Breaking Down a PR Breakdown

Thanks to the CoSIDA email today for this nugget from Justin Goldsborough as he breaks down the Detroit Pistons' reaction to players not showing up for practice in late February. Two takeaway highlights:

Changing stories, silence from leadership, anonymous quotes all lead to once conclusion — somebody’s lying and nobody’s on the same page.

And

Silence makes it look like you’re hiding or that you don’t have anything good to say about the situation, so you’re choosing to say nothing at all.

Goldsborough gives a timeline of the event that makes it easy to follow how he reaches these, and some other important conclusions. This was pretty classic crisis management -- or in the case of the self-inflicted wound mismanagement. Goldsborough also finds an interesting snag-of-the-sweater moment within these events: the fact the Pistons had dismissed their veteran PR director. He implies that lack of a steady hand on the rudder may have contributed to the erratic behavior of the organization.