Crisis Leadership Blog

We were delighted to welcome Stephanie Craig on board to be our VP of Consulting this August. This is the first of a series of posts in which Stephanie reflects on her first 60 days, shares her thoughts on crises, and, in this case, explains why she left her own successful practice to join Kith. Anyone who has started their own company knows that there are...

A big mistake we see everywhere is thinking that experience in a role or time-served automatically makes you a leader in that space. This thinking mistakes the fundamental difference between management and leadership: one is focused on what needs to be done, whereas the other is more concerned with the why. How versus Why In a crisis context, this is...

Main article Critical Takeaways: In Corporate Communications and Public Relations, the word stakeholders is a fancy way to define those that matter most to an organization. We at Kith put these people into three categories: Communities, Customers, and Critics At a fundamental level, what separates inferior corporate communications from superior corporate...

Critical Takeaways: Conducting training or an exercise without learning from the experience is a waste of resources, time, and attention. You need a process to capture these learnings and to put these into an action plan. Start with an immediate 'hot' debrief with participants. We find asking them to answer 'I like, I wish, I wonder' gets quick, honest...

Critical Takeaways A great simulation depends on thorough preparation, and that includes preparing the participants and yourself. Start by taking care of the basic administration. Otherwise, you'll get off to a bad start before the exercise even begins. Use your SMART Objectives to determine the right kind and level of preparation and remind everyone that...

Getting to yes: persuading your executives to buy-into a simulation Critical takeaways Simulations and training are excellent ways to prepare your organization for a crisis but their benefit might not be evident to your leadership. We've found that a needs-driven approach, based on a gap analysis, with a clear explanation of the budget, time, team, and...

Get SMART about your crisis training Critical takeaways Training without a clear objective often wastes time, resources and money. Instead, have a clear sense of the gaps that you face in your crisis readiness program and where you need to see change. Then use SMART objectives to help clearly define your desired outcomes to ensure that your training or...

One of the real benefits we see with crisis simulations is that these work very well as gap analyses. After a simulation, it's easy to see the gap between your current state and your desired state. How well can you develop a plan and put that into action? How well do our processes hold up? What deficiencies are there in our teams Which areas are aligned...

Speed is critical to success in a crisis but speed alone isn’t the answer – you need speed that’s based on an understanding of your core values and chain of command. Speed for the sake of speed leads to mistakes, inaccuracies, and rambling responses that get you into deeper trouble, not help pull you out. Instead, take some time to be clear, accurate, and brief. It requires additional time but helps you speed up in the end.