“AN AVALANCHE DOESN’T KNOW YOU’RE AN EXPERT.” NEITHER DO CRISES

At one of the conferences, I had the honor of meeting Miłka Raulin – a climber who completed the Nine Summits version of the Seven Summits challenge – from whom I heard a popular saying in the mountaineering community: “An avalanche doesn’t know you’re an expert.” In the mountains, it serves as a reminder that experience, the number of expeditions, or past successes do not protect you from danger, and that overconfidence can be fatal. 

The association with crisis communication was immediate. A crisis does not take into account a brand’s market position, the strength of its PR department, or the number of difficult situations previously resolved. It is a force of nature, and managing it requires iron discipline, adherence to procedures and frameworks, combined with readiness to adapt and constant monitoring of all variables. 

When confidence turns into arrogance 

Belief in one’s own infallibility (overconfidence bias) is a cognitive error that can lead to underestimating threats and their potential consequences. Teams that have successfully “put out fires” many times tend to assume that the current situation can also be handled without full mobilization of resources. This is when characteristic statements begin to appear: “we’ve handled worse,” “it will pass soon,” “there’s no point reacting so strongly.” 

Meanwhile, in the Crisis Intelligence Unit, from the very first signs we assume multiple development scenarios – from the most likely to the less obvious, from relatively manageable to the most severe, both reputationally and operationally. For each, we prepare response variants, messaging, operational decisions, and a separate action plan. 

The moment when there is no room for error 

A full-scale crisis resembles an avalanche. It cannot always be avoided, and once it begins, it escalates with full force. Proper preparation may not stop the event itself, but it significantly reduces the risk of decision-making chaos at a moment when fast and consistent actions are critical. 

Every hour without a clear position or without activating procedures creates space for speculation, which very quickly begins to dominate over facts. Many costly reputational crises were not caused by the event itself, but by ignoring early warning signs and delaying a response until the last moment. 

Just like in the mountains, in crisis communication the winner is not the one who feels the most confident, but the one who can recognize in time that the situation may quickly spiral out of control. 

It is better to overreact a few times than to let it slide once and – metaphorically – fall into the abyss. That is why the phrase “An avalanche doesn’t know you’re an expert” is for me not only a dedication from Miłka Raulin in her book, but also one of the key reference points in how I think about crisis communication.