Dick’s Sporting Goods Followed Its Conscience on Guns—and It Paid Off
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 […]
Use Peacetime Wisely: Plan Now For What To Say And Do In A Crisis
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 […]
Why Empathy is Critical When Disaster Strikes
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 […]
Surviving Social Media
By Thomas Fladung, Hennes Communications The public school policy manual included this under the “Social Media Use” heading: “An employee’s personal or private use of social media may have unintended consequences.” You think? Consider a few “unintended consequences” of recent vintage involving public school representatives. A Texas high school English teacher was fired in 2019 […]
7 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Crisis Communications Firm
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. […]
The Staff of Uvalde’s Local Paper Cover the Worst Day of Their Lives
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 […]
Chaotic Communication Adds to Pain of Texas School Shooting
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 […]
Why Wall Street Can’t Escape the Culture Wars
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 […]
The Handmaid’s Tale
From our friend and colleague, Richard Levick at Levick.com… We are an over-polled society, a fact which subsequently influences politicians to prefer to follow rather than lead. Yet, how is it possible that up until U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked, only 20% of Americans thought […]
5 Ways to Protect Your Company’s Reputation During a Crisis
By Jon Gilks, writing for CommsCo… Whether it’s a global pandemic or a local power outage, no business is completely immune from a crisis. The global banking and finance sectors are no different. Most recently, the impact of Russian sanctions and the Ukraine War have been a major cause for concern in the industry. For […]