License to Operate > Winning the Day
By TJ Tatum, Principal at Cornerstone Public Affairs
When a subpoena lands, investigators come knocking, or your brand is suddenly trending for the wrong reason, you’re not in a “PR crisis.” You’re in an existential one.
In that moment, public relations spin won’t save you. Only a strategy grounded in legal, operational and political reality will.
You don’t “win the day” in a crisis. The goal is to preserve your license to operate.
A serious crisis strategy does three things fast: it buys time, builds trust and strengthens your position with the stakeholders who actually determine your fate (employees and unions on the floor, your board and insurers, key customers and lenders, state AGs and federal regulators, committee staff on the Hill, and the journalists who will frame the narrative). If your plan doesn’t explicitly account for each of those audiences, you don’t have a plan, just talking points.
The first 48 hours decide the next 48 days
Most lasting damage doesn’t come from the triggering event; it comes from the second-day story. That’s when contradictions surface, half-facts harden into “lies,” and quotes that felt clever in the moment become exhibits in a complaint or fodder in a hearing. The instinct is always to move fast. But speed without legal durability is a boomerang. If your message can’t survive next week’s deposition prep or next month’s oversight letter, you haven’t fixed the problem. Instead, you’ve widened the blast radius.
The discipline is simple to say and hard to do: stabilize facts before shaping messages.
Build a single, privileged factual spine—who knew what, when, and what changed—then let communications flow from that spine. Accuracy first, then empathy, then action. In that order.
Put the right people in the room early
Unforced errors happen when communications is briefed last or legal is isolated from operations. Crisis work only functions when Legal, Comms, Operations, and Government/Regulatory are fused into one team with a single approval tree and a daily war-room cadence. The audience isn’t “the media.” It’s investors reading for solvency risk, counterparties reading force-majeure clauses, prosecutors reading for intent and regulators reading for cooperation posture. Treat every line you publish as if it will be read into the record, because it likely will.
Three practical structures keep you out of trouble:
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- One brief, under privilege where appropriate. Facts, timelines, and draft Q&A sit in a single, controlled workspace to act as a single source of truth.
- Quietly identify who matters most. This includes priority reporters and a handful of credible third-party validators, as well as the data and documentation they’ll need to independently verify the facts and corroborate the record.
- Decision points and time boxes. Who can approve what, by when, in which channel. Delay is a decision; document it.
Choose a posture, not a vibe
In politicized environments, “neutral” is just vague. Pre-commit to a posture matrix (Fight, Comply, or Say Less) and define the triggers that move you across modes.
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- Fight when the facts are firm, legal exposure is bounded and you have credible validators. Fighting without proof is just theater.
- Comply—cooperate, remediate, settle—when exposure is material and regulators signal a lane to closure. Own the fix, set timelines and assign accountable owners.
- Say Less when facts are fluid or litigation risk is acute. Silence isn’t abdication if you’re briefing stakeholders quietly and preserving room to act.
Whatever posture you choose, enforce three non-negotiables: credibility, consistency, clarity.
If you can’t say it credibly, don’t say it. If you can’t say it consistently across audiences, rewrite it. If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yet.
In the end, the best crisis response isn’t a story you tell, it’s a line you hold. Headlines fade, but records don’t. When the stakes are highest and failure isn’t an option, the job is to protect the enterprise and its ability to operate tomorrow. That takes fewer adjectives, more documents, and a strategy sturdy enough to survive discovery, oversight, and the front page — all at the same time.
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