Is Your Organisation Actually Ready for a Polycrisis? A New Assessment Tool for Communication Leaders

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Most communication readiness tools are comfort exercises. The questions are vague enough that any experienced professional can work through them, tick "mostly yes," and walk away feeling prepared. That is not a small problem. It is the problem.

They measure self-perception, not operational reality.

In a polycrisis — where risks don't queue politely but pile in simultaneously, amplifying one another and collapsing the gaps between your response plans — the distance between thinking you are ready and being ready is enormous. It is the distance between managing the situation and being consumed by it.

Senior communication leaders need a tool that asks harder questions. Questions specific to the CCO function. Questions that map to how polycrises actually behave, not how textbook crises are supposed to behave.

"Communication readiness assessments that reward aspiration rather than demonstrated capability are not just useless in a polycrisis — they are actively dangerous. They create false confidence at exactly the moment organisations need honest intelligence." — Philippe Borremans, Crisis and Risk Communication Specialist, RiskComms, 2025

The Polycrisis Communication Readiness Assessment is a structured self-evaluation tool for CCOs and senior communication executives, measuring capability across five strategic dimensions and 17 sub-dimensions. It produces a scored maturity profile, a gap analysis, strategic recommendations, and a downloadable PDF report.

One important clarification up front.

This is a self-assessment, not an external audit and not a validated research instrument.

What you get out depends entirely on what you put in. The instruction is simple: answer for your current state, not your aspirational one. That is harder than it sounds.

The methodology draws on several established frameworks:

The methodology page is publicly available for anyone who wants to examine how the scoring logic was constructed.

The assessment covers five strategic dimensions, each broken into sub-dimensions that reflect how polycrises behave in practice.

This dimension assesses geopolitical literacy, data and AI literacy, behavioural science acumen, digital diplomacy, and ethical reasoning. These are the analytical capabilities a CCO needs to read a complex threat environment accurately — before the first press inquiry arrives, before the first rumour circulates.

Crisis governance, team capability, and organisational learning. Not whether your organisation has a crisis plan. Whether your infrastructure would hold under simultaneous, compounding pressure — the defining condition of a polycrisis.

Stakeholder mapping, trust management, and multi-channel engagement. The question is not whether you have a stakeholder map. It is whether your engagement model is built for a world where institutional trust erodes in hours, not weeks.

Rapid sense-making under ambiguity, narrative construction, and adaptive messaging in volatile contexts. In a polycrisis, the narrative environment is contested from the first hour. This dimension asks whether your team can move at the speed the situation demands.

C-suite and board access, communication as a strategic enabler, and resource mobilisation. If you cannot translate what you are seeing into language that moves decision-makers to act, the other four dimensions do not hold.

The assessment takes 30 to 45 minutes to complete.

Completing the assessment produces a downloadable PDF report with four components.

Transparency matters here. I ran the assessment on myself and scored 3.2 out of 5.0 — Level 3: Defined.

Level 3 means documented governance, standardised approaches, and established processes. Some sub-dimension scores landed where I expected. Digital Diplomacy and Cross-Cultural Agility, Stakeholder Mapping, Narrative Agility — twenty-five years of practice leaves marks.

The gaps were more useful than the scores.

Multi-Channel Engagement Strategy scored 1 out of 5. That reflects a deliberate choice: as a boutique consultancy, RiskComms does not run a dedicated digital engagement infrastructure. The score is accurate. But seeing it named plainly forced a question I had been avoiding: is that still the right choice?

Behavioural Science Acumen came in at 2 out of 5. Also accurate. I draw on behavioural science principles but have not systematised their application. The assessment's recommendation — to integrate these principles formally into message design, not simply reference them in strategy documents — is now on the list.

That is the real value of a diagnostic tool built this way. Not the high scores. The ones that make you uncomfortable.

This tool was built for CCOs and senior communication executives in organisations facing genuine complexity: government agencies, international NGOs, listed companies, utilities, health authorities, and financial institutions. Organisations where a polycrisis is not a thought experiment.

Communication consultants who want an honest picture of how their own practice maps against modern crisis demands will find it useful too. My own results are evidence of that.

