Cheryl Broom (00:00.078)
Hi, I'm Cheryl Broom, CEO of Graduate Communications. I often like to say that colleges are just like cities and anything that goes wrong in a city can go wrong on a college campus. I mean think about it. You've got roads, you have infrastructure, you have police departments, you have employees.

You have citizens, your students, and and those students can be as young as two or three years old if you have child development centers, all the way up to, you know, senior citizens. You have theater, live music. You might even have fire academies, police academies, firearms on campus. So I mean you really are a city. You are a you are a destination for people each and every single day to live their lives.

And anything that can go wrong in a city can go wrong on a college campus. And I'm not just talking about natural disasters, but crises of confidence as well. Theft, embezzlement, cyber attacks. And oftentimes we are so busy in our day-to-day work that we don't have time to stop and plan for these types of crises. And it leaves us vulnerable, right? And it leaves us unprepared.

And that's why I asked Scott Summerfield to join me on today's podcast. Scott is a crisis communications expert, one of the best ones I've ever had the pleasure of working with. And he's been in the business of managing and helping clients manage crises for many, many years. And in fact, helped me when I worked at a college manage a few crises of our

And today Scott and I talk about how to prepare for a crisis, how to work with your college leadership, how to work with lawyers and the legals that often are involved in crises as well, and how to move from being tactical to being a strategist to being really strategic. It's a fascinating conversation full of lots of great examples, and I know you're gonna take away a lot from the conversation. Enjoy.

Cheryl Broom (02:21.614)
Well, hello, Scott. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast today. Great to see you again, Cheryl. Thank you. Yeah, and we haven't seen each other in a in a hot minute, which is a good thing because that means that we haven't been working on any crises together. Yeah. And let's let's hope it stays that way. As great as it is to work together, it's nice to not always have it in the midst of something really tough going on.

Yeah, and actually that's how you and I met was I was on the way to Scotland and a crisis happened at the community college I worked at and I was like, I'm not staying home for this one. So we had to find someone to help. That really illustrated that, you know, crises do not discriminate based on on time. They always seem to happen when your lead communicator is either unavailable, about to be unavailable.

Just not there. So, you know, having a plan in place, having a backup team in place, can can help things move along, even if you're not there to manage them. Exactly. Actually, two times in my career where I dealt with major crises. One, I was leaving on a cruise ship, and the second, I was on a plane to Scotland. So you're right. Amazing.

So tell me a little bit about yourself and about SAE communications. Yeah, just personally was in radio right way back when, still have a real fondness for the the spoken word and painting the picture in your mind that you don't get with video. radio makes you think kind of sad to see where local radio has has gone. It's no longer really local. Then was on the staff at a business organization for several years, the first.

Public information officer, communications director for a city, and for the last kind of nearly quarter century, have worked with community colleges, cities, counties, special districts on all sorts of issues, media training, strategic plan development, crisis plan development. And I guess sadly, even more so the last few years, actually stepping in and helping to manage the communications around all sorts of crises of every type.

Cheryl Broom (04:39.682)
So speaking of of the types of crises of all type, give us some examples of some recent ones that you've that you've helped manage. It's been an interesting couple of years. You know, you of course you've got COVID as the overlay, but that certainly hasn't stopped people from doing dumb, stupid, illegal, immoral, unethical things that can put a a college or other organization in crisis immediately.

Several cyber attacks, we'll talk about that a little bit later. That's very much top of mind for a lot of colleges based on what's happened recently. we're working on a whistleblower case right now, and that has a number of implications, where it's not just the organization itself, but other regulatory bodies that that that oversee different aspects of the agency, several public safety issues involving public safety staff, public officials doing

Pretty egregious things. There was a mayor in Northern California that was accused of some pretty awful behavior by a number of women. And the city that he represented all of a sudden became the focus of TMZ, British tabloids. You know, it went way beyond their typical local media. So they recognized this was way beyond their ability to handle on their own. And then

you know, COVID issues and you're never quite sure how that's gonna play out. Every one of your listeners likely has had their service model, their whether it's a college whatever it might be, turned upside down by COVID. And you really had to change up the way you delivered your services and and provided your programs. Beginning of COVID, we thought, okay, you know, trending is going to disappear. This is going to be this, you know, just horrible thing for business.

