Communicators’ Corner

These posts are written to encourage thoughtful consideration of the entire range of communication strategy, plans and effectiveness. They’re based on my experiences in actual responses, as well as drills, exercises, tabletops and crisis communication plan reviews.

Making the Best out of the Worst: #4

Marc Mullen | February 12, 2025

This post is the fourth ‘Lessons Learned’ from my experiences in several Worst Case Drills (WCDs) held in 2024. Each ‘Lessons Learned’ focuses on a specific issue revealed in the WCDs that affects communicators’ ability to communicate in a crisis. I plan on posting ome each week over the next several weeks. Feel free to use this information to improve your own planning or response actions. I hope it helps!

Lessons Learned I’ve posted to date:

#1: The approval dragon lives!

#2: Don’t do your old job in your new job

#3: Effective initial actions ensure effective initial messaging

I’ve included a ‘Mini Improvement Plan’ for each Lessons Learned, to help you ensure your readiness in an actual incident. Each action should fit into a coffee break, unless it reveals the need for more work – no guarantees then! (But contact me if you need help!)

A quick reminder: Effective drill performance is NOT the end goal of attendance: Effective RESPONSE performance is. Don’t fixate on ‘winning’ a drill; focus on being ready for an actual event. If a review of your drill capabilities reveals shortcomings, don’t wait for the next WCD. Fix it now!

4) Build cooperation in the JIC

In a major response, the Joint Information Center (JIC) will be made up of personnel representing all partner agencies in the response, as well as the Responsible Party (RP). Where do they fit, and how do they start working together? Here’s specific guidance from the Pacific Northwest Contingency Plan’s JIC manual:

“When an incident occurs, there is a high demand for fast and accurate information. Public perception is often shaped by impressions formed in the first hours of a response.

When a state environmental or emergency management agency, the USCG, or the EPA first learn about a spill, the respective PIOs should quickly contact one another to share information in an effort to release a joint media statement. The goal should be to get this first release and/or social media post approved and issued within the first two hours after notification is received.

If a Responsible Party (RP) is named, PIOs should include the RP’s lead response communicator in information sharing. The RP’s response communicator should be identified in the RP’s applicable Emergency Response Plan. The RP’s response communicator will have access to detailed information regarding the RP’s preparation and response that could be valuable in clearly describing the incident and response activities.”

Contact and Coordinate

There you have it! How to work together to communicate effectively when an incident occurs. Early contact and coordination is crucial to ensure cooperation throughout a response. By working together, response partners can share common information from multiple sources with a shared audience. This paves the way for public trust and acceptance of response actions.

How can this work out in an actual event?

How does the RP’s lead response communicator foster cooperation in early stages of a response? What practical actions should you focus on in the critical initial hours?

Provide rapid and direct stakeholder communication from the inception of the response. Failure to communicate quickly and directly with stakeholders is equivalent to failing to respond.
- Determine the impact of the incident on the surrounding public, including the anticipated level of stakeholder interest and sensitivity.
- Determine the key concerns of stakeholders, including the potency of each concern.
- Publish an Initial Statement as quickly as possible.
- Publish appropriate Key Messages to alleviate identified key stakeholder concerns.
- Provide additional updates, as much as possible in coordination with other agencies.
Reach out to response agencies to coordinate ongoing stakeholder communication content.
- Share your published response updates with other agencies.
- Share your initial assessment of incident impact and key concerns.
- Upon formation of a JIC, join the JIC and offer published content for initial JIC use. This content provides initial information until JIC gets up to speed.
Commit to the long run! A JIC is made up of multiple qualified communicators, serving over the duration of the response.
- Cooperate with other JIC members to determine which role best fits each communicator.
- Agree with how each organization represented in the JIC will jointly share content created in the JIC. Preserve one voice for response information!
- Bloom where you’re planted! Avoid conflict and fit in for the long run! There will be ample opportunity to fill other roles over the duration of the response.

Improvement Plan

Determine which organizations will join Unified Command should a worst-case incident occur at your facility.
Identify each organization’s lead PIO. They know who you are from your Emergency Response Plan, but you don’t know them.
Add their contact information to your Crisis Communication Plan.
- Include them with your list of internal communication resources.
- Include them in all content distribution from the initial statement on.
Schedule a meeting with them NOW to walk through the initial information flow in a response.
- Know how you’ll work together before you have to!
- Ask them for their other communicators and associated contact information.
- If you are participating in a WCD soon, be sure to engage with the other participating communicators. Take advantage of this opportunity to start an ongoing relationship.

