bill hueyThe tragic death of Lane Graves, the two-year-old-boy from Nebraska who was attacked by an alligator at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort this week, holds some important lessons for PR practitioners.

Among these are the risk of potential lawsuits, damage to reputation and brand, and the commonsense things every practitioner should do to anticipate problems and seek to prevent them, rather than reacting when a crisis erupts.

First, legal liability. As a recent story in The Washington Post put it:

The snatching of a 2-year-old boy by an alligator from a beach at a Disney resort Tuesday night immediately raised questions about the animal's behavior and the company's responsibility.

Among them: How common are alligators in the lagoon where the attack happened? Did Disney do enough to mitigate the problem or warn tourists about potential dangers? If not, could the resort be held legally liable for the toddler's death?

Every hotel, whether it is a one-star minimalist chain or a five-star luxury resort, “has a duty of care to its customers to take reasonable measures to make the premises safe," Alan Sykes, a professor at the Stanford Law School, told The Washington Post.

So what are “reasonable measures?” A “No Swimming” sign? A lifeguard?

To this observer, the Disney case raises additional questions: Is it “reasonable” care to set up a beach complete with sand, blue-and-white striped umbrellas, and even dune grass to mimic the seaside and then expect guests to stay away from the water? Should the “No Swimming” signs also include “Do Not Feed Alligators” so that people get the reason why swimming is prohibited? Should movies be shown at the beach at night, when the area is teeming with Florida critters?

These are the commonsense kinds of questions that every PR person should be asking throughout the organization, and not leaving to the marketing types or the “risk management” experts. Remember, their job is attracting customers or managing risk. Your job is managing reputation. If a toddler drowns in the shallow end of a pool it is a tragedy. If a child is grabbed by an alligator and drowned it is a news event with incalculable repercussions on the Disney brand and reputation.

It doesn’t matter a whit that this was the first alligator attack at the park since 1986, when a gator bit the legs of an 8-year-old boy, who survived. It happened, and it was probably preventable if people were asking the right questions and monitoring operations.

So what can you do to identify potential reputational risks and eliminate or mitigate them?

First, become more aware and observant. Don’t take anything for granted if it strikes you as odd, or substandard, or potentially dangerous.

Second, get out and start meeting with people, asking questions, raising issues and pointing out potential risks. This doesn’t mean that you have to become Mr. or Ms. Black Cloud. It just means that you swim sideways to get out of the organizational undertow and start doing your job to the fullest. Because successful PR often consists of what didn’t happen, rather than what did.

Third, don’t ignore one and two. If you see something or foresee consequences, don’t just close your eyes, make some more media calls, and hope it will go away. You say you want a seat at the management table? Then MANAGE, by God, and do your real job, not what the marketing department thinks is your real job.

Bill Huey is president of Strategic Communications, a corporate communications and marketing consultancy, and author of "Carbon Man," a novel about greed.