Comms Under Fire
What happens when a sixty-one-year-old family business loses control of its own narrative — and what it built from the wreckage.
A narrative business book about crisis communications, organizational culture, and the infrastructure that protects what you’ve spent a lifetime building.
The Premise
It started with one paragraph.
A loyal customer posted a measured question on a local Facebook group. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t trying to cause damage. He had a mildly disappointing delivery experience and asked his professional community whether others had noticed anything similar. By the time the company saw it, the post had already been shared on a page with more than 4,000 followers. By the time they issued their first response, a regional blog had written about it. By the time they understood what they were navigating, the story had already appeared in search results that would outlast the situation by years. One paragraph. Six weeks. The company wasn’t failing. It was a well-run, honest, community-rooted business with genuine relationships built over sixty years. It simply lacked the infrastructure for what happened next. That gap — between the organization a company believes it is and the organization it has built, with the infrastructure to demonstrate under pressure — is what this book is about. And it is almost certainly present in your organization right now.
“Communications is not what you do when something goes wrong. It is how you show people who you are — every day, through every interaction, across every channel where your name appears.”
— Comms Under Fire
WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?
THE BUSINESS OWNER OR LEADER
You have built something real. You have genuine relationships, a community reputation, and decades of honest work behind you. And you have never had to defend any of it publicly at the speed social media now requires. This book is about what happens when that moment arrives — and what you can build before it does.
THE TEAM LEADER OR MANAGER
You are not the CEO, but you are the person closest to the customers, the community, and the daily reality of what the organization actually communicates. You know things that leadership doesn’t know yet. This book is about building the internal infrastructure that gives that knowledge a path upward before the situation makes it necessary.
THE COMMUNICATIONS PROFESSIONAL
You know the platforms, the protocols, and the pace. What you may not have is a book that demonstrates the argument you have been making for years — communications is not a support function, it is the infrastructure that protects everything else. This book makes that argument through story rather than instruction. Use it accordingly
The Story
Comms Under Fire is narrative fiction — not a textbook, not a manual, not a framework with characters attached to it. It is a story about real people in a real crisis, told with the specific, unglamorous honesty of how these situations actually unfold. The lesson is not stated at the beginning. It arrives through the experience of watching capable people navigate something that exceeded their existing tools.
Ready to read it?
Available in paperback and Kindle.
Or request a personally signed copy directly from Rob.
Paperback: $24.99 - Kindle $9.99 - Kindle Unlimited $0.00
Signed copies available directly from the author while supplies last.
FOR ORGANIZATIONS AND LEADERSHIP TEAMS
The book is the reading. The session is where we find out what it means for your organization together.
If you’re thinking this is something your whole leadership team should read — you’re right. Purchase five or more copies of Comms Under Fire and receive a free 30-minute discovery session with Rob Sperling. Not a presentation. Not a pitch. A focused conversation about your organization’s specific communications situation — your real risks, your existing infrastructure, and what building the right systems looks like at your scale. Five books. One discovery session. The conversation that tends to go somewhere useful. $19.99 per copy. No additional charge for the session.
What does your organization currently do when something goes wrong publicly?
Who is responsible for communications when something unexpected surfaces?
What you’d most want to have in place that you don’t have right now?
Rob Sperling
Strategic Communications Consultant - Author - Founder, RS Business Ventures, LLC
Rob Sperling has spent more than 25 years helping organizations communicate clearly when the stakes are highest. His work spans crisis response, stakeholder communications, internal alignment, and the practical systems leaders need before, during, and after a high-pressure moment. He approaches communications not as a tactical discipline, but as a leadership identity - the argument that how an organization speaks under pressure is the clearest expression of what it actually values. Comms Under Fire is his second book in the Mastering Organizational Communications series. His first book, Lost in Translation, examines how strategic communication becomes the operating system of successful organizational change. He is the founder of RS Business Ventures, LLC, and the publisher of The Crisis Comms Brief, a free weekly newsletter on organizational communications and reputation.
MASTERING ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS
A body of work examining organizational communication from three diverse angles - how organizations change, how they protect themselves, and how the culture they build determines everything else.
LOST IN TRANSLATION
Organizations do not transform because of what leaders announce. They transform because of what people believe. A leadership manifesto for organizations navigating change - through the fictional journey of Angela Truitt and the communications strategies that turn strategic intent into organizational reality.
COMMS UNDER FIRE
YOU ARE HERE: What happens when you don’t control your own narrative - and what one company built from the wreckage. A narrative guide to crisis communications, organizational reputation, and the infrastructure that protects what you’ve spent a lifetime building.
THEY SAID WHAT?!
The organizational communication culture argument - the environment in which every crisis response and every change initiative either succeeds or fails. COMING SOON!.