E 69: Crisis vs Issue with Melissa Agnes

On this episode of The Massimo Show, Rod sits down with Melissa Agnes - Founder and CEO of the Crisis Ready Institute, Melissa Agnes is a recognized leading authority on crisis preparedness, reputation management, and brand protection. Agnes is the creator of the Crisis Ready® Model and author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World. She is a coveted speaker, commentator, and advisor to some of today's leading organizations faced with the greatest risks. 

 

Getting Out of the House and Becoming an Adult

Melissa grew up in Montreal, traveled the world when she grew up, but lived in Montreal her whole life until she moved to New York for work. Melissa describes her passions in high school as “ just trying to figure myself out. And I was very passionate about getting out of the house and becoming an adult and leading my own life.” Something I am sure we can all relate to! 

With ambition on her side, Melissa soon found herself working as a brand strategist and entrepreneur with a keen eye for what was coming down the pipeline when it comes to the change that technology was bringing to the world, and what that meant for businesses and potential risk. 

“So I saw the risk that social media, the real-time news cycle, and the fact that every single consumer had a voice and could raise that voice against brands. I saw the risk. I didn't understand why people, nobody was talking about it at the time.” Melissa explains to Rod. 

“And I also saw how if we confront the risk, if we mitigate the risk, all of a sudden, we have this unprecedented opportunity for connection and communication in times of crisis that can do wonders for the organization and its business, its brand value element.” 

In Melissa’s mind, this was revolutionary - and she was right! - but she wasn’t one to jump into something without doing her research. “I started by doing so much homework. Once I kind of had that epiphany, I realized that crisis management was a thing…” Melissa explains. 

“And when I realized this, I spent about a year studying everything that I could on the subject, because it just kind of fed the wiring of how I made it really, really resonated with me.” 

Melissa continued to get frustrated with the fact that nobody was talking about the way the world is today, not the way that the world was yesterday but her opportunity to prove herself was just around the corner. 

“All of a sudden, we had a client, we just launched their website, they became in crisis. They called us because it started on Twitter, and they related Twitter with a website because it was digital and just happened to pick up the phone and call me.” Melissa says. 

Within a half an hour Melissa and her team had the clients' investors getting the right information, the media correcting their story, essentially, everything flowing the way that it needed to, even though - - and here’s the real kicker - they needed to basically rewire the communication strategy because the investors and their stakeholders weren't even online yet. 

 A miscommunication that happened online and had the potential to spread like wildfire had been stamped out before any outlet that would reach key decision-makers ever had a chance to be misinformed. 

The president of the company called Melissa the next day and said that not only did the stock price of the company not go down from the day before, but it had actually gone up by a cent.

That was a direct result of how Melissa and her team managed the incident. “That was my, oh my goodness, I can serve. This is what I'm supposed to do.” Melissa tells Rod. 

What does one do when they are young and inexperienced but full of ideas and frustration? They start a blog, of course! “I blogged five days a week for several years, it turned into a blog and podcasts and videos and collaborations and amazing clients and a great career,” Melissa explains. 

After years of blogging and practicing crisis management for business, Melissa launched the Crisis Ready Institute to help leaders and their teams develop the skills, capabilities, and confidence to successfully navigate and thrive through challenge and adversity. Melissa describes a crisis as “anything that touches bottom line and reputation” and explains that her passion is communication and understanding emotion. This unique and empathic perspective guides her work in every way. 

 

An Issue vs A Crisis 

When it comes to being an independent contractor, solopreneurs, or small business owner, it may seem like you are always in crisis. But Melissa suggests that an issue is not a crisis. 

Melissa suggests understanding and defining for your organization what an issue is versus what a crisis is. And then defining the criteria or the thresholds that take an incident from issue level to crisis level. 

By having those definitions and those understandings and doing a simple exercise, where you can identify your high-risk scenarios - issue versus crisis - and those thresholds, you’ve already alleviated a lot of stress that comes with identifying an issue and its scope. 

The second step is to better understand or to seek to better understand your stakeholder groups. Because successful business is built on relationships, Crisis Management is about doing right by those relationships when it matters most. It is important to understand who you serve, how you serve them, and what the relationship is, in your business and in your brand.  Consider what their expectations are of you and how a certain specific situation relates to them, and how it impacts them. 

What are the questions that they'll have, that if you answer those questions before they come to you with those questions, you can get ahead of the story and own the narrative, and continue to build and foster trust even amidst adversity? 

Rod and Melissa spend the rest of the show swapping stories and examples of crisis vs issue, setting up a framework to define a crisis, and how to communicate the difference between a crisis and an issue to your clients and stakeholders. Listen in to hear the rest of this amazing and timely advice!