All posts by James Donnelly

communications coaching

Inspired Tips for Spokespeople

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Check out this clip from Big Think featuring James Martin, Jesuit priest and author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life.  Of course, you may recognize Father Martin as The Colbert Report Chaplain. 

Here, he talks about his experiences on the set of the newsroom comedy show:

Be charitable.  Represent well.  Have some fun, even if you’re nervous.

Fairly great advice for any spokesperson.   Or any social media networker.  For that matter, it’s great advice for humanity.

opinion and insights

Paine’s Echoes

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My passion for history was recently reignited through DVDs offered by The Teaching Company.   (I highly recommend courses by professors Guelzo, Childers and Fears.)   The courses help me draw insights from some of the world’s greatest challenges and apply them to modern-day crisis management. 

You think today’s corporate leaders-in-crisis are up against the wall?  Compare them to General Washington’s challenge in early December, 1776, when the prospect of sustained independence for the American states (nee, colonies) was most bleak. 

Washington’s dwindling Continental army and militia were badly defeated in New York, chased across New Jersey and were licking their wounds on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River.  Congress recently abandoned Philadelphia for Baltimore, to add distance from advancing British Regiments.  Many soldiers were lost to battle or defections (indeed, nearly 3,000 swore allegiance to the king through an amnesty proclamation offered by the British).  Remaining soldiers were near the end of the one-year term of enlistment previously imposed by Congress.  Continue reading Paine’s Echoes →

opinion and insights

Bird Watching: Crisis Punditry

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Lately it seems crisis management experts have become quite comfortable publicly commenting on the crisis du jour.      

I’m not fond of drawing conclusions about a crisis while it’s ongoing.  The primary reason:  it’s tough to have a robust opinion based only on publicly reported information.  To me, that’s like a physician offering a second opinion based only on a description of symptoms by the patient’s mom.      

Yet, many crisis pundits (colleagues and competitors alike) give no such pause.  When a new crisis strikes, crisis management pros swarm like swallows to blogs, newspapers, magazines and broadcast news studios.      

I’ve begun watching this space closely like a birder, taking notes on different styles.  I now fancy that crisis punditry can be categorized along some ornithological profiles:    

Continue reading Bird Watching: Crisis Punditry →

crisis response

Analyzing Five Commonly Held Beliefs about Managing 2.0 Crises

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Crisis managers prefer to operate within established protocols, rules, laws and beliefs.  Therefore, it’s not surprising these have already been established in the nascent area of 2.0 crises – those that erupt online.  However, the online networking space is changing so fast it’s prudent if we didn’t etch our beliefs in stone just yet.

This is the underpinning of my article in the current issue (Winter 2010) of The Public Relations Strategist, one of the official publications of PRSA.  My intent is not to be contrarian, but rather to be more complete.  The full article is available through the link above, and a PDF copy is also available here — “Sudden Impact: An analysis of five commonly held beliefs about crises that erupt online” — and also in the Articles and Links section of this Web site.

In case you want the Cliffs Notes summary:

Continue reading Analyzing Five Commonly Held Beliefs about Managing 2.0 Crises →

planning and prevention

Sharing a Lament with our BCP Brethren

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A pair of business continuity planning (BCP) experts recently voiced concerns about their profession.  Tim Armit from the U.K. recently observed that the scope of business continuity too often gets restricted to physical disasters and IT failures.  Ken Simpson later weighs in from Australia with an observation that BCP is becoming more fixated on management systems and certifications, rather than the holistic ability to manage incidents and recover.

We who focus on crisis/reputation management should echo their concerns.

Continue reading Sharing a Lament with our BCP Brethren →