Crisis Definition
A people-stopping, show-stopping, product-stopping, Trust busting, reputationally redefining event that creates victims and/or explosive visibility.
Grand Crisis Response Strategy
- Stop the production of victims
- Manage the victim dimension
- Communicate internally
- Notify those indirectly affected
- Manage the new media, legacy media, bloggers, guessers, and
people smarter than you
Crisis Truisms
- Bad news always ripens badly
- Crisis management is fixing mistakes faster than you make them
- Critics and victims accumulate
- Every moment of indecision creates unseen but avoidable
collateral damage - Failing to talk promptly is the death of any effective response
- Failing to talk to your critics rots your internal credibility
- Failing to talk to your critics triggers people to make things up that
you end up owning - Negative aggressive responses empower your opponents, aggravate the victims, and give all media bad headlines you will live with forever.
- Once a critic, enemy, or victim, always a critic enemy or victim
- Silence is the most toxic, top executive career-busting strategy
- Speed beats smart every time, when in doubt do something . . .
- Talking to your critics builds your credibility and silences or invalidates key adverse audiences.
- There is no such thing as 2020 hindsight because there is no such thing as 2020 foresight
- There will always be bellyachers, bloviators, gripers, secondguessers, and backbench complainers
