Blindsided is the authoritative guide to crisis management. This "how to" handbook gives essential advice that every manager needs to know when a crisis hits. Written by CMI Founder/CEO Bruce Blythe, it's a fascinating, easy-to-read guide that draws on Blythe's 20+ years of experience as a pioneer in crisis management.

  Update: Job Security
      September 2002
      Boston, MA
      Luce Press Clippings

When Fast Company profiled Crisis Managmeent International Inc. (CMI) in December 2001(“Crisis and Confidence at Ground Zero”), the Atlanta-based firm was mobilizing its network of therapists and counselors to respond to an unprecedented wave of requests for counseling in New York. But as the months unspooled after September 11, one thing CMI founder and CEO Bruce Blythe noticed was that a chunk of his business had evaporated. “Incidents and threats of workplace violence plummeted,” says Blythe. “Threats were down 54%.”

Blythe and his staff were so struck by the falloff that they called other crisis companies and the FMI to see if they were noticing the same thing. “It was like it had just gone away,” Blythe recalls. “People knew that companies would have very little tolerance for anybody making threats.” (Last spring, Blythe ways, threats and incident returned roughly to pre-attacks levels.)

For CMI, September 11 was an extraordinary test. Over a four-month period, more than 166 CMI counselors provided 11,000 hours of counseling and consulting for 250 companies in 22 states (204 of those companies were based in the New York area. Those hours represented nearly 5 years’ worth at CMI’s pre-attacks pace of business.

The last CMI consultant left New York on December 31, 2001. Since then, CMI has seen big demand for its preparedness services. “Before, when you would try to talk to people about crisis preparedness, they would look at you funny,” says CMI marketing director Grace Burley. “Now the feeling is, Help me make sure I have a crisis-management plan.”

Blythe and Pamela Porter, CMI’s director of response services, were part of a group invited to Washington by the FBI in June for a weeklong session on terrorism and terror response. Meanwhile, CMI’s staff has been anticipating the first anniversary of the attacks. In early June, the company reserved a block of hotel rooms to provide counseling services as the anniversary approached. “We wanted to help people memorialize it,” says Porter, “without feeling as if they are going through it again.”

Charles Fishman

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