The corporate crisis has a costume. There is the scrum of microphones, the late-night statement, the chief executive reading words that have been through Legal six times. But the Institute for Crisis Management is interested in the scene before that scene - the complaint that stayed in an inbox, the plant manager's warning, the policy everybody assumed somebody else had updated.
ICM calls these “smoldering” crises. In its tally of 1,232,103 English-language crisis news items from 2025, categories it considers smoldering made up 65 percent. Cybercrime alone accounted for 25.44 percent; mismanagement, 19.03 percent. The exact percentages belong to ICM's methodology, which counts coverage rather than discrete events. The broader point travels well: catastrophe often looks sudden only from the outside.
of 2025 crisis coverage fell into smoldering categories.
ICM's word for trouble that an organization could often see developing - and might have prevented or contained.
A firm born in the wreckage
Robert Irvine, a veteran public-relations executive, founded the Institute for Crisis Management in Louisville in 1990. His work had included crisis consulting after industrial and environmental accidents, among them the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The opportunity he saw was specialized: organizations needed more than a press release after something went wrong. They needed people who could map risk, build a decision system, train a spokesperson, and keep operations and communication from behaving like feuding cousins.
The firm began an annual crisis report the same year. That continuity is its intellectual moat. ICM sorts news into categories including mismanagement, cybercrime, workplace violence, discrimination, recalls, labor disputes, and class-action lawsuits. The database does not predict the next disaster. It shows managers which old mistakes keep finding new logos.
The student acquires the teacher
Deborah Hileman first met ICM from the folding-chair side of the room. In 1998, newly promoted to vice president and needing crisis skills quickly, she took the firm's certification course. Larry Smith, a former newspaper editor, television news director, and one-time press secretary to Senator Dan Quayle, taught it. Hileman used the lessons, hired the firm later, and became a senior consultant herself.
In 2014, after nearly two decades orbiting ICM as student, client, and practitioner, her South Bend company, Strategis Management, acquired it. She became chief executive. There are fancier customer journeys, but few more persuasive ones: she bought the business whose product she had already tested in her own career.
“Prepare and prevent or repair and repent.”ICM's operating credo
What the client actually buys
Before a crisis, ICM reviews what has happened to comparable organizations, interviews leaders about what keeps them awake, and examines emergency and business-continuity plans. It turns that work into vulnerability assessments, communication plans, stakeholder maps, decision rules, and message frameworks. Then it tries to make them fail safely.
A tabletop exercise may begin with an awkward but manageable incident. Then come the injects: an employee posts video, a regulator calls, a family member goes public, the first facts prove wrong. The point is not theatrical panic. It is to discover whether the phone tree is stale, authority is fuzzy, HR and Legal disagree, or the designated spokesperson has never answered a hostile question aloud.
During a live event, the offer changes: strategic counsel, message development, executive coaching, media relations, monitoring, and on-site or virtual support. Afterward comes the debrief. ICM's customer list reflects how widely the same coordination problem travels - manufacturers, hospitals, universities, government agencies, nonprofits, financial institutions, and brands including Dell, BASF, Fujifilm, KFC/Yum!, Stryker, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland have attended courses or engaged services. Current assignments are usually confidential.
A boutique on purpose
ICM is not trying to imitate the global agency networks. It operates virtually, keeps overhead light, and assembles independent senior consultants around the assignment. Hileman says she is personally involved with every client. In 2025 the firm added Jenny Barker, Dianne Chase, and Byron Johnson, broadening its bench in corporate reputation, media training, government, and public affairs.
That model is the distinction and the constraint. A client buys direct access to experienced operators instead of layers of junior account staff. A multinational crisis needing simultaneous teams in a dozen markets may favor Brunswick, FGS Global, Edelman, APCO, Teneo, or another large network. A company seeking a specialist with senior attention, training depth, and a lower-cost structure may prefer the boutique.
The disclosed 2025 course fee. It covered a 12-hour live-online certification program. Nonprofit, veteran, education, government, and group discounts were offered. Bespoke planning and response work is proposal-priced.
The public course is the scalable part of the business. It teaches leaders to identify vulnerabilities, estimate financial impact, prioritize stakeholders, develop plans and talking points, use traditional and social channels, and debrief afterward. The 2025 curriculum also included using AI for message development. The annual report, meanwhile, is free - research as both public service and a remarkably patient lead generator.
What fails first
Usually, coordination. The plan assumes a person will be reachable, a decision will be obvious, a fact will stay true, or employees will wait politely for the external statement. Simulations puncture those assumptions. ICM's most copyable method is not a slogan but a sequence: ask what keeps operators awake; study peers' failures; include Legal, HR, IT, security, operations, and communications; rank stakeholders; define who can approve what; prepare holding language; and practice while the clock is running.
What changes leaders' minds is often not another warning deck. It is watching their own plan stall in rehearsal. The exercise turns abstract exposure into an unanswered phone call, two competing drafts, or five executives who all thought somebody else had authority.
The limits of rehearsal
Preparedness is not immunity. A tabletop cannot make an unethical culture truthful, restore trust that was never built, or compensate for leaders who suppress bad news. A template imported from another industry can create false confidence. A small specialist may also be the wrong fit when a response requires enormous multilingual deployment, forensic investigation, litigation counsel, physical emergency command, or technical cyber remediation. Those disciplines must work beside communication, not beneath it.
ICM acknowledges the ethical piece directly. Its consultants commit in writing to accuracy, confidentiality, correction of errors, disclosure of conflicts, and refusing clients who would require them to violate those standards. In crisis work, this matters because the tempting shortcut is often cosmetic: find better words for conduct that has not changed. Hileman's public writing makes the opposite case. If the statement and the organization disagree, eventually the organization wins.
The most transferable lesson is mundane enough to be ignored. Do not begin with the press conference. Begin with the small signal, the person who noticed it, and the management habit that decides whether it travels upward. The fire brigade is useful. So is smelling smoke.
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