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

A Relationship Check-Up is the most basic element in a relationship-building program. In simplest terms: you have to know the actual condition of your relationships before you can do anything to improve them. Effective communication is the bedrock upon which effective relationships are built. All effective communication programs, in turn, must begin with listening, not speaking. A Relationship Check-Up developed by and available exclusively from thePRguy. It is a listening tool, just like many others used by professional communicators. This guide originally was commissioned by a statewide hospital association for its CEO members. While it speaks to the hospital industry, the principles of the process are the same for any organization.

Supervisors are employees' most trusted and sought-after source of company information -- yet few companies provide any support or training to their supervisors in their roles as communicators. This guide is designed to help managers to develop effective communication programs for departments or work groups. It includes step-by-step instructions and tips for communciating bad news and answering tough questions. This evaluation copy is designed to help company executives determine if they want to license a company-customized version for internal use. The purchase price of this review copy will apply to any subsequent licensing fees.  This workbook is a companion to thePRguy's Effective Communications for Managers Workshop. 

When selecting a spokesperson, particularly in an urgent or controversial situation, there's more to know than the name of the person at the top of your organizational chart.  There's plenty of social-science research to help you make the best choice of spokesperson under each circumstance.  Contents include:

• Why it Matters: The Impact of Selecting Credible Spokespeople
• Public Relations Implications
• Practical Advice for Selecting Spokespeople
• Characteristics of an Effective Spokesperson
• Building Credibility
• Building CEO/COO Credibility with news media

Drawn from thePRguy's Effective Media Relations Workshop, this briefing provide practical tips for executives who must interact with news media. Contents include:

• About the Culture of Reporters
• What Reporters Want to Know
• David Kirk's "The Seven Commandments"
• How to Aggravate a Reporter
• About the Reporter's Work Product
• Questions to Ask Yourself When Preparing for an Interview

This report was commissioned by a major healthcare system, which wanted to develop a public affairs/government relations function based on best practices among its peers. This report is based on in-depth interviews with senior representatives of eight healthcare systems that were identified by industry leaders as being representative of best practices. This report has been edited to remove references to the sponsoring health system and its location. Confidential information provided by benchmark participants has been removed and excerpts from interview transcripts are not attributed.

As Norm Abrams always said on This Old House, "There's a system to these things." As in any other professional discipline, communication planning uses a best-practices model, which is summarized in this document.

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.