Crisis expert Rod Cartwright is now synonymous with his ‘Reputation, Risk and Resilience’ report, which is in its third year and fast becoming the professional crisis communicator’s north star.
His latest edition uniquely leverages 11 major reports, including from The Page Society, Deloitte, AXA, Edelman and the World Economic Forum, to give a three-dimensional analysis of the extraordinary complexity of the context that organisations now operate in, the forces that drive it and how they might best respond.
The instability and challenge that has beset the world for over a decade is now accepted as our new (ab)normal. Rod diagnoses the challenge this presents and prescribes strategic crisis communication as the key to its optimal management.
Rod is Special Advisor to CIPR’s Crisis Communications Network and convened a prestigious panel event to discuss the 2025 edition on 27 November 2025. First, he shared major insights from his work and then posed two provocations, which the panel reflected upon.
The Crisis Communications Network webinar panel:
- Katie Barnes, Executive Director of the National Preparedness Commission
- Joe Palasz, Head of Crisis Communication Strategy at the Cabinet Office
- Mary Whenman, Managing Director, Communications and Marketing at the British Business Bank
Provocation 1: Why are we here (as professional communicators)?
Rod considers understanding our role as professional communicators in crisis preparedness as fundamental to organisations being ready for the scale of the volatility and challenge that is now usual.
Professional communication is fundamental to the way the world works, he argues, and must be seen as central to dealing with the dysfunction inherent in the new abnormal.
This is because human relationships are key to professional communication – and vice-versa – and dysfunction is often due in large part to a breakdown in human relationships.
To support his point, Rod cited two accepted and long-standing definitions of public relations. Professor Tim Coombs, the acknowledged authority on crisis communication, describes public relations as “the management of mutually influential relationships”. Cutlip, Center and Broom define it as “the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and the publics upon whom its success or failure depends”.
Relationships are the core business of public relations practitioners. Best practice requires us to now acknowledge the supremacy of relationships and re-instate them at the heart of our public relations practice
Relationships are the core business of public relations practitioners. So, it follows that our craft must therefore be fundamental to navigating the relationships that are now critical to dealing with crises arising during this new abnormal state, which, arguably, began with the global crash in 2008.
Rod says best practice requires us to now acknowledge the supremacy of relationships and re-instate them at the heart of our public relations practice, which leads to Provocation 2.
Provocation 2: It is time for us to rethink crisis and reimagine risk
The world has grown increasingly complex in the 17 years since the financial crash. This was epitomised by the acronym VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous).
But the issues have continued to escalate, with new acronyms emerging to reflect the increasing magnitude of risky events. Those even include TUNA (Turbulent, Uncertain, Novel and Ambiguous)!
Ipsos began talking about “navigating a polycrisis in a new world disorder” in recent years and Collins Dictionary chose ‘permacrisis’ as its word of the year. Then in 2023 Rod embarked on his analysis of key reports that became the first of his ‘Reputation, Risk and Resilience’ series. Rod has identified an ever-higher watermark of severity, “risk intersectionality” and complexity with each passing year.
Given that rising tide, Rod argues, we need to reconsider fundamentally the entire premise of our thinking about reputation, risk and resilience.
Rod gave an overview of the 10 key themes emerging from his 2025 edition of the report.
What are the key takeaways from this year’s 10 key themes?
Geopolitics is the stand-out theme of 2025. Rod has tracked it through three editions of his report. Its impact began at a global level before filtering down to regional and local. In 2025 it is impacting us all hyper-locally, psychologically and personally.
He says the World Economic Forum lists the top five risks over the next decade as climate related. But with interconnected risks acting as a constant distraction from this mega-risk – hiding in plain sight – the political will to fix these appears to have ebbed over time. Rod observes a similar malaise around the economy.
Mental health and employee engagement constitute a worrying trend. In 2023, the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) found the number one disruptor to business was stress, anxiety and depression giving rise to absenteeism linked to the pandemic, which has a very long tail. This year’s Business Continuity Index Horizon Scan report places human impacts at the core of business disruption. In 2024, Gallup found that employee engagement dropped for the first time in nine years.
Rod argues that this decline sits alongside – and is connected to – what he calls the ‘terrible triad’ of mis- and disinformation, polarisation, and populism and authoritarianism (all of which are mutually reinforcing).
