My guest for Episode 9 was Christina Forsgård, who founded Netprofile Finland in 2000 and has spent 26 years in crisis communication and cyber crisis response. Today she runs preparedness work with companies, boards, EU bodies and the Finnish government.
Structure beats panic in managing crisis
Christina’s first job when a company is in crisis is to calm people down. Stress shuts down the brain power the team needs, so she brings a protocol: a leader with real decision power, situational awareness, and a team that can work around the clock. Under that sit three pillars: incident and forensics, legal duties, and reputation.
Trust is your fuel
Reputation is the pillar most companies forget. Christina calls trust capital the fuel and the shield of a company, because it buys time, and in a crisis there is none. Her advice is to spend more on crisis preparedness rather than on insurance.
AI makes attackers fast
Christina thinks fully autonomous AI attacks are still exaggerated. The real change is that criminals use AI to piece together leaked data and act within minutes. Finland has been an open, digital society, and she believes we have not yet foreseen what AI can do with all that data.
Her three recommendations for boards
- Name someone who owns the trust of the company’s stakeholders.
- Prepare for existential threats and ask the hard questions. A board’s greatest value is showing how the world looks from outside.
- Teach leaders to operate in uncertainty, so the company becomes antifragile.
I tried more than once to steer her toward AI’s role in crises creation and crises management. She stayed grounded and unmoved and kept bringing us back to people. Whoever or whatever causes the crisis, humans prevent it, face it if it happens, judge it and make the right calls. That was my main takeaway.
Which scenario has your board never dared to put on the table?