Three days later, we get a panic call from a water agency that one of their contractors had likely exposed 60 people the day before as part of going out and inspecting multifamily units. So the takeaway for us was something can happen that doesn't involve one of your staff, but it absolutely impacts the public's perception of your organization because they are identified with you. So

Cheryl Broom (07:03.106)
A lot of different things going on. Never quite sure when I wake up in the morning what we're gonna deal with. You know, you think about crises and the first thing at least, and we're in California, and the first thing that always comes to mind are like fires or earthquakes or natural disasters. And I think we most colleges, most organizations have plans for dealing with emergencies, you know, disasters.

And even tabletop drills that you do at colleges always center around okay, there's been a water leak, there's been a power outage, there's been a disaster. But all the examples that you gave have to do with human beings and you know, moral crises of confidence, and and those things we don't seem to be b very prepared for. You nailed it, Cheryl. So yeah, yeah, we we have done a pretty good job.

Preparing for natural disasters. And sadly, in California, at least, we we, you know, it it's a year-round thing, you know, involving fires, but also debris flows, certainly earthquakes. We really haven't focused on those crises of confidence. And you think about it, even with the increased prevalence of wildfires, they're typically not an everyday thing. Crises of confidence, those people cause things, are far more frequent.

Yet have the same ability to turn a college campus or a district upside down immediately. So we're starting to see a little bit of a shift that communications leaders and senior district and campus leaders recognize you gotta have your act together ahead of time because the media will descend upon you. Your staff may not be accessible. You know, we've gotten much better at working remotely, but there's still

Efficiency and having your team together in one place. So we're we're getting there, but not quite at the speed that I think would be ideal. How do you prepare for these types of crises? I mean, I I look back at some of the ones I dealt with, and they were, you know, embezzlement, sexual harassment, faculty votes of no confidence and the

Cheryl Broom (09:21.368)
President. I mean, they've just been all over the place and each one has been so unique. And I I know in my role back at the college, I never really felt prepared to deal with them. How do people prepare for these type of things? Yeah. what we're we see too frequently is no preparation at all. Sort of this old school bury your head in the sand approach that

Let's hope it doesn't happen here. You know, cyber attack is a great example. It will happen to what extent is based a great deal on how robust your systems are and how well you've trained your staff to not put the college in that position. Number one on that list of things to do to begin preparing is building your team. Again, recognizing you as a communicator may not be available. So who's going to be your backup?

Who's going to lead your communications efforts? Who's your lead spokesperson? That's not, that's often a very different person than the individual that is leading the crisis communications response. You can't do everything, especially if it's a big issue and you get a lot of media requests. Having a crisis communications plan in place so often we'll you know get that panic text or phone call, and it's

Typically the result of not having a plan in place. And by plan, I don't mean something that you, you know, found on a listserv, you borrowed from somewhere else. We see that too often. That's probably one of the greatest frustrations I have around crisis communications planning is borrowing something just because you want to check that off your list of things to do. Well, yeah, that'll, you know, satisfy your boss who wants you to do that.

And maybe give you a level of comfort that you can focus on other things. The reality is when you need it most, it's going to be a useless document because it doesn't reflect your structure. It doesn't reflect the communications tools you have in place, doesn't reflect your staffing resources. So it really needs to be an organic, very proprietary plan developed specifically for your organization. It takes time.

Cheryl Broom (11:43.278)
Come up with a plan, have it have it in place. I recognize it takes time. You can do it internally if you can carve out that time, you can bring in somebody externally. There's a number of ways to do it, but it will make life immeasurably easier when something happens. And even more importantly, it's going to dramatically affect the public's perception of how you are handling that crisis. Yeah, and I would imagine that even changing leadership would be a time where you need to revisit.

that type of plan because some leaders are very open. Maybe they're they're a little bit more transparent, they're more comfortable with managing communications where others may be more closed off, maybe more careful. I mean even the personality of your leadership, I would imagine, would influence how you respond to a crisis and even how you plan for it. Yeah, it that's an interesting aspect of crisis communications.

