up with were running out of toilet paper, bacon fries being banned and Myleene Klass turning out to be immortal.

What I did also remember was a crisis communications exercise that formed part of a job interview I had. I was given a situation where I was told 'ok, the company pay roll hasn't run - what do you do' and had to justify my decisions. The only thing was that they kept making it more difficult, to the point where it just got silly. Sample conversation from that interview

Them - OK, so you've done your intranet story, but you need to let HR know.
Me - Right, I've sent a mail to them and all the relevant people
Them - Ah, but email has just gone done and you don't know if they've got it
Me - OK, I'll ring them on the phone
Them - They aren't answering
Me - I'll walk round and see them
Them - They're not in
Me - I'll talk to people who work with them and find out where they are
Them - The person you need to speak to is dead

It was at that point I actually burst out laughing, which is never good in an interview. It was also the point at which I realised I didn't want to work for a company who had recruiters who asked such stupid questions. Fortunate I didn't work for them in the end, their offices were destroyed the following week when Mecha-Godzilla trashed it due to not getting paid.

In closing I can say this. In a crisis, get a megaphone. Get your mate to then drive you around the roads you live yelling 'DON'T PANIC' at loud volume. You'll get noticed just like we did, but mainly by the police...