UK Horse Meat in Food Scandal? Dodgy phone tapping and payments by journalists? Vatican Secret Reports? Cover Ups? IT bugs? Politicians going to jail?

Could some of these issues have been handled better if certain "golden rules" had been followed? The blog below gives some useful insights transferable to many situations. But I would put another pro active golden question in front of them. When I train or advise people on equality/employment law,disciplinary/grievance,customer complaints -anything! – I always say put the following golden question at the forefront of your mind:-

"When I have dealt with this, where could this go next?".

It’s a reminder to record everything legibly with dates, to follow your policies/procedures, to get in touch with experts in the field and to make sure that everyone knows/agrees the next steps. Because you can bet your bottom dollar that the issue will start off one shape,end up another, drag in other issues that could not have been predicted and sometimes have an outcome that nobody had wanted in the first place!

"Where could this go next" can be rephrased to read "What is this going to look like on appeal to a senior manager or director, a clever lawyer or trade unionist on the other side, an employment judge, or god forbid, the front page of the Daily Mail? And one of the places you don’t want to be is the front page of the Daily Mail or its overseas Red Top tabloid equivalent!

Do you follow any golden rules in a crisis?

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/olly-grender/2011/07/media-storm-crisis-rupert-tell