A couple of months ago Thomas McKenzie – friend, colleague and frequent contributor here – and I were kicking around ideas for adding a podcast element to this blog. Days later he was deployed to Houston, then Corpus Christi for about three weeks of Hurricane Harvey incident response work. During and after that deployment we […]
Category Archives: Lessons Learned
Note: Brandon and I are amped to introduce readers to another savvy contributor to The Crisis Communicator blog. Terri Larson is one of the only industry-side crisis comms ninjas I’ve met who’s actually logged time as an “Initial” Public Information Officer for a major spill response and did so as the Incident Command System gods […]
When my team shows up, something has probably gone very wrong – but we’re at least equipped to deal with it.” I was the first one on the conference call. I hate conference calls. I jotted down the date and time in my notebook and a few things I wanted to ask while I waited […]
I learned from an early age that the sincere applications of “please” and “thank you” are the best tools with which to diffuse potentially hostile personal encounters on a day-to-day basis. That’s basic Jedi stuff. No one likes being stepped on or disrespected. (Especially not in public.) But smiling doesn’t get you very far when […]
BLUF: If your organization doesn’t aggressively organize response-based information gathering and analysis efforts, you’ll lose the ability right out of the gate to accurately track the tempo and temperature of public and media interest, understand where best to direct your future communication efforts and focus your speaker preparation work. In 1986, the practice of using […]
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