Interested? Want more information? Contact me!

On a related note: Does your Crisis Communication Plan provide guidance and tools needed for effective stakeholder communication in a crisis? Do you worry or wonder about its capability and currency? Here’s how you can be sure:

Ensure coordination between plans. Review both Crisis Communication Plan and Emergency Response Plan to be sure they play well together.
Assess your Crisis Communication Plan’s capability. I use 30 specific measurements.
Recommend Plan edits. Draft the edits needed in Plan or policy language.
Implement Plan edits. Add or edit content needed to maximize Plan effectiveness.
Enjoy a newfound peace of mind. Both you and your plans are ready for the worst!

I’m happy to work with you to ensure your success! Here are two steps you can take right now:

Contact me to set up an appointment to discuss my Plan review process. No obligation!
Contact me NOW! The first person to request a meeting to discuss the process will receive a credit for the first 8 hours of my Plan review services.

Making the Best out of the Worst: #3

Marc Mullen | February 3, 2025

The greatest of all drills is the Worst Case Drill (WCD), designed to simulate a worst case incident that fully tests an operator’s response capability. A WCD gives oil handling operations a greater understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their activation of oil spill contingency plans, equipment, personnel and procedures. A well planned WCD also tests the effectiveness of stakeholder communication.

Since communicators attend only their own organizations’ WCDs, I’ve compiled a set of lessons learned from multiple WCDs that I’ve attended on 2024, into ‘Lessons Learned’ to share with current and future PIOs and JIC participants.

I’ve included a mini ‘Improvement Plan’ for each of the lessons learned. The suggested actions can help ensure readiness for stakeholder communication in an actual incident. Each Improvement Plan action should fit into a coffee break, unless it reveals the need for more work – no guarantees then! (But contact me if you need help!)

I’ll post a new Lesson Learned each week over the next several weeks. Feel free to use this information to improve your own planning or response actions. I hope they help!

Effective initial actions ensure effective initial messaging

…Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, booted and spurred, with a heavy stride, on the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.

Now he patted his horse’s side, now gazed on the landscape far and near, then impetuous stamped the earth and turned and tightened his saddle-girth;

But mostly he watched with eager search the belfry-tower of the old North Church, as it rose above the graves on the hill, lonely and spectral and somber and still.

And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height, a glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, but lingers and gazes, till full on his sight a second lamp in the belfry burns!…

Paul Revere’s Ride, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 –1882

OK, we’re not quite Paul Revere saving a nascent nation, but communicators do have a clarion call in a response: We are the vital link between response actions and stakeholders’ trust!

It takes time for a response to roll out and this is reflected in drill scenarios, which typically start a few hours into the response. Actual incidents seldom start this way. They start with one person or a small group of people, in charge of all initial actions in reflection of a core tenet of Incident Command; “You are in charge!” The first people on site are in charge of the response until more qualified individuals arrive.

A response grows to match the incident. As additional responders arrive, the response coalesces into an increasingly complex Incident Command structure, to Unified Command if applicable.

This process occurs as rapidly as possible, but mobilization of people and equipment is bound by time and space; this is one reason on-location response equipment is a regulatory requirement for many facilities and operations.

Responses start with notification:

A key initial activity is notification, often mandated as the first action after ensuring the safety of responders and affected public. Every Emergency Response Plan includes some form of an Initial Incident Report, accompanied by a Notification List of key contacts: Facility and corporate leadership, responders and response organizations, regulators, sensitive populations, etc. This ensures that all the organizations that may have to take their own actions in response to an incident are notified promptly.

Even major responses start with a time-and-resource-limited initial response. It takes time to deploy boom, time to order resources, time to travel, time for briefings, time to actually begin the physical response! Notification begins the process of mobilizing responders, still bound by time and space

Rapid stakeholder communication is critical:

Of all the activities needed from the inception of a response, rapid stakeholder communication is the most critical. Public concerns increase at the scale of response awareness: Unbound by time or space, stakeholder awareness expands exponentially, driven by observations, interpretation, opinion, concern and alarm.

In a major event, the public will be aware, alarmed and active immediately. Without reliable, factual information this dynamic leads to escalating concern; missing information leads to misinformation!

