It’s always tough to answer the question, ‘How much damage does a reputational crisis cause?‘ Unlike a business interruption or accident, the cost of reputational crises is much harder to determine. Unfortunately, whether you’re in the early stages of a crisis or trying to get a leadership team to find a preparedness program, ‘How much could this cost?’ is the kind of thing crisis managers get asked all the time. ...

I wrote this on a beautiful sunny morning last week, sitting on the Isle of Skye, enjoying the sun washing over the mountains with a fresh coffee and a copy of business continuity principles. Different day, different highland view, but you get the idea OK, so I enjoyed the sunrise, mountains, and coffee a little more than the business continuity guide, but it was nice to refamiliarize myself with business continuity management (BCM) again. ...

I’ve moved my courses over to Udemy so if you’re here, it’s likely that you followed an old link. I apologize for the inconvenience but you can find my courses on Udemy here

*Is what people tell me, but here’s why they’re wrong “This will never work.” “People won’t trust something so important to an automated process.” “You can’t develop high-quality, professional materials like this without extensive consultation.” “It can’t be done.” These are the things you hear when you make something that’s only been available via expensive professional consultation into an on-demand service. Except these comments aren’t just about CrisisDojo. This is also what the founders of a small start-up heard back in 2001 when they launched their online legal services firm. ...

I want to share a simple framework for crisis response. But, if you’re a crisis management professional or corporate communicator, you need to take a deep breath before you read this. You’ll want to tell me that you can’t simplify crisis response. You’ll want to tell me, ‘It’s not exactly like the standard’. You’ll want to tell me that this won’t work for your big clients. I understand these concerns, so there’s no need to email me and tell me why I’m wrong. ...

A great exercise presents participants with a near-real environment that will apply stress to them, their plans, and their processes. Like a good gym session, they’ll finish tired, and a few things might be sore, but they’ll be better, stronger, and faster not long afterward. However, it’s just as easy to put together a training session that leaves everyone hurt, confused, anxious, and feeling less prepared. So how can we deliver a great exercise? One that will make a team much more crisis ready by the end? ...

Exercises are an essential part of skills development and, for things like emergencies and crises, the only way to build these skills outside of an actual event, events that are thankfully few and far between. But creating a successful exercise takes a lot of work and planning – you can’t just throw some problems at a group of people and hope they’ll learn from the experience. So how do you plan a great crisis exercise? ...

Image (C) Bloomberg In the last few weeks, US banks Sivergate, Signature, and the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed, while First Republic Bank required a $30bn bailout from larger Wall Street Firms. Meanwhile, in Europe, the Swiss bank Credit Suisse has been bought by rival UBS. Each of these banks was in a different position, and no single factor caused these banks to get into trouble. However, these recent events provide some essential takeaways for risk and communications managers. Here are four I think are worth thinking about. ...

Recently, there was a great discussion on the frequency of crisis management exercises in a forum I’m part of. What was most surprising to me was the degree of consensus on the ideal tempo. The vast majority of folks recommended a quarterly & annual frequency. – Quarterly low-intensity tabletops focused on skills development and team cohesion. – Annual high-intensity simulations to reinforce learning and test teams and systems in a realistic environment. ...

To be successful, the process would have to: Be faster than if I did it ‘by hand’ Produce realistic inputs Be easily repeatable Allow for customization to meet client needs The outputs had to include: Ideas for scenarios A short video news report Social media clips Text for a news story This left me with five challenges to solve: Get ChatGPT into my workspace. Generate scenario ideas. Generate supporting text material. Generate a video news clip input. Generate social media inputs. Here’s how the AI Crisis Management Exercise Build Hackathon* went down. (*Attendee one) ...