How to get Internal Comms crisis-ready in any organisation with Sarah Farrow

Crisis rarely gives you notice.

In this episode of LEAP Listens, communications consultant Sarah Farrow joins Sara MacGregor and Roger Cayless to share what internal comms teams need in place before the worst happens.

Drawing on her experience leading communications through the sudden closure of a government-funded organisation, Sarah explains how to prepare for the crisis you hope never comes, from risk mapping and scenario planning to keeping knowledge from becoming currency.

With just 24 hours between finding out and telling the entire organisation, this is a candid conversation about honesty and leadership,  because in a crisis, it’s not perfect wording that people remember, it’s how you made them feel. 

LEAP Listens is brought to you by LEAP Create, an award-winning people communications agency.  Find out more at leapcreate.co.uk

Transcript

Setting The Stage

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hi Rog.

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, Sarah. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 0:02

How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Very well, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Good, good. So here we are again. Second recording.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Indeed.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

So today we're going to be talking to somebody called Sarah Farrow. And she is an award-winning communications consultant. And she helps companies communicate clearly what matters most. So today we're going to be talking about crisis management and crisis readiness. Working with CEOs and senior leaders on this particular subject.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

So it should be really interesting because I think she's going to share with us her own experience, which is deeply personal and definitely was a crisis. So I think it should be a really interesting chat.

Meet Sarah Farrow

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Excellent. So let's jump in. So welcome to the podcast, Sarah. Thank you very much for having me. Excellent. So, Sarah, give us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

Oh, well, I work on my own now, which is new for me. Although I I do wonder at what point you have to stop saying it's new for me, because I've probably been doing it for about nine months. Is that still new? Do you think? Yeah, quite new. Um after I got made redundant from a role, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a minute. Um so yeah, I work in communications and I help individuals, teams, and organizations communicate better, whether that's internal comms, external comms, any comms. I'm obsessed with it. It's a bit I geek out on it. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but I completely geek out on comms. Um and not work related, but I'm probably the biggest Taylor Swift fan you'll ever meet.

Why Internal Comms In Crises Matters

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Oh wow, okay. You get on with a few of our um our team members. Um, total Swifties. Excellent. So today um we're going to be talking about um when crisis hits um and internal communications becomes um mission critical. Um do you just want to give a bit of an intro about that and the role of um internal communic communications in crisis management?

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Yeah, I think it's so important, but often I don't want to use the term overlooked. Often I would say it often gets overlooked. You know, that I'm definitely an advocate for there's no such thing as too much preparation for crisis. The thing that might never happen, but if it did happen like that, it is you know completely disrupts your entire organization. And it's so important that your colleagues are involved in that and that they know what's going on and that they're taken care of. Um, and internal comms just plays a massive role in that. Um, and I'm just hugely passionate about it.

Planning Tools And Risk Mapping

SPEAKER_00 2:59

So, how do you rehearse for that kind of thing? I know we've talked in the past about pre-mortems and things like this, but what's your um what's your process to sort of think, okay, what are all the things that could happen and what do we do about them when they do? Where where do you begin with that that question?

SPEAKER_03 3:19

Yeah, my favorite exercise is to do a uh four-axis graph, which has like the likelihood that something would happen, and then how much impact that thing would have on your organization. So you'll have all the things that are so so easily come to your mind, you know, uh, depending on what you do, it could be like, oh, product fail, therefore I've got a product recall. That could be a big impact on the organization. COVID and pandemics were probably nowhere on anyone's, you know, axis of uh probability of crisis happening. Um, and my our example that we're going to talk about in um organizational closure wasn't even on ours. You don't even think about it. And I think there is that time that someone just needs to take. And you know what? It could even just be 10 minutes, once a quarter, to just look at a risk register and then think, but what could happen if we were like doing a movie of really unlikely things that could possibly happen and you were making a drama movie about it, which then spins your imagination off into all the things that you'd never think of on a day-to-day basis that could happen to your organization. But then having that array of things and just having a uh what's the word? Having a structure in place that could work for most of them. You know, you can be super planned and have a playbook for everything, which I know some organizations do, but the middle ground of not having any um planning at all, the middle ground between those two things would be to have a structure or a template in place of what happens when crisis strikes, regardless of what it is, at least. Um, but yeah, I think starting from just getting it all down on a piece of paper, just the imaginatory versions and the very realistic versions of what could happen in an organization could just alleviate some stress and just give you some future planning ability, um, which you otherwise might not ever have had.

