When there’s a breaking crisis making news, you can often predict an organization’s first response: “A spokesman for SAC Capital could not be reached for comment.” “ GlaxoSmithKline could not be reached for comment.” “Anthony Weiner’s campaign manager could not be reached for comment.”

What goes on here? More than 30 years after the case of cynanide found in Tylenol became the textbook example of how an organization should respond in the face of a crisis—quickly, forcefully, and thoroughly—have we learned nothing?

There are number of reasons why you see phrases like “could not be reached for comment,” or “was unavailable for comment” in news stories when a crisis hits. Or its close relative, “a spokesman for the company declined comment,” which indicates that company officials were reached and had nothing to say.

Sometimes, of course, they really, actually weren’t available for comment—a reporter called too late, or the message didn’t get to the right contact within the company until after the story went to press or was posted online. Other times, legal or PR advisors might advise a company not to respond: perhaps they don’t want give a weak story additional credence, or they know the reporter or media outlet in question is unalterably biased. Or they prefer to put out a response directly to the company’s customers, stakeholders, and employees via Twitter, Facebook, or some other social media outlet.

Sadly, though, in the majority of cases, there is another, more structural, reason: the company and its senior advisors just couldn’t get their crisis-communications act together quickly enough to respond. And without a doubt, it is the speed and coordination of response that makes the difference in effectively managing communications when a crisis hits.

I’ll go even further: often speed is the single most important factor in determining whether a crisis is controllable or not.

A slow, lumbering response serves to give a crisis “legs”—ultimately determining whether a media feeding frenzy erupts, whether politicians join the fray, and whether the initial incident will lead to a torrent of tag-along legal action or investigations.

In-house counsel in particular should be cognizant of this “need for speed” as they work with senior management and with a company’s communications team to respond effectively during a crisis. At times, this can be difficult for a lawyer. In legal matters, the timing and method of response is much different than in the media and communications context. You may have, in a legal environment, 30 or 60 days to respond to a complaint, or seven days to respond to a letter from a regulatory agency. This gives you time to collect facts, consider options, seek counsel from various parties within the organization . . . and only then respond.

Work at this pace during a corporate crisis and you’ll likely find your company spiraling deeper and deeper into to the depths of the media firestorm. Indeed, in the age of Twitter and 24-hour news, when a crisis erupts, you may only have 3 or 4 hours (or less!) to respond. Not exactly a lawyerly pace.

Hence the importance of planning for a speedy crisis communications response before the next high-profile accident, lawsuit, or investigation. You’ve got to be ready with (1) a plan, (2) a team, and (3) a strategy, so that when the crisis hits—and with any large organization, it eventually will—you don’t spend the first day just trying to figure out:

  • Who will be on the crisis response team?
  • How they will meet, coordinate, and move forward?
  • Who will gather import facts about what exactly is going on?
  • How critical messages will be delivered to customers, media, investors, regulators, and other key stakeholders?

Yet here’s an interesting fact: a 2011 survey of global business leaders by the PR firm Burson-Marsteller and the Penn Schoen polling organization showed that only 46 percent of companies had a crisis plan of any sort in place—and nearly half of those who did believed their plan was inadequate.

In my experience handling corporate and legal crises for the past 20 or so years, I always see precious time being wasted trying to determine the parameters of response—and who will lead such a response—after the crisis has occurred and the first reporter is already knocking at the door. It’s like recruiting your fire department only after the first house has gone up in flames.

To quote the famed World War II poster warning: Don’t let this happen to you! As general counsel are increasingly becoming “Crisis Manager in Chief” (as I’ve noted in this column in the past), it is critical that you have a plan in place to do your job, and do it at the speed of the modern crisis.

James F. Haggerty, an attorney and communications consultant, is CEO of PRCG/Haggerty LLC and the author of In The Court of Public Opinion: Winning Strategies For Litigation Communications (American Bar Association Publishing, 2009).