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

April 29, 2022

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 Confidence, delivered via the Kith Method, is where we have a firm plan to spend the bulk of time: helping organizations become more confident in the face of reputational risk and crisis, and ready for what might come.

From Prevention to Cure

As a firm, we’re coming up on our 10th anniversary soon. We’ve grown so much in that time, and to those of you we’ve had the privilege of working with – thank you.

Nearly weekly, an organization or individual asks for support, guidance, wisdom, and insight on how to move them through a misalignment with the public or a reputational challenge. We love this work and will continue to answer the phone: crisis response is still in our DNA and will be something we still do when the fit is right.

But our passion and future will be around building Crisis Confidence via the Kith Method. It’s a switch from cure to prevention because, even though we love taking the call to help get folks out of trouble, we feel we can be much more helpful if they don’t need to call us in the first place.

The Kith Method

The Kith Method starts with understanding your organization and its reputational risks. Then, a crisis diagnostic reveals your skill readiness and lays the foundation for the next step, a strategic roadmap to build the Speed, Clarity, and Trust you need to succeed. Finally, we apply our unique capabilities to deliver a tailored training program, developing the 15 key attributes we think make a difference between good and great organizations in crisis.

The result is an organization that’s ready for crises so you can stop wondering if you’ll be able to step up in the face of crisis. Instead, you’ll know that you and your team understand what you might have to deal with and know you’re thoroughly prepared: you’ll be Crisis Confident.  

For the balance of 2022 and 2023, we will spend our time and effort working with organizations to become more confident, helping them become more ready through the Kith Method, the simulations we’re so well known for, and training.

This aligns very nicely with last year’s announcement of Kith Academy: online courses and training for corporate communication professionals to develop their professional skills, mindset, and the behaviors they need to succeed.

The classes and coaching within Kith Academy reflect my passion for helping the next generation of communicators. They’ll have to respond to a whole new range of crises, so I want them to have the insights and expertise that I’ve learned the hard way. I want to help them be truly ready.

So with that, we are tremendously excited about helping you build the future: your future and the future of our firm. We’ve spoken to a number of you about the method, but if you want to know more about becoming crisis confident or Kith Academy, please reach out to us. 

Thank you for being in this community, for being part of our Kith, and thanks for being on this journey with us.

Photo by Javier Quiroga on Unsplash

Filed under: Blog | Crisis Confidence

Bill

Bill is a reputation management, crisis communications and professional development expert, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal Risk & Compliance panelist, and best-selling author of Critical Moments: The New Mindset of Reputation Management. He has more than 25 years of global experience managing high-stakes crises, issues management, and media relations challenges for both Fortune 500 companies and winning global political campaigns.