Every University Will Face a Crisis. Rehearse It.

Show notes

Most universities have a crisis plan, far fewer have tested it under pressure. I explain why confidence comes from rehearsal and how to prepare, from holding statements to live exercises.

• Write the first hour in advance: holding statement, internal message and likely questions.
• Run realistic live simulations at least twice a year.
• Agree who speaks for the institution, and train them.

Read the article: Every university will face a crisis this year. Few will have rehearsed it.

Full transcript

Hello, and welcome to Marketing Greats in Higher Education. I'm Jonathan Sabarre, your host, and this is where we explore the ideas shaping how universities are seen, chosen and trusted around the world. Everything I share on this show is my own personal view.

The pace of a university crisis has changed beyond recognition. An incident on campus is filmed, shared and commented on before the duty manager picks up the phone. A data breach becomes a national story within hours. One post from a frustrated student can reach more people than your entire social following. Most universities have a crisis plan. Far fewer have tested it under pressure!

Imagine it properly. It's a Saturday evening. Your information is incomplete, and some of it is wrong. The media are already calling, and your people are scattered: one at a family dinner, another on a train with patchy signal. That's when a plan in a shared folder meets reality. Plans written in calm conditions assume calm conditions: everyone reachable, every fact confirmed, plenty of time to sign off.

I learned how much rehearsal matters at Newcastle University Students' Union, where I ran crisis communications training for three cohorts of sabbatical officers. Newly elected student leaders, often in their early twenties, suddenly responsible for an organisation representing twenty nine thousand five hundred students. It made a difference. When real incidents came, they knew their roles, who to call and what not to say. They weren't communications professionals. They had practice. Confidence in a crisis comes from rehearsal, not from a document.

The same failure points come up again and again. First, speed versus certainty. Institutions wait for every fact before saying anything, and by then others have filled the silence. A short holding statement that acknowledges the issue and commits to an update is almost always better than nothing. Second, too many voices, or none at all. Agree in advance who speaks for the institution, and train them.

Two more catch out even experienced teams. Staff and students often learn about a crisis from the media, which turns your most credible ambassadors into confused or angry critics. And then there's tone. Legal caution matters, but defensive, bureaucratic statements make things worse. People want to hear that the institution understands, that it cares, and that it's acting.

Preparing is simpler than it sounds. Map your likely scenarios: protests, safety incidents, cyber attacks, financial difficulties, research misconduct, a senior leader under scrutiny. Most institutions can list their top ten in an hour. Then write the first hour in advance. For each scenario, draft the holding statement, the internal message and the questions you expect. You'll adapt them, but you won't start from a blank page.

If I could persuade every university to do just one thing, it would be live exercises, at least twice a year. Bring the crisis team together for a realistic simulation, with injects arriving in real time: a journalist's email at ten past seven, a video circulating by half past, a worried parent on the phone just after. It's the only way to find the gaps while finding them is still cheap.

Then monitor continuously. Social listening and media monitoring should run all the time, with clear escalation thresholds, because most crises show early warning signs online. After every real incident, review honestly, then update the plan. And preparedness can't sit only with communications. It needs the vice-chancellor, legal, security, student services and estates working together, and a governing body that asks whether it's been tested.

Every university will face a crisis this year. I'm certain of that. None of us can know when it'll come, or what shape it'll take. What we can decide is whether our people will already know what to do. So put a date in the diary for that first exercise, and make it soon. On the day it really counts, you'll be grateful for every hour you rehearsed!

Thank you for spending this time with me. If this episode sparked something for you, hit subscribe, so you never miss the next one. And our full season, with guests from leading universities around the world, is coming very soon. Head to Jonathan Sabarre dot com and sign up, so you're the first to know when it launches. Until next time, keep building something great.