One honest limitation: the maturity model assumes a certain operational scale. If you lead a team of three with limited crisis exposure, some sub-dimensions will not apply cleanly. The tool will not penalise you for it, but it is worth knowing before you begin.

Standard crisis audits are typically conducted by external parties against fixed criteria — process documentation, plan completeness, training records. They measure whether the infrastructure exists. The Polycrisis Communication Readiness Assessment asks a different question: whether the infrastructure would hold under the specific, compounding conditions of a polycrisis.

The distinction matters because polycrises expose the gaps between plans, not the gaps within them. Governance structures that function well in single-incident scenarios often fail when risks pile in simultaneously and amplify each other. A conventional audit would pass both scenarios. This assessment is designed to surface the difference.

Use the gap analysis as your planning document, not the maturity score. The score orients you. The gaps tell you where to act.

Start with the sub-dimension scoring the lowest that sits within a dimension directly relevant to your organisation's threat environment. If your sector is facing active information warfare — financial services, healthcare, critical infrastructure — Narrative Agility gaps deserve immediate attention. If your challenge is getting communications onto the board agenda, Board-Level Influence and Strategic Positioning is where the leverage lies.

The progress tracking feature exists for a reason. Run the assessment now. Record your baseline. Return in six months with specific interventions behind you, and measure whether they moved the needle. That is what evidence-based professional development looks like.

What is a polycrisis, and why does it require a different communication approach? A polycrisis occurs when multiple separate crises interact simultaneously, amplifying each other in ways that compound their individual impacts. The term was popularised by historian Adam Tooze to describe compounding global disruptions. Standard crisis communication frameworks are typically designed for sequential or single-event scenarios. A polycrisis demands different capabilities: faster sense-making, higher narrative agility, and governance structures that do not collapse under simultaneous pressure.

How long does the assessment take to complete? Between 30 and 45 minutes for most users. The time varies depending on how closely you examine sub-dimensions where you are uncertain about your organisation's current state.

Is this assessment appropriate for smaller communication teams? The maturity model assumes a certain operational scale. Smaller teams may find that some sub-dimensions do not apply directly to their context. The tool will not penalise you, but a team of three with limited crisis exposure should approach the results with that caveat in mind.

What frameworks does the assessment methodology draw on? The methodology draws on the Design Science Research framework, the Becker et al. Eight-Phase Maturity Model, ISO 22361:2022 (Crisis Management — Guidance), and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. The full methodology is publicly available.

Can I share my results with leadership or my board? Yes. The downloadable PDF report is structured for that purpose. The gap analysis and strategic recommendations sections are particularly suited to board-level conversations about investment priorities.

How is this different from a standard crisis communication audit? A conventional audit measures whether crisis infrastructure exists — plans, processes, training records. This assessment measures whether that infrastructure would hold under the specific, compounding conditions of a polycrisis. The distinction matters because polycrises expose the gaps between plans, not within them.

What does a Level 3 maturity score mean in practice? Level 3 — Defined — means documented governance, standardised approaches, and established processes. It indicates a functioning foundation with identifiable gaps at the sub-dimension level. Most experienced communication functions operating without recent systematic development tend to score in the Level 2–3 range.

How often should I retake the assessment? Every six months, or following a significant crisis response, a major organisational change, or a substantial development investment. Repeated scores over time are evidence. A single score is orientation.

Is the assessment free? Yes. The tool is free, the methodology is public, and the report is downloadable. There is no paywall.

What should I do if my results raise questions I cannot act on alone? The gap analysis will identify where development investment has the most leverage. For questions about what your results mean for your specific context, or how to build the case for investment at board level, Philippe Borremans is available for consultation via RiskComms.

About the Author

Philippe Borremans is a crisis, risk, and emergency communication specialist with more than 25 years of experience advising governments, international organisations, and private sector clients. He is the founder of RiskComms and the author of the Wag the Dog Newsletter, which covers crisis communication strategy, information warfare, and the role of AI in emergency response. Philippe developed the Polycrisis Communication Readiness Assessment, the Universal Adaptive Crisis Communication (UACC) Framework, and the Minimum Viable Crisis Communication (MVCC) Framework. He is based in Europe and works internationally.