Crisis Leadership Blog
Insights and perspectives on being the lighthouse during a crisis.
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...
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.
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 Risk of Patagonia Envy
Critical takeaways When asked about “high reputation” firms, one that always comes to mind is the outdoor retailer Patagonia which has a very high reputation due to its commitment and authenticity to its mission. You can learn a lot from Patagonia but don’t just copy their approach: a good reputation is based on being authentic to your own beliefs. There...
Noah and Augustine: a crisis history lesson
Critical takeaways The story of Noah’s Ark reminds us of the need to actually take action in response to risk. This story is quoted in a 1995 HBR article by Norm Augustine who lays out six points for crisis success based on his experiences in government and business. Despite the article’s age, Augustine’s six points are still highly relevant to crisis...
Courage and conviction in crafting an op-ed
Critical takeaways Op-eds are a powerful way of telling your story in a crisis and should be in every communicator’s tool kit. Op-eds written by a committee will fail to make your points clearly. Communications should write the piece with input from the subject matter expert. This guidance note is based on our experience using op-eds in a crisis or...
Crisis on the edge – Part II
Critical takeaways Nature doesn’t have clear-cut edges and neither do crises. Taking an edgeless, long-term view of a crisis improves our ability to learn after an event and also helps us prepare and improve our actions beforehand. Here are five ways that an ‘edgeless’ mindset will help you better prepare and give you a significant advantage in the period...
Leadership Happy Hour: Critical Moments With Bill Coletti
"If you don't like what people are saying, change the conversation." -Don Draper (AMC's Madman Series) The quote I have above is one of my favorite quotes of all time. We live in a time of immediacy of communication. People know what's happening when it's happening and it's up to us, as leader's to stop acting tactically and start being strategic in how...
The Modern Leadership Podcast: Reputation Management with Bill Coletti
Bill Coletti sits down with The Modern Leadership Podcast host Jake Carlson to share his insights and expertise on reputation management and dives in deeper on strategy while sharing best practices for crisis response and planning. LISTEN NOW
Crisis Edges
Critical takeaways Situations in nature that appear to have clear edges are often more complex and blurry at the boundaries. This is the same in a crisis where there isn’t as clear a start and end as we might think. Thinking about crises as ‘edgeless’ allows us to learn more which improves our crisis response and may even prevent similar situations in the...
Crises as infinite games
Critical takeaways Infinite games are games where the objective is to excel and to pursue a worthy goal over the long term. Finite games with set structures and a winner/loser are limiting and ill-suited to long-term success. These two ideas are encapsulated in Simon Sinek’s book The Infinite Game and Sinek’s ‘infinite’ mindset is very similar to what we...
2018 Blog Recap
In addition to seeing what we can learn from the biggest issues of year, at Kith, we also like to conduct an annual review of our own writing. This is a good opportunity for us to reassess our thinking and to make sure that our core values and beliefs are properly reflected in our writing. I wanted to share these with you as an end-of-year recap of our...
2018 Crisis Year in Review
Critical takeaways Social media still matters. Companies must have a presence and use these platforms in a crisis. Pre-closure is the new disclosure. Be proactive, ‘take the trash out’, be clear about what you stand for and get out in front of the issue. Data breach is a waning public concern but still needs to be appropriately managed. These situations...
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.