When a large non-profit health corporation in Alaska asked for our help dealing with a pending court decision, we jumped into action, quickly convening a call to assess the situation and develop a crisis response plan.
Their news the court would decide in 30 days drove the overall scope and schedule of the response plan we eventually designed for them. Within 48 hours an RH Strategic team was in Alaska working with key executives to develop response scenarios for a dozen different ways the court decision might go.
We then organized a “tiger team” of executives and spokespeople most likely to be called into action when the decision came down. We led them through messaging workshops, taught them how to answer media inquiries and produced a variety of useful documents—letters to key stakeholders, question-and-answer sheets for responding to the media, and op-ed pieces they could submit to targeted outlets.
In the end we like to think it was our battle-tested experience in crisis management, our knowledge of the healthcare industry and our many media and government connections in the client’s geographic area that allowed our client to respond successfully to the court’s verdict.
Other factors in our success included convincing top-level stakeholders to get involved early in the planning process and an RH Strategic team member who, as a former TV journalist, was able to ask real-world, hard-hitting practice questions during the media training workshops.