Yeah, when you have a leadership change, often the approach to communication is significantly different. The traditional approach too often has been looking at communications as a line item, as somebody that handles your your social media, perhaps oversees class schedule, very, very tactical, but not a strategist. In a crisis, you need a communication strategist and you need access to

the president's cabinet to senior leadership. You need to get information firsthand, not second and third hand. So developing that relationship with the administration and leadership is essential. I don't know how a communicator can can thrive if they are not in the weekly senior leadership meetings. That's that's the beginning of how you ensure that you are a productive member of that team. Things are changing.

We're probably still a generation away, but increasingly those that are in senior leadership positions recognize we are in a very media-centric world. And the public expects everything now. They expect immediate, complete information. So we're getting there, just not quite there yet. I love that tactical versus strategist role. And I think that is so important. And I know.

Cheryl Broom (14:05.344)
A lot of communication directors at community colleges are fighting for a seat at the table. And I think that work around crisis communication can help showcase you as a strategist because really, at the end of the day, it is strategy and it is so important. I remember having a leadership change at the college, and we had a crisis. We had a child development center on campus with.

with student workers and and a a thriving child develop an amazing child development program. So it was basically a preschool and we had a student worker be accused by one of the preschool students of inappropriate touching. And it was very emotional for everybody involved. And nobody bothered to tell me that it had happened. It was actually our chief of police who called me at home that night saying

That he completely disagreed with college leadership's decision to not tell other parents. And I had to step in and advocate for transparency. And it was quite a battle. I mean, it was a big battle. And at the end of the day, we we didn't have a communications plan, which, if we had, would have taken some of the battle out. But we spent a day battling over whether or not we needed to alert other parents that this had happened.

And thankfully, college leadership had made the decision that yes, some they needed to be alerted. Well, fast forward after the crisis was done, the accrediting, you know, whoever oversees accrediting for preschools let us know if we hadn't alerted parents, they would have shut the whole preschool down. So thank goodness, you know, that happened. And I think it was a good lesson for everyone. But I I look back and I think, gosh, if those conversations had been had earlier.

You know, when do we when do we communicate? How do we communicate? What's our philosophy? What type of emergencies might we deal with? we would have saved a lot of heartache and frankly a lot of pain for some parents who are very upset that we waited as long as we did to to let them know. Yeah, yeah, and that's really indicative of how these crises play out. And one piece of that

Cheryl Broom (16:21.92)
Issue that you just focused on, I think it's helpful to highlight, and that is the relationship with the police chief. You clearly have a law enforcement piece of your background, so that you know that you you have props there, but you had that relationship in place so that the chief could go directly to you and indicate that this is not, you know, in in in their mind the ideal way to handle this. Let's let's figure out something else. And that's really important.

We we hear that word relationships all the time, cannot overemphasize how important that is. And also you have to always assume that word will get out. Like in the case of the child development center, my point that I made with leadership was it just takes the parents of this girl to tell their friend to go on Facebook. Like that we have to assume that it's just going to be a matter of time before every single parent.

knows what happens and then comes back and asks, why didn't you tell us? Like they have they need to be able to talk to their own children and and speak to their teachers and make sure that their children are safe. you have to assume that it's gonna get out. And in that issue, would you rather have the information getting out from you where it's accurate and you're able to manage how it's how it's delivered, or through next door or Facebook.

or word of mouth and it may not be anything near reality. So getting ahead of it is is is job one. That is probably the question that we ponder first more than any any other. do we it's not one that we pose because we you know 99% of the time advocate you know rip the band aid off get it out there be open be transparent

Unfortunately, there are often others that don't look at it that way. So, you know, we'll talk about the role of legal counsel and how that can sometimes impact insurers if it's a cyber attack. You know, I want information to come from me as college communicator or from our senior leadership. The the pushback we often get, this is never a pretty process, is well, if we come out with it.

Cheryl Broom (18:45.802)
And a you know, reporter never finds out about it, never becomes an issue, it just goes away. Haven't we created a problem that was avoidable? And I think in today's world, the reality is nothing stays buried. Everything will wind up becoming public. So let's assume that and let's develop our communication strategy and get ahead of it. And that's that's a difficult conversation to have. Yeah, it's a gamble, right? It's a gamble. And

You're gonna most of the time end up losing the bet if you think you're gonna fly under the radar. especially with social media today. I mean, you might not have a reporter pick up on something, but it definitely can blow up on social media. And I know you and I actually did a little bit of work with a client you had at a community college where most of the crisis was on on social media and it won't go away. That sticks around. Yep.

