Crisis Leadership Blog
Insights and perspectives on being the lighthouse during a crisis.
Protecting Your Reputation in Uncertain Times
This is a confusing economic time. Layoffs are happening but unemployment is at record lows. We are figuring out what the new normal is. It’s a lot to navigate as a business leader, and some everyday concerns are not getting the attention they deserve. Your reputation...

Feeling Umwelt – A Mental Framework for People Who Aren’t Listening
I’ll bet every one of us has said something like, “I kept telling them this was going to happen, but I guess it just fell on deaf ears.” Their ears were tuned to another stimulus. German biologist Jakob von Uexküll defined the unique sensory environment an animal...

Gone, But Not Forgotten
The damage of a crisis is not always immediate and not always front-page news. A couple of months ago, CTV News/Bell Media fired Lisa Laflamme, a national icon and trusted news source in Canada, because she stopped coloring her hair. It was sexist or ageist or both...

We Need to Talk About Potential Litigation
If you’re ever looking for a way to kill a conversation, raise the specter of litigation. It’s more effective at ending a conversation than feigning death, belting out “Don’t Stop Believing” or pulling the fire alarm. Worries over litigation can stymie productive...

Values Are the Bedrock of Your Organization
Many of us will have rolled our eyes when we've received an invitation to join our colleagues in a meeting room to discuss our values. Writing the same tired old tropes on a whiteboard or flip charts can seem like a waste of time. The values are written up at the end...
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

The Industrial Talk Podcast
In this week’s Industrial Talk Podcast, we’re talking to Bill Coletti, CEO at Kith.co about “Crisis Management and the Need for better Communications in your Crisis Situation”. Get the answers to your “Crisis Management” questions along with Bill’s unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

Social Risk: An Emerging Threat to Reputation
We have long thought about risk as falling definitively into one of three categories: Strategic, Preventable, and External. Organizations tend to understand the impact these kinds of risks have on their operations and are pretty adept at mitigating them and responding to them. Dealing with a data breach, a failed product launch or an industrial accident...

Creating Positive University Reputation During Crises
Over the past six months, most institutions have managed to pivot their operations to deal with the pandemic. However, there probably will be more mergers in the future due to enrollment declines this year along with the upcoming enrollment cliff.

Mastering Risk Management
This episode highlights the critical need to manage a crisis. Whilst you hope to never need it, you must prepare for one regardless. My guest, Bill Coletti, helps organizations think through what they need to do to be prepared.

Manage Smarter: Coronavirus Crisis Communications
Join hosts Audrey Strong and C. Lee Smith as they speak with Kith founder Bill Coletti on Crisis Communications in the current pandemic.

Thankful in a Thankless Year
I’m thankful that so many strategic communicators and companies have recognized the critical importance of “always be communicating” with your audiences who matter most.

Hacking Humans: The Public’s Expectations are Changing
Converstation with Bill Coletti, crisis communications and reputation management expert at Kith, and author of the book Critical Moments: A New Mindset for Reputation Management.

Social Risk Webinar Recap
The public’s expectations of corporations and brands are higher, and writing a check to a cause or saying “that’s not our lane” won’t cut it anymore. Even a well-crafted statement is not enough. Actions must follow words.

Top Tips for Running Crisis Management Simulations
Crisis simulations are a sure fire way to build “muscle memory” of response and action that can be deployed during an actual crisis impacting you or your organization. We believe simulations are one of the most effective tools in a communication team’s toolbox. Here are some Top Tips for running your own crisis simulations.

Be Prepared for What Comes after Election Night
Election Day is next week. Tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots in states where early voting is permitted. Tens of millions more will vote on Tuesday in their local polling place. Most years, elections just kind of happen. People vote, wait for results to be announced, celebrate or not, and go on with their lives the next day. The 2020 election will not follow that script, and high levels of anxiety will last for a while.
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.