One of the key tenets of crisis planning is having a surge capacity that allows you to scale up your available resources when a crisis strikes. Most companies struggle with this over time, as it can be costly to keep a PR firm or other resources on retainer. Budget cycles make this expense hard to justify, especially if your firm hasn't suffered a major crisis.
In this episode, we delve into the very public failures of one company - Centerpoint Energy - to maintain this communications and operational surge capacity during two serious weather-driven crises in Houston in 2024. The resulting public outcry caused significant reputational damage to the utility company, despite best efforts of the available communications and operations teams to manage the incident.
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