Ok, sports fans – let’s face it.
Professional sports organizations – specifically the NFL and the NBA – have exhibited a notoriously bad track record when it comes to managing crises.
The most recent affront to common sense – forget crisis managing or good old reputation management — comes from Roger Goodell and the NFL. Rather than get out in front of the Ray Rice incident and suspend the guy from football until the facts could be confirmed – as any employer would have done under similar circumstances – Goodell delayed appropriate action until forced to by the TMZ reveal of elevator footage showing Ray Rice decking his wife and literally dragging her off the elevator.
So let’s review the rules of crisis communications once and for all:
- Get out in front of the story, rather than play defense (an inadvertent football reference);
- Acknowledge the situation;
- Apologize for the situation, the harm, the inconvenience, whatever, SAY YOU ARE SORRY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED. JUST SAY IT!
- Act to fix the situation – announce a suspension, an investigation, etc.
I have no idea who advised Goodell but I like to think there was someone in the room (probably a woman) who was telling him to take the four steps outlined above – and for whatever reason he chose to ignore it. And I can’t believe for one minute that TMZ got its hands on the infamous elevator video before Goodell’s own team of highly paid attorneys and investigators.