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Take Your Own Pulse—or, What Were They Thinking?

Before leaving the subject of senior management completely, I believe it would be a good idea for those in charge of instituting new company policies to run those ideas past professional crisis communicators first, before unleashing them on an unsuspecting public. Simply put, ideas that look good on paper, as well as on the bottom line, sometimes backfire. And any ideas that originated during happy hour should usually be revisited after the buzz wears off.

Ask your company’s crisis communications guru how the new idea is likely to play in the marketplace and with your constituents, try to determine whether a new policy might cause a crisis backlash, and govern yourself accordingly. Crises will ...

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