Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message

YOUR CRISIS IS SUBJECTIVE

While conducting research for my first book on crisis management, I discovered that a disturbingly high number of companies that had experienced a crisis had not known it until it was too late. How could this happen?

There were essentially two explanations: first, companies would experience precrisis events (known as prodromes, or warning signs, which is the first of the four critical stages in the anatomy of a crisis) but not recognize the immediate or potential significance of them until it was too late; or, second, they missed these events altogether.

(There also was a third explanation: sometimes a manager would spot impending trouble but could not get his superior’s attention or, worse, the shoot-the-messenger syndrome ...