A whole new definition of "Blue Devils"

Richard Edelman's post today (www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/ ) raps Duke University across the knuckles of President William Brodhead for the delayed response to the charge of sexual assault against the Blue Devil lacrosse team. What's striking (no pun intended) about the latency of Brodhead's public indignance, despite eloquence and sincerity, is how much in common all institutions share when it comes to crisis management. Educrats, bureaucrats and corporadoes are interchangeable in the pattern. With apologies to Jack Welch, here it is: The first stage is denial. The problem isn't that bad, the thinking usually goes, it can't be, because bad things don?t happen here, to us. The second is containment, wherein leaders try to make the problem disappear by giving it to someone else to solve. The third stage is shame-mongering, in which all parties with a stake in the problem assign blame and claim credit. Stage four: blood on the floor. In just about every crisis, a high profile person pays with his job, and sometimes he takes a crowd with him. In the fifth and final stage, the crisis gets fixed and, despite prophesies of permanent doom, life goes on, usually for the better. The best practices of public relations, enabled by the marketing gene, eliminate latency. To delay response to a crisis is to create a greater one. Ask Dr. Brodhead. Or Mr. Edelman.