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Never Read The Critics

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If I am ever caught presenting public case-studies of my own crisis management stories, or critiquing the crisis management performance of fellow professionals running crises I know bugger all about from the outside, it really will be time to call it a day, and hang my head in shame. I have managed incidents, issues, and crises of one sort of another and in one way or another in both political and business worlds for over thirty years.

I have more “war stories” than you can shake a copy of PR Week at, and even picked up a couple of PR Week Awards for one of those episodes. But even with all that experience I know that I am not qualified to comment on the way other people have managed other crises, quite simply because having been on the inside of a good few of them, I know that people on the outside could never know or appreciate what the circumstances were on the inside that resulted in any particular course of action.

I always find it surprising and rather disappointing therefore when other so-called communications professionals do so. I am a consultant now but that is a very recent move. As an in-house communications director and client I hired and worked with around twenty different consultancies. I know that I would never have hired any of them if they had talked about any of “my” crises during of after the event. A well-managed crisis is just not something you talk about or comment on. Anyone who has ever been on the inside and done a good job, will know that there are plenty of things that should not be talked about. Crisis management might well encourage other people to be transparent, but not the crisis managers.

Some people like to sound off about text-book crisis management, meaning this as a compliment. But my view is that if its out of the book and off the shelf then there is something dramatically wrong. Crisis management is more like bespoke tailoring than off the peg. It is also probably good counsel to take the advice of great actors and directors, “never read the critics”.



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