He notes that in 2024, the influential BCI report found cyber-fueled financial fraud and financial crime to be the number one cause of business disruption, with cyber (in)security continuing to dominate many risk lists
Rod’s long view over three years identifies emergent strategic insights that are becoming more impactful over time. One such theme (which shines through recent Page Society/Harris polling) is the pervasive sense that lack of opportunity, equality and justice are driving growing intergenerational tensions. This can be in part understood as a perceived disbenefit of a super-aging population.
The key takeaway is the profound shift that has occurred in the nature of crisis. No longer is it transitional and timebound, but indefinite and embedded structurally into the new steady state.
But the key takeaway is the profound shift that has occurred in the nature of crisis. No longer is it transitional and timebound, but indefinite and embedded structurally into the new steady state. Two respected reports, from the World Economic Forum and Axa, agree that there has been little year-on-year change in the overall ‘buckets’ of risk in their overview of global risks.
Axa sounds the alarm that far from being reassured by the apparent stability of today’s risks, its acknowledged existence should be in and of itself a call-to-action against the backdrop of the new abnormal.
Rod argues that the impact is disproportionately significant because the individual risks he identifies in his report serve to mutually reinforce one another. This is risk intersectionality.
What are the underlying dynamics of the new abnormal?
There are three that underpin the ten key themes found in 2025:
Steady-state risks: geopolitics, economics, cybersecurity and climate emergency.
Sleeping giant risks: Worsening mental health and escalating employee disengagement. intergenerational tensions, social tensions, aging populations, and the uncertain relationship between humankind and technology.
‘Risk accelerants’: increasingly embedded systemic polycrises and structural permacrisis; ever-greater risk intersectionality and threat interconnectedness; and an excessive focus on operational and structural resilience over true human preparedness and critical human infrastructure
So what is the prescription to deal with the new abnormal?
Rod advocates a new approach with strategic communications expertise enabling leaders to better meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. Three merit specific mention here.
Making sense of the chaos: leading management authority and MIT Sloan professor, Deborah Ancona, talks about the concept of sense-making and sense-giving being an emergent leadership superpower. Rod argues that the communication function –because of its central focus on internal and external stakeholder relationships – is uniquely equipped to be the expert sense-maker enabling effective leadership in the new abnormal.
Devolving strategic management of issues and crises: organisations must recognise that the top-down approach of a single global strategy alone for managing issues and crises is no longer effective. More impact can be expected from a regional, local, culturally nuanced strategic approach.
Crises are not siloed in functions: just as crises are not siloed organisationally, then neither should the preparedness be confined to the communications function. Preparation – and the development of a preparedness culture – needs to be cross-functional. Professional communicators must advocate for meaningful crisis preparedness to realise its full value to the organisation, which can then prepare optimally for the worst scenarios.
So how do we reimagine crisis and risk to prepare optimally?
The common way of understanding ‘crisis’ in English is a finite endpoint. In other languages, a different concept emerges. In Mandarin, the symbols that make up the word are those of danger and opportunity. It means an inflection point in Greek when a choice or decision must be made. These broader definitions best illustrate the concept of risk as also presenting opportunity, and vice versa. To view a crisis purely as a set of impacts to be minimised loses the potential of the opportunity that is inherent in every crisis scenario. It also narrows practitioners’ mindset and behaviours.
This is illustrated in real-world terms by the Oxford Metrica study 15 years ago of the share-price impact of 200 mass fatality incidents. Ineffective responses correlated with a 15% drop in share price over the six months following the incident, conversely effective responses saw share prices rise by 5%.
Refocusing on the human element when considering crises builds resilience, because it moves away from reducing the response to a set of processes designed to protect reputation.
Rod argues that refocusing on the human element when considering crises builds resilience, because it moves away from reducing the response to a set of processes designed to protect reputation. Equally acknowledging the integral connection between issues and the potential for crises will enable organisations to recognise that as the continuum, and so they can better foresee emergent crises as a result.
Rod’s final recommendation is that organisations must accept that very rarely can a crisis authentically be called a PR crisis. Almost always its genesis can be foreseen and originates from operations, structures, leadership and governance, and, or is due to behaviours, values, ethics and culture.
