If you want a masterclass in crisis management and how to deal with the media I urge you to read the interview with AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
Many corporate CEOs are reluctant to give interviews for fear they will put their foot in it, with potentially damaging results for the company's share price and even their own career.
Similar fears permeate down to middle management which is why so few executives are prepared to step up and grab the opportunity, even if the company allows them to.
In general, many consider it a poisoned chalice to be avoided at all costs, never mind that if you do stick your head above the parapet colleagues will almost certainly think they could have done better.
Not only is hindsight a wonderful thing but people wilfully ignore the difficulty of doing an interview under pressure.
If you're representing your company there's a clear message you’re expected to get across, and sometimes what you don’t say is more important than what you do say. It's a minefield.
I’ve known people who have spent days with lawyers telling them what they can and cannot say which is easier said than done because it assumes the interviewer is there merely to provide a platform for your views.
Instead, questions may take you into areas you aren't comfortable with, or even have an answer to, and you have no more than a second or two to think of a response without sounding shifty or worse.
Meanwhile, back in the office, colleagues will either be cheering you on or quietly enjoying your discomfort. That’s life.
Some people have of course grown rich by setting up media training companies but one of the most lucrative avenues involves crisis management.
Thirty years ago I was exposed very briefly to this ‘secret’ world when I was contacted by a former investigative journalist who had switched sides and was advising companies that were under attack or about to be exposed for some alleged misdemeanour.
He had read about the work I had done for the Media Monitoring Unit and the idea, I think, was to see if I could help him out with some research.
His new company was just him and a secretary working in a small office above a shop in south west London. (He later added the words ‘Media Group’ to the company’s name so I assume it grew to a reasonable size!)
Anyway, I vaguely recall doing a bit of work for him but things soon fizzled out. I liked him but we were ill-suited, I think, to working together.
It did however give me a very brief insight into the world of crisis management and why it is so lucrative.
First, it is incredibly intense. Things happen and require an immediate response. Prevarication is not an option. Decisions cannot be postponed.
Second, clients need to feel they are in safe hands. Confidence therefore is key, even if you’re making it up as you go along.
Talking of clients, when they contact you they may have left it a bit late and the story is already up and running.
They are desperate for advice, leadership - anything that may help get them off the hook on which they are wriggling - and big corporations will pay big bucks because your value to them could be worth millions in terms of the share price.
However, the most important lesson I learned was to work with not against the media. This may not sound like rocket science but you'd be surprised how many companies think a story will go away if they ignore it.
It's true that you can add fuel to the fire by saying the wrong thing but as a general rule negative stories don't disappear so it's best to 'work' with the newspaper or broadcaster involved.
Running away creates a vacuum that will be filled, probably exclusively, by your critics and opponents.
Alternatively you can do what the Institute of Economic Affairs did – rather successfully, I thought – when they were attacked by Greenpeace in 2018.
You go on the offensive and fight fire with fire. See 'How Greenpeace and the Guardian believe the IEA runs the world'.
I mention all this because I suspect AstraZeneca may have taken crisis management advice and if part of that advice was to put CEO Pascal Soriot forward to be interviewed by La Repubblica it was, in my view, inspired.
Why La Repubblica, rather than a French, German or British newspaper? I'm speculating but the choice may have been influenced by the fact that the Italian prime minister was threatening to take AstraZeneca to court for a "serious contractual violation".
The priority therefore was to address that complaint – nip it in the bud, if you like – in Italy but in a way that would be reported globally, or at least throughout Europe.
Second, the interview, as published online by La Repubblica, is in a question and answer format. In fact, it appears to be a transcript of the entire interview.
This is quite unusual but agreeing to this avoids problems that can arise when interviews are written up by journalists who then select quotes that can be edited or published out of context.
The interview as published is a long read. Clearly, AstraZeneca (or those advising the company), had enormous confidence in Soriot’s ability to get his message across in his own words.
Yes, it is occasionally convoluted but that’s the nature of the vaccine process which he explains at length and in detail.
Anyone with half a brain should be able to follow it and I found his explanations concerning the development and delivery of the vaccine interesting and entirely credible.
Above all, he came across as a normal human being, not someone who was reading a statement prepared by lawyers, which can often be the case.
Apparently the interview stoked further anger among some EU officials but that was inevitable. There's no pleasing some people and they probably thought they could bully the company into submission.
That may still happen. Let’s hope it doesn’t because the interview, in my opinion, was a triumph, a model of its type, and well worth reading.
Pascal Soriot: "There are a lot of emotions on vaccines in EU. But it's complicated" (La Repubblica)