Crisis Leadership Blog

Insights and perspectives on being the lighthouse during a crisis.
The Cost of Cri$i$

The Cost of Cri$i$

“What does a crisis cost?” I’ve been asked that question a few times. Disappointingly, my answer invariably is, “It depends.” Part of the answer depends on the specific aspects of the crisis and the company going through it, but much more rests on the definition of...

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Trust as a KPI

Trust as a KPI

Fortune magazine has recently launched a newsletter focused entirely on trust. They are framing it as “trust is the new KPI”. Just in case you’ve been living under a corporate rock, KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. The Trust Factor is a  “weekly guide to...

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Don’t Become the Woking Dead

Don’t Become the Woking Dead

Bud Light. Disney. Mars Wrigley. Dilbert. The Super Mario Bros movie. Victoria’s Secret. Utah’s proposed new state flag. BlackRock. The U.S. military. Legos. Jack Daniels. Even Chick-fil-A. Accusations of “wokeness” have been flung far and wide so far in 2023. Is your...

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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
Your Crisis Beach Body
Your Crisis Beach Body

The sun is shining in Austin, Texas, and many of us are thinking about plans for the beach this summer. I've written before about the notion that a healthy body is a combination of diet and exercise, and the equivalency that I see with healthy organizations, which will have a mix of ability - crisis skills - and understanding - risk acuity. Health-wise,...

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The Kith Method: Why – And How – We’re Changing Direction
The Kith Method: Why – And How – We’re Changing Direction

Loyal readers of this blog will have seen that we've spent a lot of time talking about speed, clarity, and trust recently. For us, these represent a new approach to helping organizations: less of a focus on crisis response and more on risk awareness and crisis readiness. Overall, we're focused on building what we're calling Crisis Confidence. Crisis...

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Redundancy: Add Spare Capacity to Make You Faster in a Crisis
Redundancy: Add Spare Capacity to Make You Faster in a Crisis

I'm fond of the old military saying: "two is one, and one is none." It reminds me to have a backup or a spare for critical equipment when I'm on the boat. I can't run to the corner store if something goes wrong when I'm at sea, so I need to be able to replace or repair critical parts of the boat. Otherwise, we could be in for a long, hard, and potentially...

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Time to create good habits
Time to create good habits

I’m on my way back from Austin where I gathered with a group of female founders. We all belong to a group called Fyli (pronounced Fee-Lee). Our purpose is to support female founders as they launch their next big thing.  The idea is that support must be 360 degrees. Need access to an investor? Done. Need to find a CMO? Done. Need help ensuring you are...

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Crisis Plans Can’t Be Time Capsules
Crisis Plans Can’t Be Time Capsules

A friend of mine just returned to his office for the first time in more than two years. It was exactly how he left it – albeit cleaner – when he abruptly left work on a Thursday afternoon in March 2020 to retrieve his sick kid from school. He stayed home with the kiddo Friday. The world shut down on Monday. “It’s amazing what I thought was important on...

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Mobilization: How to be fast off the blocks in a crisis
Mobilization: How to be fast off the blocks in a crisis

Mobilization simply means getting the right people in the right place with the right information to allow them to start managing the event taking place.  The term 'mobilization' can sound very operational and, therefore, a little out of place in a communications environment, but that's the point. It's meant to convey a sense of purpose and deliberateness...

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How procedures generate speed

Procedures have a terrible reputation amongst communicators for stifling creativity and limiting the freedom needed to respond to a crisis. We'll often say that we can't plan something as complex and instinctual as a crisis in advance. In many ways, I agree. My dislike of shelves of binders is long-held and well-documented. Trying to map each step of a...

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How procedures generate speed
How procedures generate speed

Procedures have a terrible reputation amongst communicators for stifling creativity and limiting the freedom needed to respond to a crisis. We'll often say that we can't plan something as complex and instinctual as a crisis in advance. In many ways, I agree. My dislike of shelves of binders is long-held and well-documented. Trying to map each step of a...

read more
How Your Chain of Command Generates Speed
How Your Chain of Command Generates Speed

You've probably seen the Abbott and Costello sketch 'Who's on First?' (and if not, you're missing out) where the team's names - Who is on First base, What is on Second, Why is in the Outfield - make for a lot of confusion and a great skit. But take a moment and think back to the last time you were called into a room as a crisis was breaking.Now ask...

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Trust: The Foundation of Becoming Crisis Confident
Trust: The Foundation of Becoming Crisis Confident

The final component of our speed, clarity, and trust architecture that will transform you into a Crisis Confident organization is trust. The simple quote from Santosh Kalwar, "Trust starts and ends with the truth," helps us think about the truth and the trust that's necessary for superior crisis response. Of the three elements, you may be saying to...

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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.