A Disaster Waiting to Happen

If you don’t have an effective crisis communication plan, you have a disaster waiting to happen. And your plan is only as good as the way you implement it. Some things to keep in mind:

– There are two kinds of companies: Those that have had a crisis and those that will have one.

– Most of us think of crises as being sudden and unexpected, and some are. But many of them aren't sudden at all. And many of them could have been avoided if the company involved had been paying attention to the warning signals and had done something about them.

– No matter what the cost, avoiding a crisis almost always is cheaper and easier than fixing the problem after it has become a crisis.

Jerry’s Four Rules of More

In deciding whether you need to disclose bad news during a crisis, pay attention to what I call the Four Rules of More.

1. The more you want to withhold information, the more likely it is you need to disclose it.

2. The more people who will care and the more they will care, the more important it is to disclose.

3. The more time it takes for you to make all the bad news public and fix the problem, the more you’ll have to pay (in money and reputation) to put the problem behind you.

4. The more times the news media pull new information from you that keeps the story alive for another news cycle, the more damage to your credibility and reputation.

Check Jerry’s secure eStore for more information about how to be crisis ready.