"Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride," said Bob Moran, partner at Brunswick Insight, in closing his presentation at the Institute for PR trustees research symposium yesterday at the Yale Club in New York.
The former US operations president of Edelman's $20M StrategyOne unit talked about 21st Century crises that PR people will wrestle with in the very near future.
Most crisis managers currently ask, "Who could have known?" when an emergency hits, according to Moran.
Disagreeing with that mindset, Moran believes most corporate crisis are predictable. They may have different players or timing, but each follow a category or pattern.
Moran said crises fall into two dimensions: individual/systemic failure and sins of commission vs. sins of omission.
The accelerating rate of change that is upending today's world is a game-changer for crisis management. "We live in a VUCA world, which is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous," Moran explained.
Rapid change is becoming "discontinuous with the recent past as we exit the industrial era and as nations that powered our growth leave their demographic windows."
Moran identified ten key drivers of 21st Century corporate crises as 1) global aging; 2) resource scarcity, (water/"blood minerals"); 3) rise of proconsumers/makers; 4) replication/3D printing (challenge to intellectual property rights standards); 5) automation ("off-peopling"); 6) localization (Scotland/Catalonia independence votes); 7) bioethics (genetic tissue); 8) extreme transparency (facial recognition scanning); 9) Big Data/surveillance and 10) alternative economic models (sharing economy).
There will be an upswing the number of old-line companies "killed off" because of the inability change.
Corporate winners will be those able to anticipate the changing crisis challenges of the 21st Century.
Brain Science Meets PR
Terry Flynn, communications management professor at McMaster University, and Chris Graves, Ogilvy PR chairman, tackled the Neuro Behavioral Communications Research Project that studied connections and how the brain responds to certain messages.
The project is part of IPR's effort to be the "center of influence" in the field of behavioral communications.Don Wright, Harold Burson professor and PR chair at Boston University's College of Communication, talked about the chasm that exists between academic research and the practical needs of PR counselors.
Wright, who edited the Research Journal of the Institute of PR, said one of the most different tasks for an educator is to do a two-page summary of findings.
Professors, he said, generally have about 400 footnotes by page two of their research reports/white papers.
Wright quipped he sometime wonders, "Who is going to read this crap?"
There’s a fine line between newsjacking and taking advantage, aka ambulance chasing. Our job as PR professionals is to tread it carefully.
PR firms need to be mindful of ways their work product may be protected by the attorney-client privilege whenever working with a client’s internal legal team or its external legal counsel.
Manuel Rocha, former US ambassador and intenational business advisor to LLYC, plans to plead guilty to charges that he was a secret agent for Cuba.
CEO mentoring is an often-overlooked aspect of why CEOs are able to make good decisions, and sometimes make bad ones—all of which intersects with the role and duties of a board. 
How organizations can anticipate, prepare and respond to crises in an increasingly complex world where a convergent landscape of global challenges, threats and risks seem to arrive at an unrelenting pace.
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