Key resources for stakeholder communication:

Response communicators need five resources to respond in pace with erupting community concerns:

Rapid notification: Communicators must be included on the notification list to receive initial information. Seconds count, minutes can’t be wasted: The communication team needs to be activated at the same time executive leaders are. No second tier! If you’re not notified, you can’t meet stakeholder needs.
An evaluation tool: Communicators must have the capability to review initial response information and determine stakeholder concerns and sensitivity. If you don’t know the scope of stakeholder sensitivity, you can’t satisfy their concerns.
Initial content: An effective evaluation will identify key facts to share, initial impact on stakeholders, and content needed to alleviate their concerns. An effective response communication plan will include initial statement templates and key messages for predetermined stakeholder concerns. Slow content creation will result in slow stakeholder communication.
Rapid review and approval: Communicators need immediate access to individuals who can review and approve drafted content. These individuals must know the criticality of initial stakeholder communication and have approval rights. Slow review and approval in approval leads to delay. Delay leads to distrust.
Dissemination capability: Communicators need immediate access to sensitive populations. Distribution lists should be identified, prepared and available for use, and the platforms for sharing approved content need to be available. You aren’t communicating if you’re not sharing information directly to your stakeholders!

Improvement Plan:

Are you are included on all notification lists? Be sure you’re a top-level contact, so you have the most time possible for your initial activities.
Do you have an evaluation process? Be sure you’re ready to effectively conduct an incident evaluation to determine stakeholder concerns and quickly share it with leadership.
Can you write your content? Can you rapidly provide drafts of information that meets initial stakeholder concerns? Your timeline to do so should be minutes, not hours!
Can you use your content? Test your review and approval process by drafting content and sharing it with known approvers.
Can you share your content? Review your dissemination lists and tools. Determine if they’re up to date and available for your immediate use.

Confused? Alarmed? Want more information? Contact me!

Making the Best out of the Worst: #2

Marc Mullen | January 28, 2025

The greatest of all drills is the Worst Case Drill (WCD). A WCD simulates a worst case incident to fully test an operator’s response capability. Participating in a WCD allows oil handling operations to gain a greater understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their oil spill contingency plans, equipment, and procedures.

Since communicators usually attend only their own organizations’ WCDs, I’ve compiled a set of lessons learned from multiple WCDs that I attended into ‘Lessons Learned’ to share with current and future PIOs and JIC participants.

I’ve included a mini ‘Improvement Plan’ for each of the lessons learned. These suggestions for specific actions may help ensure readiness for an actual incident. Each Improvement Plan should fit into a coffee break, unless it reveals the need for more work – no guarantees then! (But contact me if you need help!)

I’ll be posting one Lesson Learned per week over the next several weeks. Feel free to use this information to improve your own planning or response actions. I hope they help!

2) Don’t do your old job in your new job

The primary WCD objective is to test response capability. Each section of the ICS structure is tested using specific injects to measure response effectiveness. Specific deliverables for the JIC are typically focused on:

Effectiveness of the PIO in representing stakeholders to Incident Command.
Effectiveness of the PIO in representing Incident Command to stakeholders.
Ability to develop a coordinated, cooperative JIC with responding organizations’ communicators.
Providing an appropriate level of counsel and content the JIC provides to Incident Command.
Effectively preparing for, and conducting, a press conference or community meeting.
Identification of stakeholder concerns and creation of content needed to address each one.
Timeliness and pertinence of communication content.
Effective social media management.
And so on

Each WCD requires a strong focus on JIC structure and roles, including effective placement of each available communicator, typically directed by either policy or people: What do the Area Contingency Plan or Joint Information Center Manual prescribe for participating communicators. Who is available and what is their training?

Most JICs invoke some variant of ‘Most Qualified Individual’ (MQI): Who is the best qualified person for each position? This qualification is determined by both training and experience. Higher trained, more experienced communicators will be placed in the most critical positions.

How do you attain these positions? That’s the second reason WCDs are conducted: To offer people the opportunity to gain experience in a ‘practice’ setting that will increase performance in a real response.

A WCD provides a great opportunity to try out new roles and positions. We often jump at this opportunity, and we often run into the same issue: The stress level inherent in the drill causes us to fall back to actions we’re familiar with instead of practicing the actions needed in our new position. This is not unique to the JIC, drills or responses. It’s a common behavior in every facet of our lives: stress freezes us and causes us to seek and stay in our ‘safe place’, which is seldom the new role or behavior we need to succeed.

