Tim Sloan, the former president and chief operating officer of Wells Fargo, now the new CEO and member of the bank’s board of directors, assures us that the cover-up continues. “You should expect more tough headlines, as additional accountability actions occur and other investigations and reviews are completed,” he said. But efforts to actually remedy the thousands, perhaps millions, of customer-facing problems Wells Fargo has caused, and is likely still causing, are stalled. Many may never really be resolved.

The First and Most Important Axiom of Crisis Survival:

Neither the media, your toughest opponents, smartest critics, nor the government knows enough to defeat you. Defeat is almost always the work of uninformed or over confident, overly optimistic bosses, co-workers and associates; well-meaning but uninformed friends, relatives, or from dysfunction in an organization.

When you’re in trouble, attracting media attention is surprisingly easy – you just don’t want it to be the wrong kind! If an event causes the phone to ring and TV cameras to appear in your lobby, you need confidence that the people who happen to be at your worksite that day are prepared. Not a problem if everyone – executives, PR, managers, and employees – is familiar with Jim Lukaszewski’s sure-fire methods for handling the media.

Read The Manager’s Guide to Handling the Media in Crisis: Saying & Doing the Right Thing When It Matters Most now. 

A few weeks ago, Wells Fargo managed to stumble, fumble and bungle themselves into a $185 million fine involving literally millions of bogus customer transactions. Amazingly, the current Wells Fargo settlement, however, keeps the same perpetrating executives, who created and facilitated this fiasco, particularly CEO John Stump, in charge of cleaning it up and preventing more problems from happening. This is a very bad joke on all Wells Fargo customers.

If you’re a Wells Fargo customer, employee or shareholder, this headline has to be THE question on your mind. . . Given Mr. Stumpf’s recent testimony before the Senate, it may be the only question for him. What we know for sure is that the massive Wells Fargo fraud/cover-up will continue.

Great defeats in politics often come from the inside out, and are rarely caused by a better competitor, social or legacy media, critics, government interference or intervention or a strong adversary.

On March 24, 2016, Minneapolis Police Chief Janee Harteau released a YouTube announcement about police treatment of citizens as County Attorney Mike Freeman releases his decision on how to proceed with the potential indictment of two police officers. If the city, including its police force, wants peace in the community, it has to wage peace in the community at every opportunity. Here is one way.

Please welcome Emmanuel Tchividjian, ethics officer for New York City firm Ruder Finn. I have known Emmanuel for the better part of two-decades. Over the years we have written things together, done various programs together, staged ethics events together. I think you’ll find him one of the most settled and pragmatic people you will ever meet. I’ve learned so much from him over the years.

There has been a moderate amount of jibber-jabber about Brian Williams’ situation, probably about what the situation deserves. Lucky for him, there have been an enormous number of significant and newsworthy events about the news business during the week when he would have occupied almost all the headlines otherwise. He’s one lucky dude.

Liars always know. In more than 40 years of working with organizations, institutions, senior people, businesses, agencies and the news media through an extraordinarily broad spectrum of problems and serious circumstances, I have yet to meet anyone who accidentally lied.