December’s Crises Show Direct Approach Works Best

The holidays arrived early for crisis communication fans. There was no shortage of stories to peruse. All featured ghosts of crises past, whose protagonists we’ve covered in Crisis Insider.

With few exceptions, all these crises were mishandled in some way. Only the first one, where the owner of a sports team attacked a budding difficulty directly, refusing to issue an anonymous statement, was handled well. Nonetheless, the best teacher sometimes is a mistake. The crises of this last month of 2021 had plenty of them.

First was the Jacksonsville Jaguars’ Dec. 16 firing of rookie coach Urban Meyer. In October, we wrote about Meyer, a legendary college coach, after he failed to fly home with his team, winless after five games. Instead, after a loss in Ohio, he remained to ‘visit family.’

That ‘visit’ included interactions with a young woman, who was not his wife, at his restaurant.