A no-nonsense guide for corporations facing crisis, from two experienced crisis managers
 
All organizations face crises from time to time, and at a time when news, information (or misinformation), and rumors can spread quickly, a timely and thoughtful response to a crisis, is critical. In this book, two industry insiders offer a  primer on how organizational leadership should prepare for and handle crises. The steps, plans, and cautions they offer show how organizations can deal openly and honestly with challenges while continuing to survive and prosper.
 
Thomas A. Cole and Paul Verbinnen show how successful crisis management requires a multi-disciplined approach enacted collaboratively under strong leadership. Drawing on many real-world examples, they speak to not only what to do during a crisis, but also the need for preparedness and post-crisis follow-up.  The book is organized around a broad range of discrete issues that need to be addressed in managing any crisis and provides the steps required to successfully address each of those issues. The authors urge crisis managers to focus attention equally on four phases of management: prepare, execute, recover, and then repeat (after reflecting on the results of the last crisis) with the next one. The emphasis is on preparation and planning, setting up the procedures, and organizing the teams that will respond to each crisis.
 
Unlike other crisis books that focus solely on communication, Collaborative Crisis Management goes further and in addition to communication, it discusses both the legal obligations and organizational challenges that accompany a crisis. The result is an indispensable guide for leaders, board members, and business students.
 

This is the audiobook version of this book.

Two experienced corporate crisis advisors offer a thorough and approachable guide to successful crisis management from anticipation to resolution.
 
All organizations face crises from time to time, and at a time when news, information (or misinformation), and rumors can spread quickly, a timely and thoughtful response to a crisis, is critical. In this book, two industry insiders offer a  primer on how organizational leadership should prepare for and handle crises. The steps, plans, and cautions they offer show how organizations can deal openly and honestly with challenges while continuing to survive and prosper.
 
Thomas A. Cole and Paul Verbinnen show how successful crisis management requires a multi-disciplined approach enacted collaboratively under strong leadership. Drawing on many real-world examples, they speak to not only what to do during a crisis, but also the need for preparedness and post-crisis follow-up.  The book is organized around a broad range of discrete issues that need to be addressed in managing any crisis and provides the steps required to successfully address each of those issues. The authors urge crisis managers to focus attention equally on four phases of management: prepare, execute, recover, and then repeat (after reflecting on the results of the last crisis) with the next one. The emphasis is on preparation and planning, setting up the procedures, and organizing the teams that will respond to each crisis.
 
Unlike other crisis books that focus solely on communication, Collaborative Crisis Management goes further and in addition to communication, it discusses both the legal obligations and organizational challenges that accompany a crisis. The result is an indispensable guide for leaders, board members, and business students.
 

A practical guide to more fully achieving a meritocratic society.
 
As America’s most vaunted cultural value, meritocracy is celebrated by some as an institution and derided by others as a myth—or even a trap. Thomas A. Cole argues in Doing Meritocracy Right that if meritocracy is to persist as an institution—and it must—it requires structural support in the private sector. For America to achieve a version of meritocracy that more closely matches our aspirations, our business leaders must first offer equity of opportunity for individuals to demonstrate and develop their talents on equal terms.
 
Drawing on his decades of experience in advising CEOs and corporate boards, personally serving on the boards of major not-for-profits, and leading a large global law firm, Cole cites elite professional-service institutions—consultancies and law firms especially—as improbable laboratories for equity of opportunity. These workplaces, out of self-interest, are laser-focused on the quality of their professionals, seeking out talent and representation and then judging these individuals on (ideally) equal terms once they’re in place. Here, Cole sees an opportunity that no public initiative or platitudes can deliver: if workplaces seek out representational diversity by applying, with thought and care, a single standard of merit—one that emphasizes character—and by providing training and mentoring on an equitable basis, then they will offer a ladder to social and economic mobility that serves both individuals and society.
 
Cole argues that a meritocratic society is achieved in two interrelated stages: access to education; and post-education promotion to membership in the elite. The latter, he says, is the domain of business. Cole argues that the private sector is better positioned to effect reform and he encourages leaders in the private sector to pursue reform both in their organizations, in government, and in the universities and communities where they have influence.
 
Meritocracy in the private sector can’t control the many American inequities that exist on the ground of American society. But it can do social good by serving as a reliable, merit-determined path to the highest echelons of business and industry. Cole sets the stage for the discussion of reforms with a “brief history of our imperfect meritocracy,” and rounds out the book with a to-do list for business leaders.