Genesis: Looking Back at the First Five Years of the Crisis Communications Network

It started with a simple idea.

By late summer 2020 the world felt like a very different place from the one we had known only months before. All the old rhythms of life had stopped but nothing had yet replaced them.  The atmosphere was saturated with uncertainty, dread and a genuine sense of chaos. Confidence in government and in institutions already felt fragile. Successive lockdowns caused wholescale confusion, trauma and fear.

For many the Covid pandemic brought about a sudden and severe rupture with the life they had known before. The old order had gone: a new era was beginning. In fact, I still look at my own life as pre-Covid and post-Covid – it was that significant.

For me, 2020 marked a mid-point in a succession of crises: a personal crisis in 2019, followed by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. I have spent much of my career working in and around risk management and crisis and during the first lockdown in 2020 I spent some of my time doing the CIPR’s Crisis Communication Diploma. It was fun, and interesting, and it helped to keep me going when all the world seemed shattered and broken and when the days were uncertain and often unkind.

I am a big believer in making the most of a bad situation: in any crisis there is always opportunity.  Feeling battered by seemingly unremitting crises I asked myself a simple question: how can I, how can we, do this better? How can we better manage the impacts of the global crisis on ourselves, better support the organisations we work with and emerge more resilient as individuals?

There was no obvious place to go to get answers to these questions. And it occurred to me that of all the groups in the CIPR, there was none dedicated to crisis, and consequently no space dedicated to communications professionals going through, and advising on, crisis. What was missing was a community: somewhere communications professionals could learn, share experiences and support one another through crisis. There was an obvious need for education, support and connection. So, in the autumn of 2020 I took steps to turn the idea into a reality.

“If we build it, they will come”

I had a gut feeling that if we built a network, people would join it. The aim was to bring together people with different career histories, talents and perspectives who shared a belief that crisis communication deserved its own professional community. Sukhjit Grewal (CIPR Director of Professional Development and Membership) backed the idea, for which I remain enormously grateful, and in early 2021 I began assembling a committee. Chris Tucker joined first; followed by Rod Cartwright, Leigh Richards and Adelaide Arthur. From the very beginning our purpose was to share best practice and promote excellence in crisis communications. We aimed high: our stated vision was to become the primary forum for all crisis communications professionals in the UK.

The Crisis Communications Network was launched on 28 September 2021 and attracted interest straightaway. Sadly, we lost Leigh in 2022 and still feel that loss today: he was a wonderful man.

The Crisis Communications Network was launched on 28 September 2021 and attracted interest straightaway. Sadly, we lost Leigh in 2022 and still feel that loss today: he was a wonderful man. Happily, all the other members of the original team still remain on the committee and since Leigh’s death we have been fortunate enough to have been joined by other terrific committee members. In addition to the original remaining committee the existing team includes Sara Naylor, Felix Ostman, Rosie Hamilton and Kerry Knight. Former committee members include Lucy Salvage, Jo Barrett, Kriti Gupta, Lorraine Bryant, Destiny Hollern, Kayleigh-Anne Soryal, Tidiane Bangoura, Rob Armstrong-Haworth, Chantel Slater and Joanne Moore-Senior. It is and has been a real pleasure to work with you all.

Five years on, the response to the network has exceeded anything we originally imagined. We have genuinely created a forum where practitioners, academics and leaders can learn from one another. The network has grown to 1,115 members across 55 countries, supported by a LinkedIn community of 5,122 professionals. We have produced two well-received best-practice guides and a comprehensive handbook Crisis Communication for Boards, published in association with the Institute of Directors. Together we have hosted 42 free events, ranging from corporate crisis, natural disasters, risk and resilience, climate change and cybercrime to AI, corporate culture, DEI and board preparedness: our events have been the top three most attended of all CIPR events in each of 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Five years on, the response to the network has exceeded anything we originally imagined. We have genuinely created a forum where practitioners, academics and leaders can learn from one another.

