This piece first appeared in O’Dwyer’s on July 7, 2026. Below is a summary of the key ideas— read the full article on O’Dwyer’s →
Rapid growth exposes a gap most companies never plan for: crisis communications infrastructure that hasn’t kept pace with the rest of the business. Hiring accelerates, governance structures form, and brand equity builds, but crisis readiness is often treated as a document to file away rather than a capability to maintain. When a crisis eventually hits, that gap becomes the story.
Why Crisis Plans Fail Under Real Pressure
Most crisis plans don’t survive first contact with an actual event. Three failures show up consistently:
- They’re written without a clear-eyed audit of past incidents and what those incidents revealed about decision-making
- They underestimate how a crisis will land with a specific stakeholder group
- They rely on assumptions about how an opposing party will act or respond, rather than mapping multiple scenarios
Scale compounds each of these problems. A single company-wide announcement rarely fits every audience once an organization spans multiple business units, geographies, and cultures. What works as a message to one team can misfire entirely with another.
Crisis Communications Is a Decision-Making Discipline
At its core, crisis communications is the discipline of making sound decisions under pressure, with incomplete information, while every choice is understood to become public. That reality should shape how organizations prepare long before a crisis begins — not just what they say once one is underway.
Montieth & Company works with leadership teams to build that discipline directly into governance and communications planning, so response readiness scales alongside the business rather than trailing behind it.
Continue reading the full article, including the “Jedi mind trick” framework for revisiting founding values and the three enterprise-level standards for crisis decision-making, on O’Dwyer’s →
To learn how Montieth & Company approaches crisis preparedness at scale, visit our Crisis & Issues Management practice.