LETTER | M'sia fast losing its crisis communication, management capabilities

LETTER | The spiralling Covid-19 situation is fast revealing our national failing grades in crisis communication and crisis management.

The fact is there was a time in past decades where we handled many crises with flying colors. This earned organisations - in public and private sector domains many accolades.

For the government, it earned the public and stakeholders’ trust.

But today, you can easily tabulate the numerous failures and pathetic crisis communication and management encounters in the country.

The latest tell-all episode is the LRT tragedy. Believe me, even sacking an employee or the captain is not going to automatically improve our understanding and mastery of these skills and competencies.

Having trained thousands of executives from big and small corporations and the public sector in past decades, I can state that indeed the country’s declining capabilities in handling crises is owing to the following factors.

Communication skills are second fiddle in many organisations. Staff appointed or tasked with this department’s function are often lacking in essential prerequisites.

Many organisations pay only lip service to the rigours of critical preparedness for crisis management. Often it is drowned by marketing and event management priorities.

Executives who acquired functional knowledge, skills and capability in the art and science aspects of crisis communication and its management are crippled by organisational politics and bureaucracy.

Leaders or captains of industry do not see the vital need to be trained in public speaking and the intricacies of holding an effective and efficacious press conference in the thick of a crisis.

In fact, many of the press statements given out ring so hollow that it needs no trained eye to detect the dereliction of duty to public accountability.

The worst of the lot are politicians and political appointees. They all think the gift of the gap buttressed by the power of their office will do the job.

Many organisations do not even have policy manuals on crisis communication and crisis management.

In some organisations these manuals are mere decorations.

Organisations do not see crisis preparedness as an investment but as a cost. Some even think it is a waste of time.

And there are those who think they are well prepared without even testing systems regularly. In fact, there are those who also believe that crisis drills are an interference to business gains.

Which in summary probably explains much of the national deficit too.

A crisis offers immense opportunities to rise from a tragedy and earn a reputation that will go a long way with stakeholders.

Unfortunately, time and time again this opportunity is seen to be squandered away.

Just take our national response to the Covid-19 pandemic and you can see the compromises we have made in all of the crisis communication and crisis management efforts all the way.

We only continue to witness helplessly this our battle against Covid-19.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.