 grew up in a part of the United States where tornadoes were not entirely uncommon. It was sort of a regular part of our lives, especially in the spring and summer, to hear those tornado sirens go off and know that we need to get in the basement and things. And I remember talking to people about how much that had changed even when I was growing up back in the in the 80s and things about how much more warning they had now. And I could tell these tornadoes were beginning to form and circumstances were there that back just before I was even born. The tornado had ripped through the town where I went to school, totally destroyed the school, and it happened to be a Sunday. And they said if it hadn't been a Sunday, lots and lots of people and lots of kids would have been killed because there had been no warning. They had really no warning system at that time. So it was just amazing the developments that allowed us to kind of know, okay, the conditions are right for a tornado and now a tornado is forming and we have the ability to alert people of that, get people into the basement or wherever they need to get for safety. And just that early warning system was such a lifesaver, literally a life-saving development in the community where I grew up that it made a significant difference in the way that we approached tornadoes and the way that we were able to manage those things. And I was thinking about that recently as I was thinking about this idea of issues management in organizations. When we think about issue management for organizations, particularly in a public relations role, and just the idea that issues management is different than crisis communications, we're going to differentiate between the two here. But issue management is all about seeing those things coming. It's about the early warning signs and identifying those early indicators and having a system in place to not only identify those things but deal with them. So let's take a look here at issue management in the context of public relations and see as public relations practitioners how issue management really factors into the role of the PR person and PR professional and what we can do to manage those issues then. So again, to clarify issue management as we define it is an anticipatory, strategic management process that helps organizations detect and respond appropriately to emerging trends or changes in the socio-political environment. Now that's a mouthful, but basically the key ideas here are first of all, it's anticipatory, meaning we're trying to anticipate these things before they actually happen, trying to identify them early on. It's strategic, it's part of the management process, and it helps us both detect and respond appropriately to these things that populate whatever environment it is our organization exists in and is part of that community. So that's what we mean by issue management. It's important to note, again, as we kind of alluded to here, that issue management is proactive. It is not reactive. Issue management is something that takes place before things happen. We ought to be able to identify and work toward identifying detecting these things before they become massive issues. So we need to be proactive in issue management. Crisis communication is more reactive. It's something has happened. Now we need to really try and manage that aspect of it. It was unforeseen or it took us by surprise, but issue management should be proactive, something that we're looking out for and able to detect early and respond to that and kind of manage it early on in the process. As we see the issue life cycle here, you can see that first of all, that triggering event happens very early on. There's always that potential stage where you're always on the lookout for, okay, what are some potential issues that could come up here? But we see that intensity at that level is very low. We're just kind of being aware of things, keeping an eye out for things and things that could potentially become an issue. But then when we see that triggering event, that ought to set us into motion here through that emerging stage. And we ought to be really focused on issue management there because once we get into the current stage and especially in the crisis stage, we have very little control over those things. Okay. So, but we see that triggering event happens. This is when, as I was saying, we ought to be in that mode of issue identification and management. Before this thing happens and then especially, you know, right when it happens, that's our opportunity to jump on there and control the narrative, can kind of control the situation, limit the exposure, limit the damage that's being caused by this issue. So, we ought to be really keyed in as PR people both before that triggering event and then immediately after the triggering event in the potential and the emerging stages and into the current stage, of course. But that's really when we have the opportunity to identify and manage issues most effectively as in those early stages. Modern times, we see things like this first get picked up in social media. So, the social media kind of happens not too long after the triggering event. Somebody's going to notice an individual's going to notice it and then it starts to snowball a bit, right? It starts to pick up as more people start to identify this on social media and pass it around on things. Eventually, it's going to hit that critical mass, so to speak, or the tipping point, as Malcolm Gladwell will call it, the tipping point of where mass media is going to pick up on it. If it gets to that stage, you're going to start seeing mass media coverage on new stations and on cable news and on your local news and on different things. And it's going to be really, really widespread then as it gets out across these major mass media networks. But so in the between phase there, we have social media where it picks up people kind of getting like that snowball rolling down the hill, picks