Trainwrecks

Every year North American companies and individuals stumble into crises that damage, and often destroy, their reputations. What triggers these disasters? How can a company minimize the risk that it will be hit with a crisis? If you land in a crisis, what’s the best way to practice damage control? In the event that your reputation implodes, what’s the path back to public acceptance? John Barr reaches into his thirty year career as one of North America’s leading crisis managers to answer the toughest questions about “the day every good executive worries about, or should.” He analyzes executive behavior and misbehavior in corporate crises that impacted major food processors, mining companies, a famous sport team owner (Peter Pocklington) and Canada’s once-largest forest company (MacMillan Bloedel). Viewed up close, Barr warns, “crisis management is not a pretty picture.” Successful executives, he argues, need to learn the rules of engagement in what he calls “The Mind Field” -- the dangerous and fast changing world of investigative journalism, NGO politics and the minefield of the Internet. Ignorance of these rules can be fatal, not just to corporate reputations but corporations’ very survival. TRAINWRECKS is one of the first books on crisis management written from “inside the storm”, by an expert who was there. Barr’s tough-love prescriptions will become required reading for executives of companies large and small who care about their reputations, and for students of business management everywhere.

Every year corporations and individuals stumble into crises that damage and sometimes destroy their reputations. These crises strike companies across the economy in sectors as diverse as banking, manufacturing, oil and gas, food processing, high technology, resource development and professional sport. What triggers these corporate disasters? How can a company minimize the risk that it will be hit with a crisis? If you land in a crisis, what’s the best way to practice damage control? In the event that your reputation implodes, what’s the path back to public acceptance? John Barr reaches into his thirty year career as one of North America’s leading crisis managers to answer the toughest questions about “the day every good executive worries about, or should.” His tough-love answers are required reading for executives of companies large and small who care about their reputations. Barr zeroes in on executive behavior (and misbehavior) in nine different corporate crises. Viewed up close, he warns, “crisis management is not a pretty picture.” TRAINWRECKS: How Corporate Reputations Collapse And Managements Try To Rebuild Them is no dry academic treatise. It is one of the first books on crisis management written from “inside the storm”, by an expert who was in “the war room” during the darkest days of major businesses. Successful executives, Barr argues, need to learn the rules of engagement in what he calls “The Mind Field” -- the dangerous and fast changing world of investigative journalism, NGO politics and the minefield of the Internet. Ignorance of these rules can be fatal, not just to corporate reputations but their very survival.

John J. Barr After careers in journalism and politics, John Barr pioneered public affairs at the giant oilsands company Syncrude before becoming a public relations consultant and practice leader for Burson-Marsteller, FleishmanHillard and his own West Coast consulting firm. His work in issues and crisis management won awards of excellence from international business communication groups. He drew clients from fields as diverse as atomic energy, forestry, food processing, electrical power, professional sports and death services. A Regional President of Burson-Marsteller described Barr as “the best pure communication strategist I ever met.” Professor Douglas Reid of the Queen’s University Faculty of Business said of Barr, “He has either been part of, or observed with an investigator’s keen eye, many of the major disturbances in corporate reputation that have happened during the past thirty years…has prepared numerous companies, and their leadership teams for the sort of day most hope never happens…[and] his fingerprints lie, metaphorically, behind a number of well-known corporate mergers, potential disasters converted to viable competitive positions, and better prepared management teams of blue-chip companies.” Barr has a master’s degree in political science and has published numerous works on history and politics. Since retiring from active public relations consulting in 2011 he published a crime novel, Geronimo's Cadillac. A sequel, Hard Times In Kandahar, is scheduled for early 2014. His hobbies are high-altitude treks, travel, golf and astrophotography. He lives with his wife Janis in Boundary Bay, British Columbia.