Managing Corporate Communications in the Age of Restructuring, Crisis, and Litigation

Corporate executives, lawyers, and board of directors suffer from groupthink when confronted with a crisis, restructuring or litigation, which results in a communications meltdown that hurts a company’s number one asset—its reputation. This failure to understand how to communicate in distressed situations results in lost credibility and trust on a global basis in front of many target audiences: customers, employees, vendors, business partners, the media, analysts covering the company, lenders, bankers, regulatory agencies, and elected officials.


This book gives examples of corporations who failed to communicate in a crisis, litigation, or restructuring in this era of financial meltdowns. By analyzing real-life examples (Lehman Brothers, BP, Toyota, MGA/Mattel, etc.), it offers innovative solutions and communications strategies for decision makers to help avoid groupthink and keep good reputations intact. If you are a CEO, CFO, general counsel, board of director, or part of the C-suite, understanding how to communicate in a distressed situation is crucial.  A public relations nightmare might be just around the corner. Be prepared!


Key Features



--Outlines failures in corporate communications that has brought down successful executives, ruined their reputations, exiled them from the boardroom and ultimately destroyed their companies

--Shows how to re-educate boardroom executives to avoid groupthink and embrace critical reasoning to create innovative solutions when planning your communications strategies amid a crisis, restructuring or litigation

--Explains how independent intelligence gathering is crucial for executives during a distressed situation when formulating successful communications tactics

--Details how to change educational curriculum in business and law schools so that communications becomes a critical important subject and not just a throwaway elective

--Illustrates how determining strategies in distressed situations helps prepare decision makers to communicate key messages to target audiences at all other times

--Teaches how to use the media when communicating during a crisis, why employees are your most important audience, and how to proactively train senior executives and board members to understand how the communications process works when confronting distressed situations

--WAV offers GAP VII: The Seventh Communication and Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices Study from the USC Annenberg School, a checklist for performing an internal communications audit, and a presentation on effectively communicating during a litigation — available from the Web Added Value™ Download Resource Center at www.jrosspub.com