Who Owns Risk And Comms

SPEAKER_00 5:12

So typically, whose whose role is that? It doesn't feel like an internal comms job apart from the internal communication aspects of it.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

Yeah, I suppose some of that should fall to whoever's managing risk in the organization, because you'd expect every organization to have a risk register, and how in-depth that register is will depend on how big the organization is and the things that they account for. But me and my team certainly would think about what were the worst things that could happen that maybe aren't on there because they could always happen. So, what you know, they might not end up on a risk register because there's always the possibility, however big or small, that you might get bad press. And your risk register manager, your risk manager might think that's just always going to be there. So I don't want it on my risk register because it's always it's just an issue that's always gonna happen. So it could just fall by the wayside. So I think there's a bit of a responsibility for a comms team who do a lot of work when it comes to crisis. Um, but I think from an organizational perspective, the comms team just need to have a really great relationship with the risk manager so they can see all of the risks across the organization and have some sort of planning for what they would do from a comms perspective, should that risk ever become a reality.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

And I suppose in a crisis, there's always that tension between getting information out quickly and getting it right. And so, how do you balance that?

The Sudden Closure Call

SPEAKER_03 6:40

I think there's a great saying that many people use in different ways, which is something to the tune of don't let perfect become the enemy of done. And if you twin that with people will always remember how you made them feel, and not necessarily the words that you used. And we were in a dire situation of a certain closure of our organization and had to tell our colleagues that. So everyone's on the same playing field. Knowledge doesn't become currency. Some people don't know more than others, everyone knows the same thing. Um, and while that's awful, it's a horrible thing to have to say, it's a horrible thing to have to plan. But at the end of the day, it's the best thing for the people that you're saying it to.

SPEAKER_02 8:05

Are you able to tell us more about that situation and and what happened and the outcomes of that? What went well? I know obviously it's a very awful situation, but from a communications point of view, what worked and what didn't work?

Telling Staff Under Embargo

Balancing Rules And Compassion

SPEAKER_03 8:21

Yeah. So we were told I worked in a um public body, a government-funded uh youth organization that essentially delivered um residential, community, and digital experiences to 16, 17-year-olds. And we were funded by the government. And one day we get a call from the Secretary of State saying you're gonna close. And you can't tell anyone that you're gonna close until I've told the House of Commons. So then, and we didn't know when that would be. So we have a lot of time to plan and a not a lot of time to plan all at the same time, but that essentially ended up being less than 24 hours. So less than 24 hours between the CEO finding out that we're gonna close and us then telling all of our colleagues. Um, and at that point, in those 24 hours, there's no telling anyone. Nobody knows. I can't tell my team. You know, the only person, the only people that really know first off, the CEO, head of people, and me. So keeping everyone kind, keeping everyone calm, everyone, all three of us, keeping us all calm and on focus without one thing, even though it's not very comms related. Um, but then just writing, writing and writing and writing the millions of different comms that have hundreds of different stakeholders that we have to talk to about this, tell about this, tell that we're upset about this, try and save ourselves about this, you know, that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, we were going to close. So I had to tell everyone. Um, but yeah, it's it's a I don't know if it's overstating something to say it's like a traumatic experience. Because in the in a career business sense, it is a traumatic experience. Um, and one that will stick with me forever and you know, spurs me on to want to help organizations not end up in a situation where you're completely blindsided by something like we were like that. We would never consider that as a possibility that just one day we'd close. Um, but then we had plans for other crises and crisis plans that we'd used in the past and kept. Uh, and they could just come out. So they could be pulled out, you could take out all of the text from all of those things, you've got everyone that you have to talk to. You don't have to think about those things, because that's the worst thing in times of crisis when you're mild panicking, you know, being a bit of a swan, all panic underneath and swan-like on the top. Um it's you just want things to be ready for you. You don't want to have to think as much as you should. So, and that's the best thing about planning, isn't it? The more you there's no such thing as too much planning. If you've got a crisis that you know might happen one day or is semi-likely to happen one day, you could have your lines prepared. So then all you've got to do is some tweaking and touching up. Um, so it was good to have old old things that we'd said about something else where we could say, well, that's the tone we used, uh, that's the thing we said. What words would we change to make that right for this situation? Um, and not start from a blank page, because that's the worst possible situation to find yourself in with just a blank piece of paper and not knowing where to start.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

So in that particular instance, um, you're the ones delivering this news. So you're naturally going to be the ones who are having to answer the questions. But it must have been tempting to put all of this onto someone else and sort of say, you know, we're as upset as you, it's it's not our fault, we didn't see this coming, kind of thing. So what was the what was the line, if you're allowed to tell us?

