I have my reasons why I refrain from giving thumbs up/down opinions on specific crisis situations. However, I try not to miss opportunities when current lessons can be applied to the profession of crisis management. A recent Advertising Age article provides such a case, through its rare in-the-moment account of strategic planning and execution that takes place in a crisis “war room.” Here’s a link to the article.
In this case, Procter & Gamble assembled a crisis team to help protect the Pampers brand of diapers when critics began to question whether its new Dry Max formulation was creating “chemical burns.”
Although the situation is ongoing and a quick scan of the brand’s Facebook page suggests the situation is far from over, the article does provide insights to some very good crisis management practices:
Organizations are wise to adapt to the unstoppable force that is social networking. At this point, if you don’t agree please refer to the myriad perspectives that advocate this point, right after you crawl out from under your rock.
Pick a team sport. Any sport. Your team gathers to prepare for the upcoming season. In your first meeting, your coach hands each of you a highly detailed playbook. He reads aloud each page to your team. The playbook details:
My passion for history was recently reignited through DVDs offered by 
Lately it seems crisis management experts have become quite comfortable publicly commenting on the crisis du jour.