The twin causes of capability and character as the origin of crisis have been studied by Professor Rupert Younger, of the Oxford Centre for Corporate Reputation, and David Waller, in their book, ‘The Reputation Game’.
The Senate SHJ Crisis Index [link: https://senateshj.com.au/project/crisis-index-300/] finds it is character-led scandals, rather than operational or capability, that cause the deepest and longest lasting damage.
This is because it is the human element and relationships that matter most. When this is understood, organisations can systemically map and track relationship risks. In other words, how do your audiences respond, behave and act as a result of your reputation?
Organisations that prioritise relationships, in human terms, over reputational self-protection, as defined by process-driven metrics, will have a greater understanding of how to minimise risk.
Rod urges communicators to use precise language – the terms of threat, risk, issue, incident and crisis – so we communicate effectively with other functions that are technically accurate. This too reduces risk.
Crisis preparedness should proactively seek out vulnerabilities in the organisation. Most organisations treat crisis preparedness like an insurance policy that only pays if the worst happens. This narrow definition increases risk.
So, Rod’s summary of his prescription for dealing with crises amid the new abnormal is:
- Communicators are sense-makers in chief that should focus relentlessly on relationships from the perspective of the ‘other’ (i.e. those impacted by the crisis) not the corporate ‘self’ (i.e. the organisation itself).
- The context of that work should take into account that the evidence shows character-led scandals will be more damaging than capability crises elevating the focus on corporate culture.
- Therefore, prioritising critical human infrastructure, over processes and technical/technological structure and processes is key to success.
This event last November took place on a Chatham Rule basis. Our panelists kindly agreed, however, that their contributions could be summarised into themes for this blog post and are below.
The Interconnected and Complex Nature of Strategic Risks
Siloed approaches by organisations to crisis preparedness are outdated and effective crisis preparedness strategies must reflect the interconnected nature of crises. The intersectionality of strategic risk requires a consequential need for a systematic and integrated approach to crisis preparedness.
Traditional assumptions that national unity will prevail during major crises, which was typical before the digital revolution, are no longer valid. Today’s society is fragmented, which is evident in the polarisation of opinion and the rise of populism.
Populism, Polarisation and Disinformation
Disinformation and the erosion of trusted sources have become a significant challenge when responding to crises. The youngest and the oldest demographics are most vulnerable to mis- and disinformation, for different reasons, and this impacts public understanding and collective trust in official sources during a major crisis.
Crisis as an Inflection Point
Crises should be seen as inflection points, not just finite operational problems. They present opportunities as well as challenges. For example, a major crisis should be seen as an opportunity to reflect and better prepare for a similar situation in the future.
Public scrutiny tends to focus more on how organisations respond than on the cause of the crisis. The culture of an organisation and the character of its senior leadership team will influence the public’s view of how well the company has responded and its reputation. The example of Deepwater Horizon was given as a case in point.
Inequality and Social Disparity
Structural social and societal issues affect national unity in times of crisis. A panelist described income disparity and injustice as key risks that must be robustly and consistently addressed. Executing impactful DEI initiatives during usual times has the capacity to engage under-represented groups. Conversely unaddressed inequality and disparity are likely to drive populism and disunity with consequences during times of national crisis.
Public Perception and Communication
Risks are better understood as both familiar and still evolving. This in turn shapes public perception, which influences their view during chaos and crisis.
Communication professionals are best placed to understand these perceptions in order to craft effective crisis messaging and a coherent organisational narrative.
This ‘sense-making’ is critical to effective crisis management. ‘Sense-making’ is the communicator’s ‘superpower’ that is honed through the routine use of the core skillset of distilling complex data into actionable insights for their organisations.
Human Capital and Organisational Preparedness
Panelists advocated for prioritising people and relationships in crisis planning which moves the preparation beyond the typical focus on processes, paper plans and structures. It is important to remember that people are both responders and victims.
Cross-Functional Preparedness
Traditional crisis preparedness tends to be siloed within the communications function. Just as the nature of risk is now understood as interconnected, it is best practice for crisis preparedness to be integrated and cross-functional. This results in a far more effective response when a crisis hits.
Read Rod’s report here.
Author: Sara Naylor is a strategic communications expert at Ravenhill Media, specialising in crisis communications.
Images: AI generated
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