There are a lot of places to get crisis experience and experience in the real world of crisis is essential to have the credibility to speed up access to the practice of crisis management. Crisis Management is currently the most sought-after area of public relations practice; and even though colleges are offering degrees in crisis management, real life experience is a prerequisite to practice.

Management, especially American managements, have an ongoing struggle and sense of disappointment about their ability to engage employees effectively, in the organization’s business, culture, issues, and progress. What triggered my commenting on this essentially dead-end idea was a review of a PWC study, “Evolving An Engaging Work Experience, Building Foundations And Creating Distinction.” It’s about employee engagement, and it is a prime example of why this idea goes and is going nowhere. Management wants to go there, but employees don’t and don’t get it.

Events of the week of August 10, 2017 in Charlottesville, North Carolina may go down in the history of American business as the moment that triggered something of a visible epiphany in the behaviors and beliefs of many US business leaders.  Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple was inspired to begin a national conversation about the moral responsibilities of tech businesses.

The Agony of Decision author Fred Garcia is one of those amazing, extraordinary people we so rarely meet in our lives. Luckily, we met more than thirty years ago, in New York as he recruited me to teach in his Public Relations program at NYU.  It was the beginning of a career long relationship where we collaborate, associate, learn from each other, and shared or refereed clients to each other.

The only school for presidents to learn how to be president is living and working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as president. Ironically this is also true for most CEO positions. It’s a job that, however smart you think you are, you learn on the job every single day.

Ten areas for serious personal and professional consideration and reflection. First, change your mindset and your entire philosophy of work.

Dealing with victims remains among the least well-handled of all management activities. Here’s how your institution can appropriately respond when a victim-creating incident occurs.

Wherever there is conflict, confrontation and crisis, there is contention. In today’s Twitter, blogger and bloviator dominated world, working to resolve important issues, questions and decisions often begins very contentiously and ends only after one side is beaten and leaves the field; there is a mutual withdrawal, or mostly commonly, one side wins and the other side stays angry.

The weight of public communication on public officials is enormous compared to the communication requirements in private industry, even in the non-profit sector. It would appear America is entering an era of extraordinary change in the relationship of government to people. Changes and eliminations in programs and services, the handling of public crises in general, are gaining more scrutiny from more opinionated sources.

The highest priority, greatest threat and most crucial aspect of managing crises is the victim dimension. Victims provide the explosive emotional drive that results in high visibility, high liability and high anxiety. The reality is most organizations, hospitals, schools and universities do a sloppy, insensitive or timid job of dealing with victims. This can be very costly to your reputation.