Crisis Leadership Blog

Insights and perspectives on being the lighthouse during a crisis.
Breaking the Crisis Wheel

Breaking the Crisis Wheel

Like my Kith colleagues, I cut my proverbial teeth in politics. Not as a candidate, but as a campaign staffer and, later, political consultant. Campaigns are great places to train for reputation management and crisis communications because everything is a crisis. The...

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Hot Potato: What To Do When You’re Targeted

Hot Potato: What To Do When You’re Targeted

We’re taking you way back in the wayback machine to when I was a little kid in Canada. It was 1991 when Winnipeg-based Old Dutch Foods entered the Ontario market hoping to gain ground but instead faced a salty standoff. Rival Hostess Frito-Lay was accused of buying...

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By definition, Kith means a cadre of peers who shape opinions and attitudes while instilling sophisticated habits for action. As a way to live this value, we like to share resources that are building blocks to good crisis management and can help you start the path of protecting your reputation.

More Recent Insights
How a Clear Chain of Command Creates Strategic Speed in a Crisis
How a Clear Chain of Command Creates Strategic Speed in a Crisis

If you’ve ever seen the classic Abbott and Costello sketch "Who’s on First?," you know how quickly things can unravel when no one knows who’s doing what. It’s hilarious on stage, but in a real life crisis, that kind of confusion is anything but funny. Think back to the last time you were called into a room as a situation started to spiral. Was it really...

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When “Natural” Turns Toxic: The Cost of Broken Brand Promises
When “Natural” Turns Toxic: The Cost of Broken Brand Promises

You may have heard recently that Perrier’s fizz has gone flat overseas. Parent company Nestlé Waters is facing a major environmental scandal after investigative reports revealed years of illegal waste dumping at its bottling sites, including massive landfills filled with plastic, debris, and even vehicle parts. To make matters worse, microplastics were...

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Don’t Let Your Crisis Plans Remain Buried Like a Time Capsule
Don’t Let Your Crisis Plans Remain Buried Like a Time Capsule

Many of us found ourselves abruptly working from home during the Covid pandemic. For some, a return to the office did not occur for months or even years. If you were one such person, you may recall the cognitive dissonance you experienced when you found it exactly as it was the day before you left, a detailed world frozen in time. One story stood out for...

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Stakeholders: Reach Them Where They Are
Stakeholders: Reach Them Where They Are

Let’s talk about precision. In a crisis, speed is critical ... but speed without clarity and accuracy is just noise. When you’ve taken the time to get to know your stakeholders, you understand where they get their information. Even if you just know the age range, you can understand which social media platform is likely to be the best option. The same goes...

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The Shockingly Long Tail of Crisis
The Shockingly Long Tail of Crisis

Around here, we warn clients about the long tail of crisis. It’s when the effects of a crisis can drag on for a long time, with unexpected problems, and damage, popping up well after things seem like they’ve settled down. It’s also known as “the ripples,” and can pose an even bigger risk to organizations that fail to act responsibly once the initial shock...

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Trust Carriers & Credibility
Trust Carriers & Credibility

Here’s one of the most overlooked truths in crisis communication: The messenger matters as much as the message. You can have a perfect statement, a perfect plan, and a perfect rollout. But if it comes from someone your stakeholders don’t trust, it will fall flat. Or worse, backfire. We are in an era of widespread distrust of certain sources based on our...

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More on Knowing Your Stakeholders: Seeing the World through Their Eyes
More on Knowing Your Stakeholders: Seeing the World through Their Eyes

In our last post, we discussed the importance of mapping your stakeholders. Now it’s time to really understand them. And the whole thinking for this series was spurred by this column about where people get their information. While Kith is politically agnostic, all of us have worked in politics at some point and we understand that people are political. They...

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Know Your Stakeholders
Know Your Stakeholders

If you’ve been around a moment, you’ve heard or read about our Kith formula: Clarity + Trust = Strategic Speed. Today, I want to talk about just one piece of Clarity: Knowing your stakeholders. That means knowing who matters, what they value, and how to communicate with them effectively under pressure. It’s not about guesswork. It’s not about internal...

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When Your Leader Falls Out of Fashion
When Your Leader Falls Out of Fashion

Lately, we’ve seen organizations in the news that have failed to prepare for an uncomfortable scenario: when the threat comes from within. It’s unsettling to imagine a business unraveling due to the actions of an insider (whether intentional or not). But it happens, and few are feeling that reality more acutely right now than Kohl’s. The clothing...

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Espionage and Consequences: The HR Tech Meltdown
Espionage and Consequences: The HR Tech Meltdown

Demonstrating that no industry is immune to controversy – and highlighting the need for solid risk mitigation strategies – a shocking scandal has just rocked the HR tech sector. Rippling, a company specializing in workforce management, has taken legal action against its rival Deel, accusing it of corporate espionage. According to the lawsuit, Deel...

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The Kith Method

Good crisis management comes from a plan. Great crisis management comes from capability – and starts before you even smell smoke. That’s why we developed the Kith Method. We can help build and maintain a flexible capability that works for you.

Your reputation is an investment; time-consuming and costly to build and expensive to repair. Protect it.