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Communications triage tool

Is this a crisis?

Six questions. Thirty seconds. A clear answer — so you stop spiraling and start deciding.

Question 1 of 6
Issue or crisis

An issue is something you watch. It's a concern that builds slowly, but you still have time to shape it.

A crisis is something you answer. It's sudden, high-stakes, and running on someone else's clock.

The two call for opposite responses. Handle an issue like a crisis and you spend credibility, budget, and your team's energy on something that needed a memo and a monitoring plan — and you teach the CEO to stop listening when you say the word. Handle a crisis like an issue and you lose the only hours that mattered. These six questions put a number on where a situation sits so you can make the call, defend it, and act at the right speed.

Built by Jennifer George, a chief communications officer with 22+ years in crisis communications, for the readers of The CCO Dispatch.