How today’s leaders prepare for tomorrow’s crisis

Hello,

From cyberattacks and service outages to leadership misteps, recent headlines have shown that organisations are being judged as much on how they respond to a crisis as on what went wrong in the first place. In an always-on news cycle, reputations can be shaped within hours, and this can rarely be protected by one perfectly worded statement.

The strongest responses come from organisations that prepare early, make decisions together and know how to communicate once the pressure is on.

Crisis communications is a team sport

The first rule of crisis communications is to bring the right teams together before anything goes wrong.

Cyber, legal and communications each enter a crisis with different priorities. Cyber is trying to establish what happened and preserve evidence. Legal is assessing regulatory obligations and future risk. Communications is under pressure to reassure customers, employees and stakeholders.

None of those priorities are necessarily in conflict. But if each team stays in its own ‘dance space’, the gaps show quickly.

The strongest crisis teams have already done the legwork before the first incident arises. They’ve mapped their biggest flashpoints, agreed how decisions will be escalated, and understand how to balance technical accuracy with the need to communicate quickly.

That’s what separates teams that react to a crisis from those that lead through one.

Driving the narrative under scrutiny

At some point, a crisis plan stops being a document and becomes a live conversation, whether that is a media interview or a high-pressure stakeholder discussion. This is where responses often stumble, by treating the interaction like a game of tennis, simply hitting incoming points back and forth.

The strongest spokespeople treat it more like rugby. They accept the question, take possession of the momentum, and use that moment to drive the narrative in the direction it needs to go.

This relies on a fundamental confidence: you live the operational reality and hold the definitive facts. An external commentator or journalist will always have a viewpoint, but they rarely have deeper insight than the organisation itself. Remembering this shifts the dynamic between spokesperson and external stakeholder from defensive to collaboratively firm.

What happens after the crisis matters too

Immediate containment is only day one. The real test of crisis leadership is what happens next.

Rebuilding a corporate reputation is a long game – often requiring a deliberate 12-month strategy rather than a quick fix. It takes time, patience, and a shift from reactive management to proactive recovery. Different businesses operate under completely different constraints and expectations; in light of this, long-tail strategies will look radically different for everyone.

For some organisations, recovery means a quiet, multi-month focus on operational remediation and rebuilding trust behind closed doors. For others, it opens a window for a completely different approach.

Take the viral Astronomer saga as an example of a highly creative route. After its executives became the focus of a runaway personal scandal, the company didn’t just slink into the shadows. Once the immediate fallout passed, they used a self-aware video campaign fronted by Gwyneth Paltrow to separate the brand’s reputation from the CEO’s personal brand and wrestle control of the narrative back. Read more about Astronomer’s strategy here.

A celebrity cameo is obviously not a blueprint for every business or every crisis. It does, however, highlight a broader operational truth. Once the urgent firefighting is finished, the next phase requires a strategy tailored to the business’s long-term future, moving the brand purposefully onward rather than just waiting for the news cycle to reset.

The With Editor

Why crisis communications is a team sport

Lizzie Jones explores why communications, legal and cyber teams need to build relationships long before the first holding statement is ever written. [Read the full blog here]

Why Cannes still works

Graham Alexander looks beyond the yachts and headlines to explore what Cannes reveals about the conversations, communities and relationships shaping modern marketing. [Read Graham’s blog →]

Life at With

The best client relationships start with strong team relationships. Take a look behind the scenes at our latest Away Day and why investing in our people is part of how we deliver our best work. [Take a look →]