Whatever your organizational milieu, there are a few principles that govern all risk management and communications situations.  1.To communicate about risk effectively, institutions must demonstrate interest and concern for all opinions and positions, understand different perspectives, and respect their underlying premises. 

 Recognizing this fact, federal government policy on the subject states that " ... effective risk management requires open and transparent communication among differing or even opposing interests."  Efforts to reconcile vested interests as an incident unfolds will only result in choking off the free flow of information that members of the public need to gauge their own responses.       

 If "timing is everything," as the saying goes, it is never truer than in the management of a public emergency.  And in the era of real-time social media, incident managers risk rendering their entire effort irrelevant -- or even counter-productive -- by ignoring this principle.  

 Other rules of engagement flow from the recognition of this fact.  But before we get to them, readers of the "Risky Business" stream are invited to offer examples from their own experience that underscore the risk or the value of observing this operating principle.