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 […]
Them, That or Those – Who is a Stakeholder?
Who are we trying to engage with anyway? Pull out the objectives for the last exercise you attended. Dimes to dollars that JIC capability was measured by holding a press conference. Now review the differences between Liaison and Joint Information Center in the NRT manual, your Area Contingency Plan or your own organization’s crisis response […]
Sea Change
Every so often, a sea change occurs in our communication world. Sometimes without us realizing it. We tend to notice major sea change, when its impact makes recognition and understanding unavoidable. But some changes sneak up on us and change our world without us realizing it. In the FX television series “The People vs. O.J. Simpson: […]
We Are All Sausages
Trauma exposes the real us: We may look sleek and shiny on the outside, but the truth is that there are always messes inside. When trauma slices across our lives, it exposes our secret side even as it impacts our prepared public face. In every personal crisis, all our internal stresses and strains come to […]