You know, that was a a professor that you know exhibited some behavior in a a a Zoom class. So you know one of the the concepts I think overlays everything today is everything we say and do is recorded. There is a camera or a mic on us 24-7, and our words live forever. So this was a a class, you know, in the middle of COVID being being held by Zoom. of course it's being recorded.

that professor's actions will will live on for a long time. And it did blow up on social media. you know, we we probably see more activity on Nextdoor than any other platform right now. Used to be Facebook, not so much anymore. If you look at the penetration of Nextdoor in each of its individual neighborhoods, I don't think any other platform can touch it. So that's that's that's where this typically starts. So even if it hasn't been picked up.

By traditional media, the chatter is likely going on out there already. Definitely. I know I'm a next door user and I like reading all the gossip on there. There's always something going on. Yeah. And you know, we talk about how different organizations deal with social media and crisis response. And often because of the vitriol that you see on next door, there is a sense that let's just ignore it.

Cheryl Broom (21:10.2)
Know we can't win. It's ugly, it's vile. What's important to keep in mind is there isn't just one next door. So the community I live in has 29 different next door neighborhoods. In mine, the minute something gets ugly, the moderator not only deletes the thread, they or deletes the post, they delete the whole thread. I think that's a little heavy-handed, but the net result is there's none of that ugliness. The neighborhood next door, anything goes. So

I can't, as a communicator, ignore a platform that has the level of engagement that Nextdoor has. But there's inherent problems. It's very tough to monitor what's being said unless you have somebody in each of those neighborhoods because it's a very hyperlocal format. But things can spiral out of control pretty quickly. Definitely. You had brought up legal counsel, and that's something I think that a lot of communicators

struggle with as well. Like I know in the instance where you and I worked together with the Zoom class, we had written some very thoughtful social media responses and made recommendations. And then nothing happened for a week because Legal was reviewing them. And then they come back and they're re they're reworded or rewritten and the whole intent and tone has been stripped down. Like how how do communicators effectively work with legal and

How how do you navigate that? Yeah, and you know, as I was going down that list of types of crises that we've dealt with recently, every single one of those involved agency legal counsel, whether it was a college or district attorney, city attorney, county council. they are an integral part of just about every crisis we deal with.

Where the challenge happens is we often come at crises from very different places. They want to protect their client. That's what they're supposed to do. I I respect that. often that translates to a very traditional approach of no comment. Yeah, don't return the the the phone call, don't reply to the email, don't reply to the text. Essentially a no comment. Well, in today's world, we know what a no comment

Cheryl Broom (23:30.23)
says, you know, guilty, opaque, all the bad stuff in in crisis communications. We as communicators come in and want to be open and transparent and share what we know and and manage it in the way that we know is is effective. So there's often inherent conflict in that relationship. And that can result in some pretty tough conversations.

Two of the hardest phone calls I've experienced in my career happened with the same issue within the last couple of years. This involved an officer-involved shooting. And we just had really different approaches to how we were gonna release this information. I mean, I was shaking by the end of both of those calls. One was with inside counsel, one was with outside counsel. And I don't shake real often, but it was it was tough.

but I had to keep in mind that I can't poison this relationship. I need those attorneys to keep me out of trouble. So my inclination to be open and transparent sometimes means I want to say something that we can't for any number of reasons. And we know certainly in the public sector, there are employee confidentiality issues. In law enforcement, there's their confidentiality protections. So I need to have a productive relationship.

But I also need to stand up for what I believe is right. It invariably comes down to leadership to determine which direction we're going to go. Up until you know fairly recently, it was almost always, well, the attorney says we can't say this, so we're just not going to say anything. We're now seeing a bit of a shift. So I may want to be over here on this on the scale of openness. The attorney may want to be over here.

We're more often now finding something in the middle. So we can deliver a message. We can tell our story in a way that is not going to cause problems for the organization. But it's it's sometimes tough getting there. Then the delays that you noted. In today's world, we don't have the luxury of time. Communication is immediate. So I want legal counsel to review documents. I need their input.

