Outages, critical issues, and crises are unavoidable. In the immortal words of Forrest Gump: “shit happens.”

So if you take a deep breath and accept that crises happen…how can you at least make them less painful?

That’s what we’ll be exploring all this month. Specifically, we’ll be tackling:

Spotting critical issues

• Creating a clear method for determining what IS a critical issue
• Learning to spot a critical issue (trickier than you might think)
• Building a clear process for addressing critical issues with your team
• Determining what part(s) of the organization handles critical issues

Communicating during critical issues

• Telling your customers about your issues (no matter how painful)
• Choosing venues for communicating critical issues
• Knowing when to quit your job (really)
• Saying sorry

After the storm

• Banning your founders from going surfing (and other lessons)
• Figuring out how you could have better communicated with customers
• The worst social media crises of 2013 and what we can learn from them

Are you ready to explore the big, scary world of crises with us? Stick with us throughout this month! Check back in on this page for new posts or subscribe!

Photo courtesy of reegmo.