What happens? Let’s take a detour to fast food.

I worked my way through college at a pizza parlor, rising to the level of assistant manager. In that role, I was responsible for running the store on our busiest nights. One night, we were short staffed, running out of everything and there was a line of customers out the door. To ease the load on the pizza cooks I assigned the slowest worker to run the cash register, which gave more time between each order while managing customer expectations (nobody waits for their pizza until they’ve ordered it!).

We were out of sliced tomatoes, so I ran into the prep room to cut more. I was faster at slicing tomatoes than anyone else, so this was a best use of my time. Pretty good management decisions, right?

My boss didn’t think so: He walked into the prep room and asked what I was doing. I told him what and why. He disagreed. “No matter how good you are at slicing tomatoes, your job on a night like this is to run the register, meet the customers and keep your crew running right. It’s not about slicing tomatoes; it’s about being in front of your customers!”

What had I done wrong? I’d reverted back to my safety zone of being the fastest tomato slicer, and I’d stepped away from what was most important. My crew needed my leadership more than they needed my tomatoes.

The same thing can happen to us in a WCD – or a real response! When we step into a new role in the JIC, and we experience the stress of the new position, we can inadvertently revert to known, safe behavior. If we’ve stepped into the JIC Manager position, we might revert to writing a press release (Information Creation role) or answering inquiry calls (Inquiry Management role). If we’re trying out the PIO position, we may revert to making the JIC run better (JIC Manager role). We know these roles, and we’re safe in them. But we’re not meeting requirements of our new position. And we’re failing the response.

WCDs are rightfully touted as an opportunity to test knowledge and capability, work with people who will be next to you in a real event, and practice new roles in a safe environment. At the same time, the JIC function is being graded and the grade earned will be a part of the overall drill success or failure. So, it’s a good idea to maximize your preparation so you can maximize your capability and success!

Improvement Plan:

Ambition is be rewarded, so go for it! Go ahead and try on a higher position!
Read all the pertinent training materials. Take the available ICS courses.
Remind yourself that your new role is going to be the only role you have. Resolve to perform only the functions inherent in your new role. Don’t go back to slicing tomatoes!
Practice your new role before participating in the WCD. This requires a combination of study and a response walk-through. Participating in a walk-through with a mentor – an experienced communicator you work with, to give you a combination of knowledge and muscle memory that will stress-proof you for a drill or, more importantly, an actual event.
Have your mentor conduct a mini-TTX with you. (What’s a mini-TTX? Ask me!)

Making the Best out of the Worst

Marc Mullen | January 21, 2025

Regulators in the states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho require oil handling operators to maintain oil spill contingency plans and to participate in a drill regimen to be sure each is ready to launch an effective spill response. As the Washington State Department of Ecology states on their website:

“We require oil-handling operations — such as facilities, pipelines, large commercial vessels, and railroads — to have oil spill contingency plans that detail how they would respond to oil spills. We review the plans and test them in complex deployment and tabletop drills as part of our public service.”

Deployment and tabletop drills include what are known at Worst Case Drills (WCDs). A Worst Case Drill simulates a worst case incident that fully tests an operator’s response capability. Participating in a WCD allows oil handling operations to gain a greater understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their oil spill contingency plans, equipment, and procedures.

Planning for significant oil and hazardous spills is conducted through a three-state (Washington, Oregon, and Idaho) Northwest Area Contingency Plan (NWACP). The NWACP provides policies and tools to ensure a rapid, effective response if an incident occurs. WCDs are scheduled in a triennial cycle, allowing time for a complete review of each WCD to determine lessons learned and develop an improvement plan for each operator. When implemented, lessons learned from WCDs improve operators’ capability to respond. This is good for everyone; the operators, the environment and the public.

In 2024, I had the opportunity to attend five WCDs held in Washington and Oregon. I participated in different roles in each WCD as needed, including;

Public Information Officer (PIO), Assistant PIO (APIO) or Joint Information Center (JIC) Manager,
Responsible Party (RP) PIO for initial, pre-Unified Command (UC) stakeholder communication,
Liaison Officer (LOFR), or
JIC support (drills are often understaffed, so it is common for each participant to fill multiple roles).

