Social media has dramatically changed the playing field in terms of crisis communications - and any company that does not effectively use social media to take the pulse of its constituents on a constant basis, and know how to communicate with them in a crisis, is breaching its fiduciary responsibilities to its stakeholders.

Companies that do not actively practice, study, and plan for crisis communications - as well, of course, crisis management - are doomed to fail when a crisis befalls them. Crises are, in a word, inevitable, and those macho companies that think, "it can't happen here," or if it does, "I can handle it," will suffer the hardest failures.

I often say that good crisis management is good decision-making under stress.

In my experience, the public will forgive mistakes, provided they are acknowledged promptly and a remedial course of action is articulated. Lawyers often get in the way of this, which is a subject I cover in my book: how to deal with obstructionist lawyers in a crisis.

Too often, clients want us to give them a one-size-fits-all crisis management plan from off the shelf. Some of our competitors do this because it's fast and cheap. They build a plan once and keep using the same plan over and over with other clients.

When I wrote my first book, Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable, it was endorsed by the American Management Association, and consequently was read by America's top corporate leaders, and overnight put me in high demand as a consultant and as a speaker. Also, that book forever changed the way businesses look at and deal with crises by giving a tangible feel to an otherwise intangible subject.

Too often, business schools teach academic crisis management theory, if that, but given the diverse and unique nature of crises, all the theory in the world will not help you manage an actual crisis unless you know the basic mechanics.