The crisis email cometh.
(Note - I dictate into ChatGPT because I hate typing. This may be reflected in the formatting but every word and thought is my own.)
A very 2026 hypothetical...
A lot of people in communications, particularly crisis communications, make a lot of money and spend a lot of client energy preparing for problems they’ll never have but I’ve got one problem that every single comms team of every single organisation - no matter how immune you think you are - needs to prepare for.
I call it: the email.
The email comes from an organisation you don’t deal with. You’ve never heard of them. You might wonder why such an organisation would even be contacting you. Is it SPAM? You double click and find that the correspondence is well-written, long, detailed, the tone is urgent, names are dropped.
Full titles will be used and there's a lots of traditional formatting. Many people are CC'd in and they are demanding a response. (The authors are really, really good at this stuff.)
The email states that if you do not address their grievance your funding will be cut / jobs will be lost / media will be called / compliant politicians engaged / all manner of hell will rain down upon you. Heck - prepare to be royally commissioned!
Your stomach is right to fall.
What’s the thrust of this email?
It varies along certain themes but the core concern is that your organisation has caused great offence. (Not really DONE something - just caused offence.)
Someone associated with you has said, done or inferred something they don’t like. Perhaps this someone works for you, volunteers for you or serves on your board. Maybe it's a donor or someone with whom you are loosely affiliated.
Whoever it is, they once said or did something the writer finds distasteful, discriminatory and utterly unacceptable. Maybe they liked a social media post, attended a rally or stuck up a poster.
Did you accept a donation from that person? Did you offer them an internship? Did you like their LinkedIn post from 2018? Did you allow them to speak? Did you not allow them to speak? Did you employ them? Did you not employ them? Did they not express the right point of view on a political issue?
Maybe you mentioned one community group in your speech. Or did not. Maybe you mentioned one group but not another.
So how is this crisis different?
It's all about feelings and sensibilities. Facts and don't really matter.
Freedom of expression is jettisoned. Those that once championed such concepts (media, politicians) have sided with the offended.
Things get personal quickly - individuals are targetted and threatened.
Complainants are highly organised with built-in support and can escalate matters quickly.
No solution will be enough - jobs must be lost, careers must be derailed, corporate reputations tarnished and punishing grievance processes entered into.
Acknowledgements or explanations are not enough - the aim is to drag you through as much pain as possible.
There is a hidden agenda - to silence any future offence from other players.
The fact that most offence is deeply subjective is irrrelevant to the writer.
What makes this so tricky from a comms perspective?
A lot of crisis management works on the assumption that you’ve done something wrong — that there is something to correct, redress, admit and apologise for.
However in this example you might be entirely innocent or feel that what occurred was entirely out of your control or open to interpretation but that matters not.
Someone (may have) overheard what your opp shop volunteer said.
There's a problematic (100 year old) statue in your park
You celebrated (or didn't) that religious festival.
One of your part-time staff liked the 'wrong' post.
No matter how strong your reputation or how clearly understood you believe yourself to be, there is a large and growing part of the community ready to define you as the bad guy and it won’t feel good.
That being offended is part of life in a democracy is not important to the writer.
The temptation, of course — as we’ve seen from our elites in academia, law, entertainment and business — is to enter a kabuki-theatre level of self-flagellation. The bland statement. The sacrifice of the 'offender'. The back downs. The rambling apology. The promise of review.
If you are innocent, this sort of response is pathetic - the opposite of leadership.
You might believe that if you move fast enough, apologise loudly enough and demonstrate sufficient remorse, the pressure will subside. Sometimes it does but often it doesn’t.
Welcome to this era, where anything you say or don’t say, think or don’t think, feel or don’t feel, can be used against you by people who are more motivated and better connected than you.
So how might we play such a scenario?
Take your time.
Do not accept the claims at face value.
Get your most senior people together and declare a crisis.
Investigate the claim.
Stand up for yourself and your people. They do not deserve to be sold down the river.
Prioritise your reputation with your stakeholders, not the general public or complainant.
Expect that people in power will drop you like a hot potato for fear of offending the complainant.
Prepare for ill-informed media coverage.
Have your media spokespeople briefed, coached and ready.
Good luck out there.