When dealing with any kind of crisis or major incident, one of the biggest issues you’re likely to face is communication – whether that’s internal communication with your own people or external communication with your customers, suppliers, shareholders, neighbours, the media or whoever.

Get this aspect of your crisis management right and you’ll make life easier (or, at least, less difficult) for yourself. Get it wrong and you’ll almost certainly multiply your problems several-fold. Get it right and you stand a fighting chance of coming through with your reputation intact – perhaps even enhanced. Get it wrong and your reputation can be shredded in a moment – or a soundbite.

All of which suggests that you should give some thought in advance to your crisis communication strategy and plans rather than trying to wing it on the day. This includes an understanding of your various stakeholders and their concerns, so you can decide how and what to communicate to whom.

So why not take some time out to identify your key audiences and the types of messages that you might want to get across to each; and have a think about the appropriate mechanisms for doing so and how and when you might deploy them?

Far better to do that groundwork now than trying to work it out when your back’s against the wall.