SPEAKER_03 11:58

Well, at the end of the day, we were just we were incredibly honest. We told our colleagues when we could tell them, we told them when we found out, so they knew that there was no no one knew before them, you know, there was no uh you weren't the last to know. Um we we did have, you know, some conversations that were, you know, we were told you can't tell your colleagues before this is spoken in the House of Commons. And you know, you've got to have conversations where you realistically think, if we're gonna close, why should we follow that rule? And shall we just tell them all now and get them told before they could possibly see it in a B E C news alert or whatever?

unknown 12:40

Yeah, that would be.

Templates Beat Blank Pages

Radical Honesty With Colleagues

SPEAKER_03 12:41

Um, and we toiled over that for a while, but then very, very wise CEO at the time. I'm like, let's just tell everyone. Uh, very wise CEO at the time. I was like, you know what, let's follow the rules because you never know what that could mean. We knew that there would be four or five months between telling people we were gonna close and closing. So we're like, let's not risk anything. And again, people are just gonna remember how you made them feel and not the fact that there was a 24-hour gap between one person knowing and another. Um, so we told we were just really honest, but we were kindly honest. Um, we did the order in which we had to do it because we wanted the gap between the House of Commons hearing and our colleagues' hearing to be so small, seconds, you know, so it couldn't make it to the news. Um, so we all had BBC House of Commons live stream on in the background because we didn't know when it would be. And as soon as she stood up at the podium, that was when everyone got the invite to come to the call. Um and we sent something out to them. Um, that was when I look back at it now, I'm like, why is this com so long? We didn't need to write such a long communication to everyone. Um, but we almost wanted to say in the letter what we were going to say on the call. So we sent them all something so they all heard something at the same time. Then about half an hour, an hour later, everyone was then on a call, so then they could hear it. Um, and I'll never forget the fact that, you know, you get so wrapped up in these situations and have spent all night and all the previous afternoon just writing and then double checking and getting it right, and the three of us just checking each other's work to make sure that we're saying the right things and or saying the kind thing and being honest as we can and all the rest of it. Um, and then I'll never forget the fact that that email went out and my team found out at that point. And I'm like, oh, I kind of just my my mentality through my team and the amalgamation of all of our colleagues. Um, and then as soon as that email dropped, the first message I got was a guy in my team, and all he wrote was, How can I help? And I'm like, that I was never gonna cry in that situation until I got that message, and I'm like, why do you have to be so nice?

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Yeah, that's very, you know, it isn't thankfully it's an unusual situation, isn't it? Um and like you say, you'll probably never forget something like that. Yeah. Um, but when when you are in sort of that sort of a you know, that crisis and then it passes, and obviously this is a your situation that you had, but I'm sure you've got other examples. How do organization then use internal comms to like rebuild that trust um and learn from what's happened?

Operating Principles After Shock

Weekly Close‑Down Bulletins

SPEAKER_03 15:28

Yeah, well, and we had that situation. We had the the crunch moment when we found out we were gonna close and had to tell everyone, but then we didn't, and that was in uh November. Uh oh, November 2024, it feels so long ago. Uh that was in November 2024, but then we didn't actually close until the end of March 2025. So you have this crunch moment of busyness, but then everyone knows, and it's like, what do you do? What do you do between everyone knowing and then everyone leaving? Um, so the exec team essentially all got together a couple of days after the big announcement, and we kind of made a plan that was less of a plan because there was a lot we didn't know, but more of a principles. So we essentially set out a list of four or five principles that would guide every action that we took between then and the closure. And, you know, that was things like we will always put the needs of our colleagues first. Um, so if someone wanted a member of staff to go to an event, but that was completely inappropriate because they were going to be in a position where they're surrounded by people that could ask them about us closing, we would never send someone, you know, just things like that. So we built the principle around that. We were an organization that was built to serve young people. So, like one of our principles was we will serve young people until the day we close, making that balance of it's all about us, but these young people benefit from us immensely, and we're still gonna serve them with every penny we've got left until we close. And then things like, you know, we'd always be honest and transparent and just maintain that level of transparency. Which, of course, when you're trying to close down a public body, I don't really think the government really knew how to close down a public body because it doesn't happen very often at all. Um, so we ended up doing like uh just a weekly close-down bulletin, which sounds really depressing, but it was really well read and everyone like wanted to know what was going on. Again, that point about let's not make knowledge currency. So making sure at every point everyone knew what was going on, we'd send out a weekly update from all the different project streams that were closing down the organization bit by bit. And um, that was really appreciated, just keeping everyone in the know all the time, um, while we operationally debuilt our organization, which was really sad. But at the same time, I think everyone just appreciated knowing and having that opportunity, even if they didn't want to know, because you know, people check out at that point, um, but having the opportunity to know what's going on, um, I think just kept a lot of respect and gratitude, particularly for the leadership, um, because we had a very new CEO. So I think everyone felt for him at the same time as well.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

