Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor, famously quipped that you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Few of us will face the number of crises that a big-city mayor or a presidential aide may deal with in a day, but we still need to be prepared. Otherwise, a clumsy or tone-deaf reaction may cause more damage than the event itself.

Every crisis is unique, but crisis management is always about communication. For manufacturers, the present calamity is a series of breakdowns in the global supply chain. Automakers have been hit hard, particularly those that rely on advanced semiconductors to run innovative safety features like assisted driving.

Only a few months ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to a software crisis by publicly acknowledging that his company’s “full self-driving” technology was “not very good.” Shortly thereafter, Tesla announced record sales and deliveries. Other manufacturers have a lot to learn. If they want to emerge from the supply chain crisis on top, they won’t just emulate Musk’s transparency; they’ll avoid the following common mistakes.

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