A thing I did after Queen Elizabeth's death is set up a "Comms Batsignal," and it's helped for "breaking news" comms. By the time I woke up (I'm Pacific time US), at least 2 drafts were moving. So I started a Teams chat with our head EA (UK), CPO (US), external marketing (UK), CEO (US), D+I head (UK), and a few US and UK HR folks prepping our immediate response, and we were able to consolidate the drafts and send a companywide comm out the next morning. We had to hold on day-off plans for UK staff to wait on the day-of-funeral announcement, but once that announcemet was made we were able to take advantage of the 18-hour working day our time zone differences allowed to get something out pretty quickly.
Since that chat worked to align everyone, I renamed it "Comms Batsignal" and told the people in the chat to go there first to start the "Are we saying something?" convo when a big story hit. We've used it successfully to respond to Hurricane Ian (we don't have offices in Florida, but a handful of employees, so our CEO reached out directly to offer support) and the shooting in St. Louis last week (near one of offices; HR/CPO reached out directly).
Thanks for sharing your experience and idea, which can easily be tried by fellow readers. Don’t forget to include such a breakthrough on your year-end review!
A thing I did after Queen Elizabeth's death is set up a "Comms Batsignal," and it's helped for "breaking news" comms. By the time I woke up (I'm Pacific time US), at least 2 drafts were moving. So I started a Teams chat with our head EA (UK), CPO (US), external marketing (UK), CEO (US), D+I head (UK), and a few US and UK HR folks prepping our immediate response, and we were able to consolidate the drafts and send a companywide comm out the next morning. We had to hold on day-off plans for UK staff to wait on the day-of-funeral announcement, but once that announcemet was made we were able to take advantage of the 18-hour working day our time zone differences allowed to get something out pretty quickly.
Since that chat worked to align everyone, I renamed it "Comms Batsignal" and told the people in the chat to go there first to start the "Are we saying something?" convo when a big story hit. We've used it successfully to respond to Hurricane Ian (we don't have offices in Florida, but a handful of employees, so our CEO reached out directly to offer support) and the shooting in St. Louis last week (near one of offices; HR/CPO reached out directly).
Thanks for sharing your experience and idea, which can easily be tried by fellow readers. Don’t forget to include such a breakthrough on your year-end review!