Collapse Of Buffalo Bills Player Provides Crisis Lessons In Real Time For Business Leaders
By Edward Segal for Forbes
It’s not often that business leaders have an opportunity to learn from a crisis that plays out in front of their eyes. Company executives had that chance Sunday night if they were watching the NFL game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals.
Buffalo Bills’s Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed on the field during the first quarter of Monday night’s game, and is currently in critical condition, CNN reported.
How the NFL and the Buffalo Bills responded to the situation provides the latest example of the crisis communication best practices to follow for those who have to deal with a crisis at their company or organization.
Crisis management and communications experts weighed-in with their observations on what the league and team got right—or could have done better.
Don’t Wait To Act
“While the game was paused as Hamlin received medical treatment, it took the NFL more than an hour to announce it had been fully postponed and would not continue that night. The delay caused widespread criticism on social media,” according to PR Daily.
As crisis experts we only get so much time to help organizations react and manage their worst possible moments,” Adam H. Brill, the senior director of communications at Harrison Edwards who manages the agency’s crisis and government affairs practices., said via email
“We call it the ‘golden hour’ because it’s within a short 45-minute window that answers have to be given, especially when lives are on the line.” This should be followed by efforts to recover from the crisis “and getting information out consistently and through trusted sources who can mitigate rumors while providing reassurance that every effort is being made to help those directly impacted,” he counseled.
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