Crisis Leadership Blog
Insights and perspectives on being the lighthouse during a crisis.
Checklists: Simple Tools for Complex Situations
I love checklists. I also love Thanksgiving. What could be better than combining the two? As you get ready for the holidays coming up, I want to remind you that checklists are critically important...
Don’t Just See, Observe: How to Prevent Blindspots
“You have not observed, and yet you have seen.” – Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia Pattern recognition is a superpower of strategic communicators. In the midst of a crisis, we have the ability to connect the dots out of a cacophony of signals, personalities and...
Why You Need to Understand the Cost of Crisis
What does it cost to replace a manufacturing plant? How about a flagship store? Fight a lawsuit? How much does it cost to restore your reputation? These are often the questions we ask when asked why protecting your organization’s reputation is a worthwhile...
Beware the Ripples: Sometimes These Are Signs of an Incoming Wave
Last week, executives from all the big oil companies gave sworn testimony to a Congressional committee. Under oath, they were asked if their companies knew that their products contributed to climate change and how long they had known this. Everywhere you turned, the...
Why We Only Do One Thing
When I first started doing crisis management, someone asked me what kind of crisis I handled. I thought that to be an odd question. If you are a patent lawyer, you handle patents not just left-pawed blue schnauzers. If you are a neonatal nurse, you take care of...
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
Get Back on Plan Now for a Better 2021
It’s going to be important for organizations to figure out the next big thing. Launch it, lead it, push it through, and make it happen. That’s what people will be looking for.
Bust Through Silos, Even During COVID
Instilling new behaviors and patterns is easiest when the old ones aren’t functioning. So use this time to get those great plans back in place and bust through those silos.
Scaling Your CEO for Better Crisis Response
CEOs either rise or stumble during a crisis. It often comes down to what they focus on.
Using Tabletop Exercises to Improve Coming-back Plans
Critical takeaways: Use tabletop exercises to explore specific what-if scenarios around your coming-back plan. What you’re really looking for is, "Uh oh, that's something we hadn't thought about. How's this going to change our planning?" They’re also a tool for testing transformational ideas, including policies that would not have been considered before...
Seeking Bigger Pastures
Critical takeaways: The sheer volume and complexity of today’s challenges make it hard for strategic communicators to do what we do best. Seeking bigger pastures will enable us to see around corners and best position our organization for what’s next. Focusing on the gain, not the gap, grounds us on the path to our bigger pastures. We are a little over...
Unless the CEO Is the Crisis
How CEO Greg Glassman went from CrossFit to crosshairs and the challenge to restore a brand that followed.
Leading While Always Communicating
Critical takeaways: Strategic communicators will need to find ways to keep their CEOs leading while always communication and visible to people who matter Humility, generosity and engagement are crucial leadership characteristics in this time of COVID-19 Great strategic communicators need to think like CEOs so their CEOs will be great communicators when...
Saying Hard Things – Focus on a Bigger Picture
Critical takeaways: In a crisis, organizations should aim to be understood, not loved. Focus on a bigger picture to meet reasonable people’s expectations for a responsible organization. Spend your efforts communicating to the reasonable 80% and not over-indexing for the unreasonable 20%. Last week, and during our COVID-19 webinar series, I talked about the...
The Eggs Podcast: Bill Coletti
Kith CEO Bill Coletti joined Michael Smith and Ryan Roghaar from The Eggs Podcast to discuss current crises happening in the United States and how to manage your way through it as a company. He also talks about where to start if you want to change your company's reputation. LISTEN HERE
Saying Hard Things – Own the Disappointment
Critical takeaways: Saying hard things will inevitably disappoint people who matter. We cannot write magic words that will somehow keep people from being upset. We must own the disappointment. Our five-point Framework for Saying Hard Things can help soften the blow of difficult news. Saying hard things is inevitably going to disappoint an audience that...
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.