With the holidays in the rearview mirror, many of us now turn to making personal resolutions for the new year. Whether it's training for a Tough Mudder, getting more sleep (hello, melatonin), saving more money for your dream retirement beach house, or remembering to call your elderly aunt at a...
crisis planning
Insights into crisis leadership, reputation and readinesscrisis planning
Hanging in the Balance: Why and How Financial Leaders Should Prepare for the Unexpected
Any crisis comes with costs – economic costs, social costs, psychological costs – and long-term implications for your business’ bottom line, reputation, and team morale. No industry is immune to the threat of a crisis. Some sectors, including finance, face heightened risks due to the uncertainty...
Be Prepared for What Comes after Election Night
It’s almost here. Based on retail stores, you might think “it” is Christmas, but “it” is not. No, “it” is Election Day. Most years, elections just kind of happen. People vote, wait for the results to be announced, celebrate or not, and then go on with their daily lives. This is not one of those...
How Colleges and Universities Can Handle Reputational Risk Better
Higher education is seemingly in an increasingly perilous spot. As the job market shifts — 47 to 54% of jobs will likely be lost to automation by 2030, or roughly 800 million jobs globally, according to McKinsey Global Institute — higher ed also needs to reinvent itself to remain a value-add in...
Holding Statements: What Are They and Why Are They Critical to Effective Crisis Response
Speech is silver, silence is golden. According to this proverb, saying nothing is more valuable than saying something, even if the something itself has value. As a crisis management expert, I believe those are backward, and I’d add one more phrase to the proverb: rapid response is platinum. Speed...
Preparing for Risk
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this through the frame of crisis and crisis response and what organizations should do. In fact, I was speaking about this on a panel and was joined by an intelligence analyst.
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.
‘Crucial Conversations’: Lessons for Crisis Communicators
Critical takeaways The book ‘Crucial Conversations’ is a great guide to managing high-stakes conversations but it also provides useful guidance for crises. Many of the same techniques the authors advise for critical conversations can be used by crisis communicators to shape messages - externally...
Crafting Hard Messaging: How to Communicate Difficult Decisions
As we continue to face the daily uncertainty of how this pandemic will unfold, there is one thing we know for sure. Companies will continue to make extremely difficult decisions in the weeks ahead and will be faced with communicating those tough decisions to those who matter most. This webinar...
Leveraging Stakeholder Research for Your COVID Communications Strategy
Bill Coletti and Karlan Witt, CEO of Cambia Information Group, discuss using stakeholder research so you don't have to guess when it comes to crafting your next COVID-19 response message. The webinar covers: Robust research options: the recipe for strong survey research, message development,...
Turning Inwards: Tips for External Communicators Managing Internal Communications
Critical Takeaways The changes forced on businesses by COVID-19 are placing greater emphasis on internal communications. This is requiring external communicators to turn their attention inwards but this change requires a shift in perspective. We’ve outlined five considerations that external...
Crisis Planning: How to Manage Preventable Reputational Risks
The previous post,3 Reputational Risk Categories: A New Framework for Crisis Planning, reviewed three reputational risk categories and how they fit into a new framework for crisis planning. The next three posts will explore each of the threats in greater detail, starting here with...
Are you ready for a crisis?
Is your organization prepared to respond to a crisis and protect its hard-earned reputation? Take our quiz and find out!