Learning the lessons of history..

For all our clever inventions and sophisticated thinking, we really do have some major weaknesses.  The human race is simply unable or unwilling to learn from the lessons of history.

We make the same mistakes again and again and again, even with the knowledge of what went before.

Reputation Management and crisis communication is a great example of this weakness.

Let’s be honest, there is no harder discipline in Public Relations than dealing with the aftermath of a crisis. 

And of course when it comes to crises hindsight is 20/20. Looking back at past crises you can see the errors being made and you ask yourself how they could get themselves into this situation.  Unfortunately it’s a little more difficult when you are in the heat of the battle.

Anyone who has the potential to be involved in a crisis, and that includes every single PR people on the planet, should become a student of past crises.  There are valuable lessons to be learnt by evaluating them, lessons that could help you through a future crisis.

 Pan Pharmaceuticals in Australia could have benefitted from evaluating how a crisis way back in 1982 was handled. Johnson & Johnson’s handling of the Tylenol crisis was exemplary and even though we live in a very different world today the basics of good reputation management haven’t changed.

Based on reports from the Sydney Morning Herald, they could have done with the help.