Jim Lukaszewski on Preparation for Crisis

One of the more current stories in the news involves Penn State University and the sexual abuse scandals there. And the prevailing opinion is that the university has stumbled, fumble, and mumbled through the public relations aspects of this project. I do this all the time, and I've actually never seen an organization really communicate effectively in the first few moments of a crisis. It's almost impossible to do. Crises begin abruptly, surprisingly explosively, and dealing with them takes some preparation and some thinking, and that takes time. And that makes our responses look like they're unprepared, because they generally are. Crisis news ripens badly, it always does, and things get a lot worse before they get.