By Jay Fitzgerald for Harvard Business School Working Knowledge After the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Dick’s Sporting Goods’ CEO declared: “I don’t want to be part of the story anymore.” Two new case studies by George Riedel go inside the retailer’s decision to remove certain firearms from stores and restrict gun sales. Days […]
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications Public officials, CEOs, executive directors and members of for-profit and non-profit boards have a responsibility to their stakeholders to plan for situations that will imperil life, limb and the ability of their organizations to fulfill their missions. In the immediate aftermath of a major incident, such as a mass shooting […]
By Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications Considering the Supreme Court’s epic Roe v. Wade decision, its decision to loosen New York City’s gun laws, unrelenting gun violence across the country and the prospect that the upcoming mid-term elections may result in the seizure of ballots in certain battleground states, emotions are likely to boil over and […]
By Tony Jaques, for Managing Outcomes – When a boatload of tourists was involved in an incident in remote northwest Australia, and more than a dozen were taken to hospital – some with serious injuries – you might expect the company to express shock and sympathy. But apparently not. According to media reports, the only statement […]
Crisis communications is a sub-specialty of the public relations profession that is designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization facing a public challenge to its reputation. Crisis communications is aimed at raising awareness of a specific type of threat, the magnitude, outcomes, and specific behaviors to adopt to reduce the threat. […]
By Minda Zetlin for Inc. – Facing a raft of cancellations, Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci did something highly unusual–perhaps unprecedented. He sent a video message to all of the airlines’ employees and frequent flyers apologizing for the problem and explaining what the company is doing to fix it. It’s a brilliant piece of crisis communication […]
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications – Having a crisis consultant in your contact list is nice, but no substitute for having a plan in place. For companies and organizations, written, tested and ready-to-go business continuity plans should be part of doing business. Typically, those plans include the step-by-step operational response procedures to follow in the […]
From Rachel Monroe, writing for The New Yorker – The paper’s employees lost neighbors, acquaintances, and a daughter in a school shooting. Then they had to report the story. The news, as it initially came over the police scanner in staticky bursts of information, was confusing. A shooting, a car crash, a man with a […]
From Christopher J. Tennyson, writing for Crisis Quotient Blog – In the Early Hours of a Crisis, Getting Things Right Trumps Fast Response We’re all still processing the horror of last week’s mass murder in Uvalde, Texas. Continuing confusion about just what happened at Robb Elementary School that day is adding to the pain being […]
By Paul J. Davies, writing for Bloomberg – Wall Street has always been involved in politics even if bank bosses sometimes want to pretend disinterest. In the past, they were able to stick mainly to battles about tax and regulation. Now, it is ever harder to avoid the U.S. culture wars. Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive […]