Why summer is the most overlooked risk window for crisis response

Summer is often treated as a slowdown. Calendars ease, travel increases and teams operate with a skeleton crew. For leadership, it can feel like a natural pause in intensity.

But crisis readiness does not take a vacation. If anything, summer creates conditions where response is more likely to falter.

In my experience working in crisis management, the real risk is not the volume; it’s the reduced ability to manage these incidents effectively. During these downtimes, it’s typical for decision-makers to be harder to reach, teams to be more fragmented and coordination to take longer. The common result is a gap between how organizations plan to respond and how they actually are able to operate when it matters most.

Decision-Making Under Pressure​

One of the most persistent misconceptions I see when it comes to crisis management is the idea that crisis response is primarily a communications function. In reality, it is an exercise in decision-making under pressure. Messaging is simply the output.

I’ve observed that when organizations struggle, it is usually less because of the message itself and more because they cannot align on what to say, when to say it, who should speak and who has the authority to make the final decision. Summer can expose that gap quickly.

Imagine a cyber incident that begins early on a Friday in July. Initial alerts come in, but key leaders are traveling or offline. The technical team is still assessing the scope, legal is advising caution and communications is waiting for alignment. What might normally be resolved in a single conversation becomes a series of delayed exchanges across time zones. By the time a statement is approved, the window to shape the narrative has already narrowed.

This example might be hypothetical, but the dynamic is not. The CrowdStrike global IT outage in July 2024 demonstrated how quickly a crisis can escalate under real-world conditions. A routine software update triggered widespread system failures, grounding flights, disrupting hospitals and impacting financial institutions globally. The issue itself was technical, but the response required immediate coordination across geographies, sectors and leadership teams. This crisis forced CrowdStrike to make decisions fast while managing operational disruption in real time.

Although we do not have insight into the vacation schedules or internal availability of CrowdStrike’s crisis team, I believe the incident underscores a simple point: When incidents hit at scale, the ability to align and act quickly matters more than the plan itself.

This highlights one of the biggest problems I see in crisis communications plans: They are built around ideal conditions. They assume that the right people are available, that decisions can be made quickly and that teams can align in real time. Those assumptions are less reliable in the days between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Preparing Your Organization For Summer Crisis Conditions

Preparation for summer is not about adding more to an already complex plan. It is about removing points of failure that are more likely to surface when your teams are separated and response conditions are less predictable. Here are six steps that can help you strengthen your company’s crisis readiness:

These steps are not complex, but they are often overlooked. By taking the time to test how your teams operate under pressure and under less-than-ideal conditions, you can better position them to respond with clarity and control when it counts.

Final Thoughts​

While crises aren’t limited to summer, this season can expose where organizations are least prepared to handle them. If you want to navigate this period effectively, ensure that your crisis management plans are tested and proven to hold under real-world conditions.