While your statement is tied up in bureaucratic staff buffoonery, your higher headquarters is writing a statement that lacks your operational context and commander’s guidance.
Meanwhile, savvy reporters are putting together off the record statements and launching that first bit of breaking news without your forever lines.
Always be right. Accurate and truthful. But if you are going to be slow, you won’t be any of those things.
Set an uncomfortably early deadline. Burn whatever relationships you must in order to forego, or quick-turn, a staff section’s review of your statement (if you add value to the organization, they’ll get over it). Have templates, contact lists, and computer systems ready to cut steps out of the process. Understand and track your organization’s activities alongside the staff, so you don’t have to ask questions later.
Do you want to be right? Then be right. But don’t be slow.
It isn’t one or the other.
