Understanding Crisis

Crisis Management is a vital part of Public Relations. A Public Relations professional has to deal with crisis for the client or the organization he is working for.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to give a precise definition of a crisis any more than it is possible to predict with exact certainty how a crisis will occur, when it will occur & why it will occur?
It is most important to know,
What exactly crisis means?
How does it occurs?
What are different types of crises?
Generally there are two types of Crises:
1. Natural Disasters
2. Man-made or Human caused
Natural disasters are inevitable as nobody can predict about when earthquakes, storms, deluge, fire etc. will happen. Though the organizations are now training their staff for Disaster Management, no one can claim that only a particular type of disaster may happen. Therefore, managing natural disaster is little out of control game.
However, man-made crises can be foreseen in many cases. These types of crises are not not always major crises as well as not inevitable. Labour strikes/ shortages, Market crash, Financial frauds etc. are some of the major crises.
A PR professional has to study the crisis occured in the organization/ with the client thoroughly well, so as to plan the strategy for managing crisis.
He has to collect the detailed information from the client/ key person of the organization such as origin of the crisis, area of affection, involvement of internal/ external Public in crisis etc.
One should think about how long the crisis will exist, which may be from a month to more than a year. This again helps to plan strategies.
Crisis is not the only problem of communication but it involves technical & functional components as well. It has often been said that companies actually face crisis almost everyday in their lives. A 'crisis', like a gathering storm, in most cases, starts with little swirls & eddies that signal an impending disturbance. In crisis, technical responses & communication run in tandem.
Major crises occur not only because of what an organization knows, anticipates & plans for, but just as much because of what it does not know & does not anticipate.