If your organization does not have an issues-management program, you may need some crisis management training. 
Issues do not exist in a vacuum.  In very simple terms, issues arise in the public debate.  In that debate there are opinion leaders and opinion followers.  Issues management is all about your relationship to those leaders.  Those leaders will shape and influence the public policies that will make or break you.  So it is absolutely critical that you know what they expect of you.

How To Manage Issues Before They Manage You is a one-hour professional-group presentation given by David Kirk, APR, Fellow PRSA.  The centerpiece of that presentation is this series of four detailed charts that detail the process through which issues arise, explode and resolve and shows, for each of the three major phases of an issue:

• Who is involved in the issue in each phase
• How those involved are structured around the issue
• How the issue is being expressed
• The actions they are taking
• The impact those actions are having

In each phase, the charts also lay-out a communciation plan that includes:

• Target audiences
• Communication principles
• Goals
• Strategies
• Key Messages
• Tactics
• Measurement

This white paper, Building Relationships with Community Opinion Leaders: Why, Who and How, prepared originally for hospital CEOs, is based both on a survey of those CEOs and an extensive review of the scientific literature on the role of opinion leaders in shaping public opinion. It includes an extensive review of the scientific literature on the role of opinion leaders in shaping public opinion.

The issue of transparency in hospital prices has gathered a full head of steam nationwide. The Federal government, most state governments, the major health care insurers and scores of major hospitals are demanding — and responding to demands — that hospitals publish their prices so that consumers can make informed decisions about their health care choices. Nearly 4,000 U.S. hospitals currently participate in the American Hospital Association‟s Hospital Quality Alliance, the initiative to provide information to the public about the quality of health care in America‟s hospitals. The momentum of similar price-transparency initiatives, driven by Federal and state statutes, consumer advocates, opinion leaders, media and consumers is unstoppable. This issue briefing was written for the board of directors of a major healthcare system.

This white paper was written by David Kirk, APR, Fellow PRSA for the executive committee of a large regional banking company, during the reengineering of one of the bank’s major subsidiaries. It was written to assist the executive committee with planning for employee communication issues that were likely to arise following the completion of the reengineering. It contains a number of excellent summaries of research and best practices in the area of employee communication. Although the bank has since been acquired, its name and other identifiers have been masked.