Is your farm or company ready to handle a crisis? Unfortunately, in today’s world the possibility of having to deal with one has become very high. During the 2013 Alltech International Symposium attendees could get some hands on training during a session on Crisis Management.
I worked with one of the session presenters, David Wescott, VP, APCO Worldwide. He created a crisis simulation in which a fictional company was used and a volunteer found to be the CEO of the company. David outlined a situation in which the fictional company was purported to have caused nursing home deaths from a company food product and information spread virally via Twitter. During a break I approached our fictional CEO as a news reporter with a video camera putting him on the spot to answer, “What do have to say to the public about your company product causing these deaths.” Of course, nothing had been proven and the Twitter messages were all false or completely speculative. It was fun, at least for me. Then after the break the video was played to critique how the fake CEO handled my questioning. I’d post the video but I don’t think we need to have a fake online crisis. We have enough of those as it is.
I visited with David after the first of the two sessions held during Symposium. You will hear that there is a need to have a crisis management plan so that you and your company know what to do if something should happen.
Listen to my interview with David here: Interview with David Wescott