That's fantastic. I mean, um, we did say these were bite-sized, and um it's always the case that when we're having a really interesting conversation, um, time has run away with us. I think for me, there's a really good takeaway about the probability and or likelihood and impact matrix that you talked about. I think that's probably an exercise that we'd encourage people to do.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

And I and for me, the takeaway was around being honest and kind in your communications. Um but Sarah, what would be your advice for somebody that is going through this crisis at the moment um in an in internal comms role?

SPEAKER_03 18:55

I think for someone that's going through it now, because my 100%, you know, I'll die on the hill of there's no such thing as too much planning. Um, but it's great to say that in hindsight, isn't it? I think the one thing I would give advice to anyone going through the going through that situation now would be that your colleagues will not remember the words you said. They will remember how you made them feel. So don't let perfect wording take you hours to perfect and get in the way of something that would have exactly the same impact. Um, yeah.

Key Takeaways And Advice

SPEAKER_02 19:30

I think that's great. Great to finish on. Yes. Um, one thing that we didn't um talk to you about was your um you won the Gallagher's Internal Communications Leader of the Year. I just wanted to say congratulations and what that means. And um, yeah.

Award Recognition

SPEAKER_03 19:46

Well, it was actually my work in the closure of NCS that I was nominated for. And do you know I'm I'm not a very tearful person. I don't cry really. It's not I just don't uh give emotion that way. But when um they did like the countdown on the screen and the only person left was me uh before they announced the winner, I was like, oh my god, I did not know what to do with myself. But yeah, it's honestly an honour, an honor to be like to have your work in such an awful situation awarded like that was unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Yeah, it sounds like handled a terrible situation as best as you possibly could, and were acknowledged for it. So that's that's fantastic. Um, as Sarah mentioned before we went on air, um, we do ask one final question, which is just if there's anything interesting that you're currently listening to or reading that you'd want to share with the listeners.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

My uh current read is uh it's gonna sound really bad. My current read is the ultimate um LinkedIn sales guide.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

All right. Okay.

What Sarah Is Reading

SPEAKER_03 20:58

Well, you know, I'm newly self-employed, and you really need to get to grips with how LinkedIn works. Um, and I've read loads of different books, but that one at the minute Daniel Disney, I think the guy is called, who writes that one. Such a great book. Like, I'm not selling a thing, and like the book is very much about selling things and being a salesman, but it's got so much advice about how to change all of your LinkedIn for people to come and not think that you want a job. You know, I'm not here going, I want a job as a comms director somewhere. It's more about me and what I offer. Um, so it has been I I would recommend it. Although I bet there's like you get far more interesting reads than that.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

No, I I I need to up my LinkedIn game. I it's always one of those things I feel like I'm I just uh it's an effort.

SPEAKER_03 21:46

But I say that all the time, and that is exactly why I thought, you know what, let me just read something because you know, as I bought a book and then I bought another book, and then I got a bit obsessed with it. Actually, I need to stop. But if I was gonna recommend one of all of those books, yeah. Would be that one, even if you're not selling anything, it just the way that it talks to you about your your LinkedIn profile um in like the modern day is um like mine is now completely different to what it was a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was good and I'm like, no, it's not.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Yeah, no, I'll definitely take a look at that. Yeah, excellent.

Wrap Up And Reflections

SPEAKER_02 22:21

Well, thank you, Sarah. Thanks for your time and sharing your story. And um, yeah, it's been a pleasure to speak to you. It's been wonderful to be here.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

Thanks a lot.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Thank you very much. Thanks. Well, that was fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Yes, it certainly was. Yeah, really interesting. Um, and like another one that we could have just carried on talking to.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Yeah, and some things as well where you think, oh, we should probably do that too.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

So uh Yeah, I mean, yeah, a risk register. Obviously, we have a risk register, um, but um it's then, isn't it, preparing for those eventualities and making sure that all your comms are lined up and in large organizations that's a huge job, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Yeah, and very easy to get to get wrong. So I guess her her message about you can't plan enough was a a good one.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Yeah, absolutely. All right, thanks for thanks Roger.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

All right, cheers, bye bye.