Before The Statement

Here's the back cover, built to be read in the eight seconds a browser gives it.

The statement is the last thing that happens. Everything that decides your company's fate happens first.

A crisis will find your company. The video, the breach, the recall, the 2 a.m. phone call. What happens in the next ninety minutes will not be decided by how well you write. It will be decided by whether anyone knows who's in charge, who gets told first, and which words can be spoken before the facts are in.

Most organizations improvise those answers live, in front of everyone. This book is how you stop being one of them.

Inside, the complete operating system for the first 24 hours:

• Who's in the room. The seven seats, the lockdown, and why the CEO governs the crisis instead of running it
• Who hears first. The eight-ring notification cascade, because anyone asked about the crisis must hear it from you before they're asked
• What gets said, where. Twelve channels, ten ready-to-adapt holding statements, and the manager kit, decision log, and hostile-question drills your team can run tomorrow

Kellyann Erskine has spent more than seventeen years inside corporate communications, in the rooms where these decisions get made and unmade.