Cowboy Crisis Management

Erik Bernstein crisis communications, crisis management, crisis preparation, Crisis Prevention, crisis public relations, Crisis Response, PR, public relations, reputation management Leave a Comment

It takes a village to solve a crisis

Like it or not, crisis management is a team activity. An individual may direct and coordinate the team’s efforts, but it takes input from every department to do things right. In a recent CPA Insider article, Lee Terry drew a colorful metaphor for the situation:

Don’t be a cowboy. Cowboys are the enigmatic personification of the American west — independent sorts who might kiss the pretty girl but then disappear forever, or maybe shoot the bad guy — or a good guy — just for the heck of it. So when you are in a crisis management meeting and everyone else disagrees with your suggestion or idea, don’t decide to implement it anyway on your own. If you do, you may find yourself in a new crisis pretty quickly, and you won’t have a six shooter or a horse to get you out of it.

This isn’t to say that going against the majority is never right, but when you’re facing a room full of your (hopefully) trusted peers and everyone’s telling you that your idea’s a bad one, you’d be a fool to not take a step back and think again.

The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

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