up a little bit at a time. But then eventually it's going to become unmanageable in that media coverage area where you're going to have that unconditional acceptance. You're firmly in that crisis stage. And so then you just have to at some point, it's going to die out. The next thing's going to come along either it's going to get fixed and start to go away then because people aren't interested when something gets fixed. They only like to see the train wreck. They don't like to see the damage that it caused for the, you know, the cleanup effort afterwards. Or it's just going to kind of lose steam and people are going to lose interest. The next big story is going to come along depending on the news cycle. And you'll enter that dormant stage then where things kind of cool off on that for whatever reason. But so we see these these different stages and how it kind of unfolds in that issue life cycle. As I mentioned, you know, really our opportunity to influence things comes in those first couple stages, the potential stage, the emerging stage a little bit into the current stage, but really, most effectively to manage these things and to have an influence on these things in the beginning stages as a PR professional working with that organization. After that, our influence is somewhat diminished. It kind of takes on its own life. This narrative does and and you know, people start to speculate on it and they comment on it. And then it's like a game of telephone where things get distorted and you really don't have any influence over that to a certain extent. What people are saying about it on social media. You can't control that. You can try and contribute to that and kind of you know, influence it by pushing people a certain direction. But the truth is our influence at that stage is much much less and much more diminished than it would be early on in these things. So we need to keep that in mind as we look at the overall issue life cycle. So the issue management process just briefly for us as PR professionals, the kind of stages that we can go through here in issue management and that process first is to identify we've talked about that a bunch now. Before things happen and certainly as they're happening just initially, we need to be able to identify potential issues. Where could this run a file? Where could this create a problem as best as possible and so that we can prepare for that before things even happen and maybe even head it off at the pass and and and cut it down before it becomes an issue. But we need to be able to identify what are some of the issues that we're going to run into here and what may pop up for us at different times so that we can be prepared for that. Then we need to track these things as they do happen. We need to keep an okay, this this is a blip on our radar screen now. So what's that let's track it. Let's see if it picks up any steam. Let's see if people notice that see people are talking about it. See if it has any traction to go somewhere. We need to be tracking these things and keep an eye on them and and and track what people are talking about in general specifically as it relates to our organization. But in general, what are people talking about? How are they talking about it? How can we take advantage of that or or shield ourselves from that whatever it is. So we need to track things just in general. We need to analyze we have this data we have this information coming in we need to be able to analyze okay. What is the issue here? What can we do to to to again manage it or to resolve it or whatever it is. How can we use this to our advantage or at least shield ourselves from the greatest damage related to this issue and so we need to put some thorough analysis and we need to pull in people from different areas of the organization. You know people from IT people from marketing people from sales people from these different things that bring different perspectives we need to analyze this thing from all angles to see how our customers and our communities are going to react and respond and what their expectations are of us. We just need to be able to thoroughly analyze and think through what this issue is and how it relates to us as an organization. And then of course we need to find some ways to resolve that issue and resolve it either by solving it and minimizing the damage related and caused by it or resolving it by taking advantage of it and using it to to to grow as an organization and to enhance our image and reputation as an organization whatever that resolution may be we need to find some way to resolve that situation then hopefully to the benefit of the organization and if not then to the least detriment of the organization. So obviously there's a lot of details we're just talking about what issue management is and there's a lot of detailed information we could get into about how you go about these things. That's going to be a later discussion but for now we just wanted to differentiate first of all between issue management and crisis communication. First that issue manages proactive. It's something that we should be on the lookout for before it happens and certainly be working to manage it both before and immediately after an issue pops up. So it's proactive. It requires some analysis and requires us to pull in people from all parts of the organization and so issues management is a major part of many PR functions in an organization ought to be on the radar of every PR person in an organization. If you have questions about issue management or about anything related to public relations in that realm please feel free to email me and love to hear from you there and chat with you about it there. In the meantime I hope that you have a firmer understanding of issue management and are now better on the lookout for those things that pop up that could affect the overall productivity and effectiveness of the organization which you represent in that public relations function.