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18
Healthcare Journal of BATON ROUGE
MAY / JUN 2012
CR I S I S MANAGEMENT
He uses the rule of “35 minutes—6 hours—3 days—2 weeks”
to explain. What the rule suggests, he says, “is that there is a
greater than incremental amount of reputational harm caused
when there are incremental delays in showing you care.” There
are, he says, specific moments in the cycle of visibility when you
can “pretty effectively put a crisis behind you.”
• Within 35 minutes.
If, within 35 minutes of a crisis becom-
ing public, you can define your crisis, define your motives, and
define your actions, in a very short amount of time you can put it
behind you and almost nobody has heard about it.
• Within 6 hours.
If you miss the 35 minute window, your
risk becomes greater. You now must act within 6 hours to have
another shot at minimizing the risk of information being shared
exponentially. You can still put the crisis behind you, but it’s
much harder to do because now people have heard about it,
they’re talking about it, they’re tweeting about it, etc.
• Within 3 days.
If you miss the 6 hour window, says Garcia,
you are now part of the media cycle and subject to being visible
for three full days. “That’s because the story will get on the eve-
ning news which will trigger daily newspaper coverage. There
‘‘Silence
in the
immediate aftermath
of the crisis allows
critics, adversaries, and
individuals who are
angry or hurt to define
the crisis, to define the
motive and to define
the actions—
usually
to the disadvantage
of the institution.”
will be social media reactions to the evening
news and the daily news. That will expand
the universe of people who know about the
crisis exponentially.” Again, the more peo-
ple who know, the harder the message is to
manage.
• Ultimately, if you miss the 3-day window,
you fall into a full
two-week cycle
of po-
tential coverage as weekly newspapers, blogs,
television programs, etc., begin to pick up
and communicate the story—again, expo-
nentially impacted by social media. You are
now at risk for up to two full weeks of expo-
sure he says.
“Incremental delays cause exponential
harm,” Garcia stresses. Hospitals can mini-
mize this potential harm by being quick and
effective in their early handling of any cri-
sis. Strike during the 35 minute window and
your chances of controlling the message are
vastly improved.