What I remember most, however, is not the numbers but the conversations. In a theme that was to continue, our first event was ‘Crisis Communication Preparedness: Building Organisational Resilience’ with special guest Mark Hutcheon of Deloitte. One of my personal favourites was an event we held early in 2022 about the terrorist attacks at Fishmongers’ Hall and at the Manchester Arena (many thanks to Toby Williamson, CEO/Clerk of Fishmongers’ Hall and to crisis communication expert Amanda Coleman), but in truth there are too many events to choose from and I’ve learned so much from them all. We have been privileged to host a truly astonishing range of speakers, all leaders in their fields, including Professor Lucy Easthope, Rupert Younger, Dr W. Timothy Coombs, Dr Tony Jaques, Philippe Borremans, Mary-Ann Anyikam, Dr Hannah White, Fiona Hathorn, Ed Conley, numerous CIPR Fellows and Honorary Fellows, and so many dozens of others that it is impossible to list them all here. We are hugely grateful to you all. You are amazing people and it has been an incredible honour to meet you, talk with you and to hear what you’ve had to say.

Meeting the zeitgeist

In the five years of its existence, the Crisis Communications Network has tapped into the national, and the global, mood. In 2022, Collins Dictionary chose “permacrisis” as its word of the year. It was an apt description as it denotes a state of permanent, deeply embedded, crisis. In addition, we also find ourselves living in a state of “polycrisis”: a situation in which multiple crises overlap, interact and amplify one another.

Clearly, we are still living in febrile and volatile times. What with ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East, global unrest and an enduring cost of living crisis, it is hard to argue that things have got any easier, or calmer, since 2021. Indeed, with the global conversation focusing on increased budgets for defence capability, and governments actively preparing their citizens for war and/or natural disasters brought about by changing weather patterns, you could argue that the short to medium term does not promise to bring any immediate relief.

There is a continuing thirst for education and support about crisis and the network has grasped the opportunity to shape the conversation. We are hugely grateful to the CIPR for allowing us the opportunity to exist and for supporting us all the way including, most recently, with the considerable resources put behind Crisis Communication for Boards: A Handbook for Good Governance, a huge project which has already had far-reaching global impact. This too, I hope, will change the conversation and make a compelling case for a better understanding of crisis communication at board level, and for professional communicators to sit on boards.

Resilient organisations, resilient people

Before Covid, resilience was not a word in everyday use, but with the rise of permacrisis and polycrisis, it has become much more common. The media encourages us to plant more climate resilient gardens, to prepare for disaster, and to make our homes more resilient to emergencies ranging from floods to power outages to war.

Resilience is both a word and a concept that has been explored extensively by the network since its inception, particularly by Rod Cartwright, who has published his report Reputation, Risk and Resilience each year since 2022.

Over the last five years, I have come to think about resilience differently. Resilience is not blind optimism, nor is it simply the ability to endure hardship. It is the ability to adapt without losing sight of who you are and what matters, to recover, to learn and emerge stronger through experience.

True resilience is not just about defending what you have. It is about responding to adversity with integrity and honesty, learning from difficult experiences, making thoughtful choices in uncertainty and building back better over time. In challenging circumstances, it means thinking about people, creating opportunities, helping others to be the best they can be and, ultimately, creating something better than what existed before.

A truly resilient organisation is one that is strong in and of itself. It becomes bigger than its founders.

The same is true of organisations. A truly resilient organisation is one that is strong in and of itself. It becomes bigger than its founders. It does not depend on anyone, or two, or three people for its success. Over time it develops a life of its own. It adapts, survives and thrives through changing teams, new generations and fresh challenges. It learns from disruption and grows because of it.

We are now five years in. My hope is that the network will continue to build on its undoubted success over the next five years, and the five after that. The real test of any organisation is not whether it can be established, but whether it can endure, evolve and remain relevant long after its founders have moved on.

There is no doubt that, at global and national level, the last few years have been difficult for all of us. We have endured a great deal. But if endurance is about surviving the storm, then resilience is about surviving the storm and becoming able to steer through the next one.

That was the idea behind the Crisis Communications Network five years ago. Not simply to help people withstand crisis, but to help them understand it, find a way through it and emerge stronger on the other side.

I hope it remains the network’s ambition for many years to come.

Happy birthday Crisis Communications Network!

Author: Katherine Sykes, Co-Chair CIPR Crisis Communications Network

Image: AI generated