By the Time You See the Crisis Coming, You're Already Behind

Nobody wakes up thinking, "Today's the day everything goes sideways." And yet — it does. The problem with crises isn't that they're unpredictable. It's that the early signals are easy to miss when you're buried in approvals, editorial calendars, and whatever internal fire you're putting out that week.

According to a recent panel at Ragan's Crisis Communications Virtual Conference, catching a crisis early isn't just about having a good monitoring tool. It's about knowing where to look and being honest about whether your team is  looking there.

THE EARLY SIGNS AREN'T WHERE YOU THINK

Jennifer Haslip, head of research and science communications at Google, Jessica Chu, associate manager of global communications at Yum Brands, and Aadil Mohamed, corporate intelligence leader at Resolver, all spoke to this point at the conference. The consensus? First signals tend to surface in places comms teams aren't watching closely enough.

That might mean a niche Reddit thread. A Glassdoor review spike. A pattern in customer service complaints. A journalist who just started asking questions in your industry that seem unrelated to you — until they aren't.

The issue is that most comms teams have set up their monitoring for the fire, not the smoke. By the time something hits your dashboard as a full-blown alert, you've already lost precious response time.

SPEED DOESN'T MEAN RECKLESSNESS

Here's where a lot of communicators get tripped up. They think moving fast means having all the answers. It doesn't. Haslip was direct about this at the conference:

"Get the facts fast. You don't have to have all the answers to start preparing a statement and communicating that to your stakeholders. Put people first, so lead with empathy. And then be nimble, monitor the situation, adjust your statement and share updates regularly so that people know what's going on."

That's a framework worth writing on a sticky note and putting on your monitor. You don't need a perfect statement. You need a first statement — one that's honest, human, and signals that someone is paying attention.

Silence isn't neutral. In a crisis, it reads as guilt, confusion, or indifference. None of those are great looks.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR PR STRATEGY

If you only run a crisis simulation when a client asks for one, you're not prepared — you're just pretending to be. Real crisis readiness means building early-detection habits into your regular workflow, not just your emergency binder.

A few things worth auditing right now:

• Where are your blind spots? Map the channels you're not monitoring consistently and ask whether that's a risk you're comfortable with.
• Do you have holding statements ready? Not just for obvious scenarios — for the weird, left-field ones too. The ones you'd be scrambling to write at 7pm on a Friday.
• Is your internal comms as strong as your external comms? Employees often find out about crises the same time the public does. That's a problem. Your people need to hear from you first.
• Can you move fast without losing the empathy piece? Speed matters, but a cold, legally-sanitized statement can make things worse. Practice drafting under pressure with a human voice intact.

The communicators who handle crises well aren't just lucky — they've done the unglamorous prep work. They've stress-tested their processes, built relationships with their monitoring tools, and practiced saying something real before they have all the facts.

That's not paranoia. That's just good PR.

If your crisis prep could use a second set of eyes — or a first set — Winsome Marketing works with brands to build communications strategies that hold up when things get hard. Reach out and let's talk before you need us.

This post was originally inspired by The first signs of a crisis can be easy for communicators to miss via ragan. We encourage you to read the original piece for full context.