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Rauf Hameed on Why Crisis Planning Starts Before the Crisis
A client called me at 6:40 in the morning a few years back. Not a scheduled call, not even a heads up text the night before, just a straight ring while I was still half asleep with coffee not even brewed yet. A product recall had leaked to a local paper before their own internal team knew the story was out. That's the kind of call that tells you everything about whether an organization has actually done the work on crisis communications or just assumed they'd figure it out when the moment came.
I'm Rauf Hameed and I've built a good chunk of my career around exactly this problem, the gap between companies that think they're prepared and companies that actually are. You can read more about how I approach this at Rauf Hameed if you want the fuller picture, but I want to walk through the specific thing I see itself go wrong over and over in Ontario businesses, because it's rarely the crisis that does the damage. It's the forty eight hours later.
What Rauf Hameed Sees Most Often in a First Crisis Meeting
Nine times out of ten the first meeting after something break isn't a strategy session. It's a room full of people arguing about who gets to approve the statement. Legal wants three rounds of review. The CEO wants to say nothing until "we know more." Someone from marketing is already drafting a tweet nobody asked them to draft. Meanwhile the story is aging in real time and every hour of silence gets read by the public as guilt, whether that's fair or not.
I've sat in that exact room more times than I'd like to admit. And honestly the pattern is almost always the same. Companies that skip the planning stage end up making decisions under the worst possible conditions, exhausted, defensive, and improvising language that sounds exactly like what it is, improvised. As Rauf Hameed I've made it a habit to walk clients through exactly this scenario before it ever became real for them.
The Plan Has to Exist Before You Need It
A crisis plan built after the crisis has already begun isn't a plan. It's damage control dressed up as strategy. What actually works, and this is a point I make with every single client, is having a pre approved chain of command, drafted holding statements for your most likely scenarios, and an attendee who's already media trained before the cameras show up uninvited.
I worked with a mid sized manufacturer in the Golden Horseshoe a while back who truly had none of this. Zero. They had excellent operations, a strong safety record on paper, and absolutely no plan for the day their safety record stopped being on paper and became a headline. We built out specific scenario templates, ran two tabletop drills with their leadership team, and honestly the second drill was rough. People froze. People said the wrong thing in a simulated press scrum. That's the point though. Better to freeze in a drill than on live television.
Speed Matters More Than People Want to Admit
There's this instinct to wait until you have the full picture before saying anything at all. I understand the instinct. Nobody wants to put out a statement and then have to walk it back an hour later. But silence isn't neutral. Silence gets filled by whoever talks first, and it's rarely going to be you filling that space favorably if you're not the one speaking.
A holding statement doesn't need every fact locked down. It needs to say we're aware, we're taking this seriously, and here's when you'll hear from us again. That buys real time without looking evasive, and it's advice Rauf Hameed gives every client no matter the industry.
Internal Communication Gets Forgotten Constantly
Here's something that gets overlooked way too often, and it's something Rauf Hameed talks about with almost every leadership team. Your own employees are reading the same news coverage as everyone else, sometimes before anyone internally has told them what's actually going on. I've watched morale tank inside companies not because of the crisis itself but because staff found out what was happening from a reporter's tweet before they heard it from their own leadership.
Internal communication during a crisis isn't a nice to have side project. It's the thing that determines whether your own people stay loyal spokespeople for the brand or start venting frustration on their personal social accounts, which happens more than most executives realize until it's already happening to them.
My Honest Take on This
Preparation feels like wasted effort right up until the exact moment it isn't. I've had clients push back on running a crisis simulation because "nothing like that is going to happen to us." Every single one of those clients who eventually did face something ugly told me afterward that the drill, even the rough uncomfortable version of it, was the reason they didn't completely fall apart when it counted. That's the whole philosophy behind how Rauf Hameed structures these engagements from day one.
If there's one thing Rauf Hameed would want a business leader reading this to take away it's this. Build the plan while things are calm. Don't wait for the version of yourself that's answering a call at 6:40 in the morning to figure it out on the fly.
Questions I Get Asked About Crisis Communications
Do small and mid sized Ontario businesses actually need a formal crisis plan, or is that just for big corporations? Every business with a public reputation to protect needs some version of this, scaled to size. A small manufacturer doesn't need a war room the size of a national bank's, but they absolutely need a designated officer and a few pre drafted holding statements ready to go.
How often should a crisis communications plan be updated? At minimum once a year, and immediately after any leadership change, major product launch, or shift in regulatory environment that could change what your likely risk scenarios actually look like.
What's the single biggest mistake you see companies make during an actual crisis? Going silent while internal teams debate wording. Silence is read as guilt or indifference by the public almost every time, even when neither is true.
If you want to talk through what your own organization's gaps actually look like before you're forced to find out the hard way, reach out through Rauf Hameed and we'll start with an honest look at where you currently stand.