Cheryl Broom (25:52.118)
I need them to highlight something that may be an issue, but I can't wait a week. If we wait that long, we've lost it. So I think we need to help legal counsel understand why we are in this very compressed time frame and figure out how we can maybe speed things along. So it again, it comes back to having that relationship in place. And I think not just the relationship, but also the plan that you had spoken about.

I know that when you work with your clients on plans, that you'll often develop, you know, holding statements or sample statements. And those are things that can be pre-approved by legal counsel, or at least maybe they can give their opinion on, you know, what their recommendation would be if something like that would happen. And having those conversations before they actually happen are invaluable. We're going through that process right now on a crisis, and the relationship legal counsel has been very productive.

We have to be working with an attorney that understands the impact of both traditional and social media. So that makes our job easier, where it's easy for us to talk about it. The turnaround time is very quick, but just having a few essential documents in place can help crisis communications management flow much more efficiently. A key message platform, an internal QA.

That's the document that often takes the most time, that can be probably the most helpful. And that's where you you come up with the 12, 15 snarkiest questions, most difficult questions a reporter or a member of the public can ask you. that part's kind of fun. As former reporters, you know, we're we're pretty good at that. The tough part is coming up with the answers and weaving your messages into those answers. So that process will

very often allow the organization to get ahead of an issue and eliminate a lot of last minute scrambling. Legal counsel has to be part of that though. Yeah. And that's where you start building the relationship, building the trust, showing your competencies is through this planning process. So that when a crisis does happen, people know where you're coming from, that you're prepared, that you're ready, they have a relationship with you. So

Cheryl Broom (28:18.07)
I think it's so much more important than just having, you know, a piece of paper or document on your computer. There's there's just so much that goes into it that that will help prepare you. Yeah. And this I think also highlights the difference between the traditional planning we've done for natural disasters, earthquakes, floods, fires, debris flow, which typically involves a lot of public safety, because it has to, and crises of confidence, which we see more often.

In addition to legal counsel, I need to have a relationship in place with HR, with finance, with IT, facilities, each of these parts of the organization that may come into play when a significant crisis happens. I don't know what type of crisis it's going to be, but chances are at least one and maybe all of those may be involved. And again, going back to a cyber attack, every aspect

Of college operations can be impacted by that. So I want to get to know my peers in each of those functions way ahead of time, not when something happens. So you recently we got to see each other briefly at a conference. By the way, did you find your glasses? I think you lost your glasses. Ten minutes later I found them. Yay! And they're on your face right now.

I was speaking after Scott in the same room at a conference, and he ran in looking for his glasses. So we got to catch up briefly. Panicked. Yeah. and you had spoken with one of your clients about a cyber attack that they had had on their campus. Tell us a little bit about that and how you dealt with it. Yeah, so cyber attack is a great example of a crisis that affects every aspect.

Of campus operations. You know, if you don't, if you haven't been a victim yet, chances are you will. Hopefully, your IT department has built in some robust functions to prevent that. But all it takes is one faculty or staff member clicking on something that they shouldn't, and all of a sudden you're in a world of hurt. So have the opportunity to go through a pretty significant cyber attack simulation.

Cheryl Broom (30:35.074)
Back in Cambridge, that IBM, who focuses on cybersecurity, held. And it really pointed out a lot of aspects of a cyber attack crisis that I hadn't even thought about. Things like our key cards that we all have. So our ID badges now typically have a lot of functions. Get you, you know, into the elevator, the floor you're going to, get you into the parking lot that has restricted access.

If you are the victim of a cyber attack, chances are those functions are gone. You may have people trapped in elevators. You may not be able to get your vehicle out. traffic control functions around your campus. Yeah, that's a very practical aspect. And then add in all the potentially much worse pieces of a cyber attack where students, faculty, and staff can't access grading systems, scheduling, HR.

You know, all of us have our paychecks direct deposited now, which means our banking information is kept somewhere that potentially could be hacked. So we encourage colleges to do is think about your vulnerability. Think about the risk that you have. If one day you came in, or if you're working remotely, you log on, and there's essentially some version of a sculled crossbones on your laptop, which is the way these things work.

