CRISIS PREPARATION, PLANNING, AND RESPONSE

“Your reputation is your most valuable asset. It is hard to earn, but easy to lose. In the digital age, losing your hard-earned reputation can occur in an instant.”

— Gary Conkling, CFM Advocates

Any organization can fall prey to a crisis situation. Only the foolish fail to prepare for one.

In our CFM Crisis Ebook, we share our experience, insights and advice on crisis response and crisis preparation. Our Ebook is our way of destigmatizing crisis by talking about it. People who have contemplated crisis situations are often better positioned to deal with them when they occur and come out the other end with their reputation intact.

Clients hire us to assist in crisis response and prepare for potential crises. We guide clients through an audit of their possible crisis situations, sort them based on probability and consequence and develop specific crisis scenarios for the most likely and potentially devastating crisis situations.

We don’t offer or recommend cookie-cutter crisis plans because crises are unique events. We discourage spending time on placeholder statements because you can’t anticipate what needs to be said and by whom in advance. What we offer is a helping hand in time of need.

I started my professional career as a journalist, covering a huge downtown explosion, labor negotiations gone awry, controversial projects and political scandals where I was the guy asking the tough questions. Working for two Members of Congress was its own form of daily crisis management. Handling public affairs for a technology company like Tektronix exposed me to a wide range of issues and challenges. Co-founding and managing a public affairs agency for almost 30 years allowed me to offer crisis counsel on multiple crises from a Christmas Eve closure of a major real estate firm to the suicide of a medical professional facing a lawsuit for molesting a patient.

Every new crisis I handle teaches new lessons and reinforces basic principles. During my career, the advent of the internet and digital smartphones have radically changed the crisis management landscape. Evolving public attitudes and growing community outrage have demanded smarter, more empathetic crisis tactics and strategies.

In the spirit of shared knowledge, we have made the CFM Crisis Ebook available online for free. We hope you find it useful, timely and insightful. We hope it inspires you to prepare for the rainy day you hoped would never happen.

You know where to find us if we can help.