Communicating Under Fire

The crisis communications survival guide.

Anyone who promises a “blueprint” for managing a crisis today is, frankly, lying. Blueprints might have worked in the 24/7 news cycle of the 1990s and early 2000s, but in today’s 1440 news cycle—when every minute counts—the flames of crisis fires rage too quickly for the old ways of thinking.

In his over twenty year–career leading crisis communications for governments and organizations across the globe, Dallas Lawrence has seen it all. His work has taken him from the communications headquarters for the Iraq War to Yemen in an effort to avert the Yemeni Civil War, from the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facilities in Cuba to the Horn of Africa’s command center for anti-pirating activities. Lawrence has helped manage crisis responses for nuclear disasters, celebrity scandals, the Boston Marathon bombing, the collapse of Wall Street, the Boy Scout sexual assault crisis, data breaches, cancel culture, and more.

The need to be prepared for the rigors of a reputational assault have never been greater, thanks to:

• Anyone now being capable of wielding a global platform to swing at their favorite punching bag
• Every news outlet circulating updates that just five years ago would never have made the editorial cut
• Political leaders using their bully pulpits to attack everyone, from the media to private companies and high profile individuals

Communicating Under Fire provides the desperately needed mindset, strategies, and communication moves that anyone with a reputation worth defending will need when—not if—their crisis moment arrives.