You know, the the hackers have demanded, you know, $50,000, $100,000 in Bitcoin, because that's always what they want because it's not traceable. What are you going to do? What is your plan? So that needs to be part of your crisis communications plan created ahead of time, also. It's not that easy though. I'm so glad you asked this, because there are other factors at play. So legal counsel is gonna have thoughts around what we say.

Your insurer is going to have some very clear thoughts. What we're finding is insurers, for whatever reason, often don't want you to say anything. And this played out real time at a community college in California recently, where they were the victim of a cyber attack. Basically, every system was shut down. And their legal counsel and their insurer's legal counsel did not want them to say that it was a cyber attack.

Cheryl Broom (32:56.066)
They didn't want to give any information at all. So what is if if you can't access any of these systems, what is the public to think? What's a student to think? Well, you goofed up. It's your fault. When in fact it wasn't. And the campus communicator made a pretty aggressive decision after about day two to come out and say, you know, I'll deal with the aftermath later, but we're going to say what happened. And

It was interesting. Virtually immediately, the discussion changed from this being a campus-caused issue, a district-caused issue, to an externally caused issue. So people were still not happy, but the blame shifted from the college. And it was probably an eye-opener for the insurer and legal counsel as well. But it shows that if you're open and honest and call it for what it is.

That could often shift the the the narrative. Yeah, people just want to know like what's going on. I mean, I I learned that lesson. We had a outage on a campus and we sat around for like 10 minutes debating what to say. And meantime, everybody's sitting in a class in the dark, like, what's going on? Are are we should we evacuate? Should we leave? Like they're just waiting for you to say something. And I think that's the case in a na a natural disaster and a and a human-made disaster is

If you can give some sort of explanation, you don't have to have all the all the answers, all the information, but just enough to let people know this is something we're working on. This this was the cause of the problem. This is our priority. As soon as we have more information, we will get it to you. Just say to have something to reassure people that you're handling it often is enough to buy you time to then craft communications that can.

Be evaluated by insurance and legal and everybody. So and that illustrates why you need to have those discussions ahead of time. So for example, there was a workaround to access, I think it was Blackboard that they use for internal communication. if you accessed it through Blackboard rather than through the college site, you were still able to get in. It was a different process, but you need to communicate that and you need to be open about it. And the other missing piece that we see time

Cheryl Broom (35:19.352)
time again is a lack of empathy. Your students, your faculty, your staff, the public that may be accessing a campus for a community event of some sort are going to be pretty upset and frustrated and annoyed and aggravated. And I think acknowledging that and offering alternatives if you have them, and also being very honest with the three toughest words to say in a crisis.

I don't know or we don't know, but as soon as we do, we will let you know. I I just think the public wants honesty. And there are too many examples of where that openness and transparency just isn't there. Well, I think you have one of the world's most fascinating jobs. And never know waking up first thing in the morning, what's going to happen that day. It it is truly fascinating.

just the the the issues that you've dealt with and the expertise that you've brought have been in incredible. And I'm sure there are a lot of listeners who would be interested in connecting with you and maybe talking about how to set up a communications plan. So how can people learn more about you, your company? Where can they go for information? Sure. SAE Communications dot com, Scott Summerfield on LinkedIn, you know, probably the two easiest ways. Scott.

At SAE Communications.com. Yep, got kind of a sick, twisted personality. I love talking about this stuff. my business partner, Sherry Benninghoven, share shares an equal fascination with crisis communication. So we are always happy to help somebody talk through an issue, absolutely pro bono. You know, good communication benefits all of us. So it's not about making money, it's about highlighting the visibility of good communication.

And our function as communicators to senior college leadership. That is how you begin to change the dance when your chancellor, when your president recognizes that this turned out differently because we had a communications plan in place and we valued our communicator. Wonderful. Well, it's been so great catching up with you, Scott, and really appreciate your time and your expertise.

Cheryl Broom (37:40.75)
And I hope that you and I will see each other at a conference and not at a crisis. Absolutely. Hope to see you again soon, Cheryl. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Higher Education Coffee and Conversation. If you like the podcast, please leave me a five-star rating. And to discover more great higher education related content, make sure to visit us at graduatecommunications.com. And with that

I'm going say thank you for listening. Thank you for the hard work you do for students each and every day.