Playing Catch Up

So I'm behind (if that isn't obvious). School is piling up around me and that's combined with my job at Barr Mansion with twenty weddings in one month; all this is basically guaranteed to turn me into a zombie by the end of October. So today I'm playing catch up (since yesterday's pitiful attempt at catch up was equivalent to the Cowboy's pitiful win last night). Being so far behind with school made me think about what happens when a company falls behind and is forced to play catch up. After reading Paul's essay on crisis management in a digital society, I think there is no such thing as playing catch up for a company. You are either ride the wave and handle a crisis as it breaks or you get kicked into the undertow and are forever trying to get back to the surface. Digital media has completely altered the way a company is forced to handle crises. For consumers and other publics, this change is for the better. Today, companies are forced to dispel information quickly, act decisively, and fix the problem or suffer the consequences. Because of this, consumers are able to enter into conversation with companies, receive valuable information about products and product safety, and have the problem resolved quickly. For companies, this means never ever falling behind. Companies must now commit time and resources to always staying caught up with the conversations online and ways to handle those conversations if they turn ugly. The immediacy and permanency of the internet demands companies develop and actively manage a crisis plan, because in today's digital world, there is no such thing as playing catch up.