Christopher Lehane, former special assistant counsel to President Bill Clinton and press secretary for Vice President Al Gore, summarizes key lessons from his years of practicing crisis communications on the Hill in Masters of Disaster: The Ten Commandments of Damage Control. The book, which was co-authored with Mark Fabiani and Bill Guttentag, has been making the rounds on Washington’s top political blogs as a must-read for politicians caught with their pants down, either literally or figuratively.
While political communication is a main focus of the book, the authors define a crisis very broadly as “something that is putting you or your organization’s trust at risk with those very audiences…whose trust you must be able to maintain to survive and thrive.” This approach makes their advice applicable to everything from front-page political scandals to everyday disasters, such as inadvertently hitting “reply-all” when sending an email.
Lehane, Fabiani and Guttentag organize the basic tenets of crisis communications into ten, easy-to-understand commandments. These tips range from speaking to your core audience to embracing the need for full disclosure to exposing the self-interested agenda of the opposition.
However, to their credit, the authors recognize that there really can’t be any hard and fast rules in crisis communications because every situation creates its own unique challenges. Their commandments are really more like guidelines, and the authors present an exception to every rule, which gives the book a more nuanced and realistic approach. For example, the seventh commandment, “respond with overwhelming force,” refers to the need to identify one key message to reinforce and repeat at every possible opportunity. But the authors also warn against “message handcuffs,” meaning that while organizations should try to stick with their original messages, they must be willing to change if these don’t appear to be resonating with key audiences — even if that means weathering criticism for being inconsistent.
The book’s plethora of current case studies is by far its greatest asset. It covers incidents as recent as the controversy over Mitt Romney’s tax returns and the public outcry following Rush Limbaugh’s harsh comments about Sandra Fluke. Each commandment is accompanied by several real-world examples of both good and bad crisis management that help clarify and elaborate on the authors’ points. However, I was extremely disappointed by the lack of case studies from Lehane’s stint as the Clinton administration’s crisis communications guru. Marketing for the book focused on his role in helping Clinton navigate the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the threat of impeachment, but these were actually not discussed in great detail. Since Clinton broke almost every commandment in the book but still emerged as one of history’s most beloved presidents, this inclusion would have added a very interesting dimension to the book.
Because the case studies are impressively up-to-date and could serve as a good foundation for class discussions, I would recommend using excerpts of this book in a crisis communications course. Beyond the examples, however, much of the book offers fairly vague, general advice that would be insufficient for classroom use. Although the ten commandments might be helpful for a politician looking for an introduction to the field of crisis communications, they lack the level of detail needed by future professional practitioners. Overall, Masters of Disaster makes for an entertaining read but is probably not the most effective resource to turn to when actually preparing for or managing a crisis.
Brooke Shaffer
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
While political communication is a main focus of the book, the authors define a crisis very broadly as “something that is putting you or your organization’s trust at risk with those very audiences…whose trust you must be able to maintain to survive and thrive.” This approach makes their advice applicable to everything from front-page political scandals to everyday disasters, such as inadvertently hitting “reply-all” when sending an email.
Lehane, Fabiani and Guttentag organize the basic tenets of crisis communications into ten, easy-to-understand commandments. These tips range from speaking to your core audience to embracing the need for full disclosure to exposing the self-interested agenda of the opposition.
However, to their credit, the authors recognize that there really can’t be any hard and fast rules in crisis communications because every situation creates its own unique challenges. Their commandments are really more like guidelines, and the authors present an exception to every rule, which gives the book a more nuanced and realistic approach. For example, the seventh commandment, “respond with overwhelming force,” refers to the need to identify one key message to reinforce and repeat at every possible opportunity. But the authors also warn against “message handcuffs,” meaning that while organizations should try to stick with their original messages, they must be willing to change if these don’t appear to be resonating with key audiences — even if that means weathering criticism for being inconsistent.
The book’s plethora of current case studies is by far its greatest asset. It covers incidents as recent as the controversy over Mitt Romney’s tax returns and the public outcry following Rush Limbaugh’s harsh comments about Sandra Fluke. Each commandment is accompanied by several real-world examples of both good and bad crisis management that help clarify and elaborate on the authors’ points. However, I was extremely disappointed by the lack of case studies from Lehane’s stint as the Clinton administration’s crisis communications guru. Marketing for the book focused on his role in helping Clinton navigate the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the threat of impeachment, but these were actually not discussed in great detail. Since Clinton broke almost every commandment in the book but still emerged as one of history’s most beloved presidents, this inclusion would have added a very interesting dimension to the book.
Because the case studies are impressively up-to-date and could serve as a good foundation for class discussions, I would recommend using excerpts of this book in a crisis communications course. Beyond the examples, however, much of the book offers fairly vague, general advice that would be insufficient for classroom use. Although the ten commandments might be helpful for a politician looking for an introduction to the field of crisis communications, they lack the level of detail needed by future professional practitioners. Overall, Masters of Disaster makes for an entertaining read but is probably not the most effective resource to turn to when actually preparing for or managing a crisis.
Brooke Shaffer
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill