Crisis Management Advice for Legal Leaders

Watch this short video where Tim shares his perspective on crisis management. He highlights the importance of understanding what you can control and breaking things down into small manageable pieces.

Transcript

Question: Do you have any advice on crisis management from the perspective of a legal leader?

Answer: You have to understand what you can control and you have to start breaking things down into small manageable pieces. Right? It's a little bit of a psychological exercise for you.

It's kind of like someone who's never run long distances before or in many, many years, you don't necessarily just get up and say, I'm gonna run a marathon and then go twenty six miles. Like, the first step is getting up off the couch.

You know, maybe the next step is putting on running gear. And the next step is going outside. And the next step is running down the street. And you break things up into manageable pieces.

I think in a crisis, you're hit with a lot of things all at once, and it looks like a mountain or it looks like a marathon. So you have to start thinking, alright, what can and must I do immediately?

What are the most urgent things that I actually control? You think about a crisis scenario where you do have a lot of media interest. And, obviously, your executives are going to be heavily focused on what's happening in the media.

But you need to understand that there are a couple of responsibilities that you have. Number one, is making sure that the communication that you put out there is not go be something that's harmful to you at a later point in time. And two, no one likes the story, and no one's gonna publish the story that's, hey, we were wrong when we when we broadcasted this earlier. And, actually, that person that we said was a villain as a great human being or a great actor, otherwise.

It takes a long time to to change a public narrative. So while that creates a sense of urgency, it's really important for you as a legal leader to understand what you can and should control immediately.

It's also important to know when and how to rely on your own team, your existing in-house team, and when to start bringing in outsiders to help you manage the situation. If you find yourself in a crisis situation, you're going to find yourself with thousands of friends who are here to help you, meaning here to charge you a whole lot of money because they know you don't have any idea what you're doing. So you've got to really figure out, okay, if I'm gonna hire these people, what do I expect them to do?

You've got to understand a lot about what outside consultants can actually bring to the table and why you may or may not want to use them. So, break things down into digestible steps, no when to ask for help and recognize that particularly in high profile types of types of situations, changing the public narrative is going to have to happen over time.

You're not just going to be able to get out there and prove that you're right. And then the whole world says, oh, wow. You were right. It's so rare that that happens.

That's that's how we think about it.

Awesome. Thank you for listening to Tim's Take. You can send your questions to cockpitcounsel@linksquares.com