The briefing sessions held before class between the advocacy team and the visiting executive may be among the most instructive parts of the course, according to some of the students. Rachel Freeman, who role-played Ashland's Media Relations Manager, asked Hall why he waited several days after the tank explosion to go to the site of the accident and make the company's first public statements. But overall, he managed the crisis well by being honest about Ashland's oversights, and about what he did and didn't know at the time. He really seemed to want to teach us what he had learned from his experience. During his time with students, Hall told them how he had made the decision to call the press conference, to apologize to the people of Pittsburgh, to inform them about clean-up efforts and to explain all he knew at the time about the circumstances surrounding the tank rupture.
Corporations live in a glass house.
Lawyers tend to want to hold information back. Leaders who can thus rally their bravest instincts and focus exclusively on the crisis at hand are the ones who can pull a company through, maintains Meyers. The only thing that managers detest more than discovering mistakes is disclosing them publicly. Some companies are undone by their own fear, ignorance, or arrogance. And the sad aftermath of an unmanaged crisis is often that the organization is never the same.