How to Measure Crises

Your reputation as an organization is extremely important to the success of your business. People do not want to by from or be associated with a company or organization that has a bad reputation because the things people choose to associate themselves with in a way represent themselves. By associating with an organization who has a bad reputation they then hinder their own reputation. Stakeholders also have a key interest in the reputation of your company, a bad reputation is going to lead to a drop in the stock market. Ideally you have a good reputation already because it is something that takes time and effort to change for the better. Recent events with Facebook and its privacy scandal demonstrate how quickly your reputation can change from good to bad.


Crises management is important and a well managed crisis is one that deals with all of the bad press up front, right away. If the crisis is not handled well it can cause damage for a much larger amount of time and will make it more difficult to gain back a good reputation. An overnight poll is one method Paine brings up, in her book "Measure what Matters", to find out what people believe about you especially just after a crisis in order to determine if anything you have been doing is working to relieve the situation. Having a good reputation involves having trust, trust will also be a great defense mechanism in the event a crisis does arise. Trust cultivates many positive things throughout an organization so trust is necessary not only between an organization and its consumers but also within the organization. An organization whose employees trust their employer are more likely to do a better job as well as support the goals the organization has in place. A good relationship with the media can help when dealing with a crisis as they are the ones who have a large impact on how information is released to the public during a crisis.

Clearly it is important to be able to measure a crisis and the trust you have with the all those who can support your organization. The first step is to define how what it means to survive the crisis. The goal should be something you can measure, this can be setting goals based on limiting the drop in stock prices or sales among other things. The next step is to define your audience, this is who you are looking to improve or build your relationship with in order to improve your reputation. Next you need to define your benchmark, during a crisis the focus will generally be on your own organization, however monitoring media outlets and how they cover your crisis can also be a useful tool. Once you have determined your benchmarks you have to define your measurement criteria. This often has to do with the amount of containing messages relating to the crisis and how desirable or undesirable the messages may be. You then need to determine what tool you are going to use to measure your progress toward your goals. Finally, based on the data gathered you need to analyze the results and make reasonable recommendations toward actions to further improve your organizations reputation.