As we watch the Ray Rice saga unfold this week, much criticism has been made of the NFL’s slow response in handling the situation. That brought to mind one of the first lessons in crisis management when it comes to the public’s desire of a company (or entity in this case) in terms of how it deals with a crisis. Here’s what they want:

1. The right people
2. Doing the right thing
3. At the right time

It’s that simple! Yet many companies, or in this case the NFL are still too slow to respond to events such as the Rice mess, the whole time knowing what their response is going to be. A lot of those “inside” corporations blame lawyers. Of course, once attorneys get involved, the process does get extremely complicated. But it doesn’t have to. I once had an attorney at a major Oil and Gas services company tell me during a Crisis Communications conversation “They are going to sue us anyway, we might as well get it right”. Those words have stuck with me over the years as to how companies should handle crises. If companies spend all their time worrying about legal ramifications, they lose the element of time, and that can be crucial. I don’t mean to downplay the importance of getting things right on the legal side but preparation and planning can help prevent needing to go to the lawyers after the fact in order to get the needed approvals.

So in closing, the lesson to be learned from Roger Goodell and the NFL is next time, have your ducks in a row before something like this happens so when it comes time to make the right decision, you don’t have to run it by your entire legal team to pull the trigger.