Katie Paine is My Hero

Hello loyal, I'm sure willing, participants of my blog, I am writing to you all today to spread the good news of Katie Delahaye Paine's wonder book Measure What Matters. In this fun and perhaps even last installment of my weekly blog series analyzing and commenting on Ms. Paine's work, we will be taking a closer look at her chapter "Threats to Your Reputation"—specifically when she articulates Grunig, Grunig, and Dozier four principles of a crisis period.

1. The Relationship Principle: This principle is pretty straightforward and states that organizations may be able to stop and withhold crises simply through having a good relationship with their publics. This relates back to the concept that in times of issue, those people that super love a brand will super defend a brand in everything—being a company doesn't have to do it themselves and will avoid a crises before it is really a crisis. 
2. The Accountability Principle: This principle is arguably more straightforward than the relationship principle and dictates that an organization should still accept responsibility for a crisis even if said organization is not at fault. This is because oftentimes, the public may still blame you for a crisis and it will generally make everything worse. The BP oil spill is a great example of this phenomenon.
3. The Disclosure Principle: This third principle is something that organizations should already be doing i.e. attaining high levels of transparency. It reads an organization must disclose any and all information about a crisis and upon obtaining new information, promising to release it to the publics as soon as possible. 
4. The Symmetrical Communication Principle: This lengthy principle is perhaps even more ethically motivated than the disclosure principle. At the time of a crisis, "an organization must consider the public interest to be at least as important as its own." Paine goes on to make the example that public safety ought to be as important as profits. The symmetrical communication principle is all about socially responsible behavior.