Since communicators usually attend only their own organizations’ WCDs, I’ve compiled lessons learned from the WCDs that I attended into ‘Lessons Learned’ to share with current and future PIOs and JIC participants.

I’ve included a brief ‘Improvement Plan’ for each of the lessons learned. These are suggestions for specific actions that will help ensure readiness in an actual incident. Each Improvement Plan should fit into a coffee break, unless it reveals the need for more work – no guarantees then! (But contact me if you need help!)

I’ll be posting one Lesson Learned per week over the next several weeks. Feel free to use this information to improve your own planning or response actions. I hope they help!

1) The approval dragon lives!

In several of the WCDs I participated in, it was difficult to gain Unified Command (UC) approval of draft content in a timely manner. This is an ongoing dynamic: Everyone agrees that stakeholder communication is critical to an effective response. People need to know what has happened and what is being done about it.

Despite this and all the pledges to support rapid stakeholder communication, getting release approval from UC remains an obstacle course. Every PIO has stories of delays in the approval process:

Unified Command is ‘too busy’ to approve right now – come back later!
Everyone wants to rewrite the release – and PIO ends up with multiple, often conflicting edits.
A single edit holds up approval of the entire document- a minor change holds up a major release.
One of the approvers isn’t available – PIO has to track them down and hope their edits don’t conflict.
New information is available due to approval delays.

The list goes on. A PIO can begin to feel like they’re the medieval knight fighting the approval dragon to rescue the fair maiden.

Enough metaphors! Approval delays are real, and they matter. Failure to deliver information to concerned stakeholders can throw an entire response off track and severely damage the reputation of the responders – both public and private. In one of the WCDs I attended, UC didn’t approve draft content in a timely manner, for hours after the ‘incident’ occurred. As a result, an afternoon Press Briefing became the default mechanism to distribute content to the general public. To compensate for this lack of updated information from UC, inquiries received by JIC or Liaison had to be answered solely from initial and update statements that had been published by the Responsible Party (RP) before UC was formed. While this demonstrated the value of early response information provided by the RP, an effective UC approval process is critical for an effective delivery of ongoing response information to stakeholders.

Why do approval challenges persist? How much time do you have? Let’s start with one key issue: While UC sees the importance of effective stakeholder communication, it isn’t the only priority they deal with. They may not even see it as their highest priority.

Since timely stakeholder communication may not be UC’s highest priority, it must to be the PIO’s highest priority. Instituting an effective approval process is the first and highest responsibility of the PIO. Here are some suggested actions for establishing an effective approval process:

The RP PIO, who receives the initial notification call, should immediately determine the Incident’s impact on the public. I suggest using an Incident Communication Worksheet (ICW) to determine severity, and an Incident Communications Report (ICR) to share results with Incident Command. The ICW rapidly guides the PIO in determining stakeholders’ concerns and guides creation of Key Messages/FAQs that address their concerns. The ICR prepares the information for Incident Command in an effective and concise format.
Using information from the ICW, the PIO creates an Initial Statement (hopefully from a short and easy to use template) and important Key Messages/FAQs.
The PIO shares both the Initial Statement, Key Messages/FAQs and the ICR with the Responsible Party Incident Commander (RPIC).
The PIO requests immediate review and approval of Initial Statement and Key Messages/FAQs.
Both Initial Statement and Key Messages/FAQs will serve as Holding Statements unless incident severity mandates sharing them directly with the public, in which case the PIO uses RP distribution tools to share the information.
Note: This process of creating and sharing pre-UC content with agency responders is included in the Northwest Area Contingency Plan JIC Manual.

These actions ensure that the first voice of the response to stakeholders is from the RP and codifies a review and approval process built on accurate Incident Command understanding of the priority of stakeholder communication.

To carry this understanding over to Unified Command, the RP PIO shares the ICR at initial Command meetings, either the Incident Briefing, initial UC meeting or Incident Objectives Meeting. The RPIC should ensure that the PIO is given time to share the ICR at the earliest meeting possible. After presentation of the ICR, the RPIC should request immediate review of any additional draft content.

Improvement Plan: What we can do to be sure of a timely approval process

Meet with your organization’s designated Incident Commander and walk them through your incident assessment tools.
Review the content creation process. Review the statement templates that will be used to create initial draft content.
Help them understand the value of information you will bring to them for approval, and the urgency of an efficient approval process.

Need help? Have questions or comments? Please contact me. I can help!

The unexamined life is not worth living

Marc Mullen | January 15, 2024

Per Wikipedia, “The unexamined life is not worth living” is a famous phrase supposedly uttered by Socrates at his trial for impiety and corrupting youth, for which he was subsequently sentenced to death. Regardless of Socrates’ fate related to these words, it’s a great dictum to follow. And it’s particularly important for communicators to note for our own integrity.

As professional truth-tellers, our job is to ensure that our stakeholders recognize and appreciate our employer’s reputation. So what do we do when we’re attempting to protect or restore a reputation that is being attacked by its own corporate culture?

Tony Jaques, Owner and Owner and Director of Issue Outcomes Pty Ltd, offers some compelling thoughts in his recent post: How moral blindness breeds plummeting corporate reputation

“Qantas. PwC. Rio Tinto. Optus. Telstra. Medibank. Facebook/Meta. Twitter/X. Any of the big banks.

The sound you can hear across the big end of town is the shredding of reputations in the wake of corporate crises, often triggered by moral blindness.

Releasing the latest Roy Morgan Trust Index, CEO Michelle Levine said Australians have never been more distrusting of business since their risk monitor began in 2017, and distrust of corporations had soared dramatically after COVID.

“Once the crisis had passed,” she said, “they found the new freedoms they had enjoyed under the cover of COVID hard to relinquish, and a kind of Moral Blindness became endemic.”

Referring to the unprecedented decline in trust of Qantas, she asserted there was moral blindness everywhere, from appalling call center delays, canceled flights, and snail’s-pace fare refunds, to former CEO Alan Joyce refusing to pay back any of the $2 billion in “corporate welfare”, despite the company surging back to billion-dollar profitability.

Of course, Qantas was not the only company to be accused of making unfair profits during a cost-of-living crisis. Australian supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths, for example, came under attack after announcing bumper annual profits of over $1 billion each at a time of food insecurity.

While business experts explained that such profits were not extraordinary given the size of these companies, Amy Booth and Danny Carney from a Tasmanian consumer protest group seemed to be reflecting a wider opinion when they declared that people “…understand they’re being screwed by the two big supermarkets.”

“They know it’s unfair that they make billions in profits while people steal or starve themselves to survive.”

Unsurprisingly, Coles and Woolworths made reassuring statements acknowledging that many people were doing it tough, and both pledged they were looking for ways to help reduce consumer costs.

However, the challenge for issue and crisis managers is not to try to reconcile polarised views about the competing demands of consumers and shareholders. It’s to recognize that, irrespective of the facts, the opinion and experience of consumers, investors, the media, and other stakeholders is what determines trust and reputation. Brand is what you say about yourself, while reputation is what other people say about you. And corporate reputation overall is plummeting.

Two key reasons are a perceived decline in management behavior and a rise in moral blindness from a supposed growing corporate culture of money over community responsibility. Moreover, it doesn’t even matter if that’s not true.

Corporate culture is how organisations behave when people aren’t looking. But more and more people are now looking, and too often they are mightily (un)impressed by what they see. Whether it’s Royal Commissions into the banking and casino industries; the latest news media exposé; or the rapidly increasing pace of legal action by various corporate cops against a growing list of business wrongdoers. Little wonder that reputation is increasingly at risk.

While experts argue about the exact numbers, most agree that reputation generally accounts for 50-60% of the share value of corporations, and much higher in many cases, depending on the industry. That is a massive amount of value at stake.

Take the case of BP in the UK which was already under pressure because of a massive boost to profits and executive bonuses on the back of rising petrol prices because of war in Ukraine. Then last month the CEO was sacked because of “workplace flings” and BP’s share value fell by $3.6 billion.

Managers and communicators need to fully understand that reputation is a core business asset – driven by what you do, not by what you say or what you promise – and there is very little chance it will improve while bad behavior continues.”

Thank you for sharing this insight, Tony!

So what does a communicator do?

Whether undertaking day-to-day communication, response or recovery communication, the communicator has a unique role: We represent our organization to the public, and we represent the public to our organization. We’re pretty good at the first one, but often lacking in the second. There’s little reason to expect an organization to see itself as the public does: It’s up to communicators to point it out. Doing so may be a career altering moment, but it is the dividing line between communication and obfuscation. At the end of your career, do you want to be remembered for your integrity, or your lack thereof?