The Risk in Risk Assessment
A powerful tool Effective risk assessment is critical for effective crisis communication planning. You need to know what could happen in order to identify affected stakeholders, map their concerns, prepare messaging and plan an ongoing response communication plan. The good news is that one should be available to you; risk assessments are what planners do! […]
You Say Tomato, I Say Tomahto
In the response world, abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms (look it up!) are unavoidable. Complex titles are easier to recite and remember when reduced to a few letters, so Agencies become initialisms (DSHS, WaDOE), response systems become acronyms (NIMS), people become abbreviations (APIO). Even acronyms become acronyms (TMAtM = Too Many Acronyms to Mention). Two of […]
Becoming ‘Us’
You know the ‘Us’ around you – the people you work with every day. You know these people and you’ve learned to work with them and trust them. But an incident has occured, and here you are, showing up to join the response and walking into the Joint Information Center, a room filled with ‘Them’! […]
We Have Met the Enemy and They is Us
America mythologizes the rugged individual; the lone cowboy out on the range who can herd the cattle, find the gold, rassle up the rustlers, woo the heroine and speak sagely to the townsfolk before dispatching the villain. We all want to be like Shane, or John Wayne. We synthesize this rugged individualism into our communication […]
Just the Facts, Ma’am?
It’s 2:00 AM, and the event you’ve feared has occurred. Something went bump in the night. The monster under the bed moved. Chains rattled in the hallway. You got ‘the call’. Something terrible has happened, and now you have to brush the cobwebs off your crisis communication plan and begin to communicate with your stakeholders. In […]