An often overlooked crisis communications tool – which has more power than many people give it credit for – is the after action report (AAR), or “lessons learned report,” if that sounds more familiar. A well-written AAR has several inherent benefits: It provides your leadership with a clear picture of you/your team’s important incident actions. […]
Tag Archives: The Fundamentals
I live in one of the Rockefeller Foundation’s “100 Resilient Cities,” which is a program funding innovative thinking and action to overcome issues that challenge preparedness, response and recovery during crisis. Norfolk for instance, where I make my home, faces issues of serious coastal flooding problems and the inadequacy of its infrastructure to support mass evacuations. Resiliency is easy […]
My recent series of posts covering the basics of crisis communications generated a few questions from pros who have the corporate comms thing wired, but would like to see more granularity on the mechanics of building a crisis comms program. You ask, we deliver. This post will expound on our 101 post, “Preparing for the […]
Two years into my first crisis communications job, I felt salty. I had my “trial by fire” case in the first month, and came out of it unscathed. I had been interviewed by reporters hundreds of times for dozens of emergencies. Given the facts of a case, I could whip out a serviceable, well-constructed news […]
In·for·ma·tion /infərˈmāSHən/ noun: knowledge that you get about someone or something; the communication or receiving of knowledge or intelligence. Fact /fakt/ noun: something that actually exists; reality; a truth verifiable from experience or observation. A common thread running through our profession is that the simplest of concepts are often overlooked or taken for granted. That’s bad news for organizations responding to emergencies and crises, (but good […]
The Crisis Communicator 