planning, crisis, consulting

Beyond a Crisis – Better Helping You to Prepare and Avoid the Worst

October 21, 2020

We’re really excited about the launch of our new website, kith.co, which highlights exactly how we help organizations gain reputation resilience. We work with companies, associations, and other organizations to help them find that resiliency, which often begins by helping them get out of the tough situation they find themselves in. 

We’re certainly here to help when a crisis happens, but that’s not all we do at Kith to protect and strengthen an organization’s reputation. We offer services that help strategic communicators grow as leaders, their teams respond better to crises and their enterprise attain reputation.

The best strategic communicators provide value far beyond their ability to write great press statements or craft key messages to the audiences that matter. It starts with how you show up to a crisis, how you rise above the moment and become that true, trusted advisor to your CEO. Kith Academy is a professional development program that focuses on the mindset, behaviors, and skills that transform a good tactical communicator into a great strategic communicator.

Instead of writing a response, lead the response. Craft the strategy and become the person executives turn to when reputation is at stake.

Let us help you prepare for crisis

Kith can work with your communications team to test and hone crisis response skills. The crucible of a crisis does not develop leadership skills – it reveals them. Crisis simulations provide a team with the opportunity to practice under pressure in a safe, controlled environment. I’ve found that simulations reveal unforeseen gaps in speed, skills, confidence, and tactics that might otherwise go undetected until a real crisis reveals them to the detriment of reputation.

We offer three types of simulations for crisis response and communications teams. A full-scale crisis simulation immerses the team in a real-world, real-time scenario augmented by realistic media stories and social posts. It’s a fully-orchestrated crisis scenario that forces the team to make critical decisions while the timer counts down but the real stakes are low. Full-scale simulations are best for experienced teams looking to take their crisis response to the next level.

A tabletop training exercise is like a surprise dress rehearsal where your team confronts a “what if” scenario with unpredictable elements built-in. Less experienced teams will find tabletop exercises as a way to develop skills and learn strategies in a realistic, but not the pressurized real-time, environment.

We also offer self-guided crisis scenarios that a communications leader can conduct with their team. These exercises are great for new or developing teams, or as a refresher for more experienced teams who haven’t faced a major test in a while.

When it comes to the enterprise level, we take organizations on a transformational journey to reputation resilience. There’s more to it than just a great crisis response team. Reputation Resilience means having the risk acuity to ‘see around corners’ and avoid preventable risks. It means embedding sophisticated crisis readiness throughout your organization. 

I’ve long been a believer that a company owns its brand but the public owns its reputation. 

A reputationally resilient organization has earned credibility with the public stakeholders who own your reputation. When your reputation is resilient, you have the public license to expand your impact, grow, and achieve far greater things, and you’ll have the benefit of the doubt when a crisis does occur.

We’d love to have a conversation with you about how we can strengthen you as a communications professional, train your team, or help your organization achieve reputation resilience.

Filed under: Crisis Planning

Bill

Bill is a reputation management, crisis communications and professional development expert, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal Risk & Compliance panelist, and best-selling author of Critical Moments: The New Mindset of Reputation Management. He has more than 25 years of global experience managing high-stakes crises, issues management, and media relations challenges for both Fortune 500 companies and winning global political campaigns.