> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.discernibleinc.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Issue 67: Not Every Bite Is a Crisis - URL: https://www.discernibleinc.com/issue-67-not-every-bite-is-a-crisis/ - Published: 2026-11-02T13:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-02T13:00:00.000Z - Description: Why unprepared security teams turn routine incidents into crises, and what communication research says about readiness, alarm fatigue, and trust. - Author: Melanie Ensign - Tags: #Perspectives Newsletter --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ae/fc/aefcd8de-a3c5-4631-8da8-b86ceabbc317/content/images/2026/10/photo-1542202229-7d93c33f5d07.jpeg) # Packing for Snakes Many teams treat nearly every incident as a crisis because they're not prepared. This habit costs more than most leaders realize. Executives learn to fund security only after something breaks, employees tune out alarms, and external stakeholders cement memories that follow the company into its next incident. Our new blog post looks at what separates organizations that are truly ready from those that only feel ready, and why you'll never get through the forest without some snakes. [**Read more**](https://www.discernibleinc.com/packing-for-snakes/) --- ## In Theory 🧠 Karl Weick’s foundational 1988 essay [*Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situations*](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-6486.1988.tb00039.x?ref=discernibleinc.com) (published in the Journal of Management Studies), argues that people think by acting. To understand an unfolding incident, responders have to act, and those actions shape the situation they are trying to read. This is why a response can escalate the very event it was meant to contain. Weick identified three forces that decide whether action clarifies a crisis or compounds it: 1. **Commitment** locks people into early interpretations they then feel obligated to defend. 2. **Capacity** limits perception, because people notice what they believe they can act on. 3. **Expectations** tend to fulfill themselves. For security and privacy leaders, this explains why practiced teams escalate less. Their first moves come from rehearsed capability rather than improvisation. An organization that expects every incident to be a crisis will usually act in ways that make it one. --- ## In Practice ✍️ [*MIS Quarterly, December 2025*](https://aisel.aisnet.org/misq/vol49/iss4/10/?ref=discernibleinc.com)*:* Anthony Vance, Dave Eargle, C. Brock Kirwan, Bonnie Brinton Anderson, and Jeffrey L. Jenkins studied a neurobiological effect called generalization of habituation. The work began years before this publication, with early results presented at the [2019 Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security](https://www.usenix.org/conference/soups2019/presentation/vance?ref=discernibleinc.com) (SOUPS). Across two field experiments and an fMRI study, the team found that people who learn to ignore frequent routine notifications carry that habituation over to security warnings they have never seen before. This happens below conscious awareness, even when people can tell the two kinds of message apart. Warnings that looked and behaved differently from everyday notifications resisted the effect. From my experience, this has a clear organizational parallel. When every security update arrives with the urgency of an emergency, audiences habituate to the urgency itself. So why do so many organizations only communicate about security topics when something goes wrong? Regular, calm communication during quiet periods builds the relationships an incident depends on and gives a genuine alarm something to stand out against. What matters is that routine updates look, sound, and arrive differently from urgent ones. --- ## Inclusive 🤝 **Cryptography Harlem** Black communities are over-policed, under increased levels of surveillance, and marginalization. Encryption offers privacy, safety, and protection. By looking out for the most targeted communities Cryptography Harlem empowers ALL communities in the fight to push back surveillance, fight digital harms, and protect civil liberties. The nonprofit does this through livestreams, in-person events, free guides, free resources, and free training. [**Learn more**](https://www.cryptoharlem.com/?ref=discernibleinc.com) --- ## In Our Ears 🎙️ **Hidden Brain,** September 18, 2017 Host Shankar Vedantam explores information aversion, the tendency to avoid information we know is important because hearing it hurts. Economists Joshua Tasoff and Ananda Ganguly found that people will pay to avoid unpleasant health results, and that avoidance grows with how bad the news could be. Psychologist Dolores Albarracín adds that fear reliably drives one-time actions but fades too quickly to sustain ongoing behavior. For security leaders, this is the hidden cost of only appearing with bad news, which conditions stakeholders to brace whenever you show up, and people who expect pain start finding reasons not to engage with you. Showing up during quiet periods to help other teams reach their goals, by unblocking a launch, de-risking a new market, or making a hard deal easier to close, changes what stakeholders expect from security. That goodwill keeps people listening when the news is hard, and it’s far easier to build before an incident than during one. [**Catch the episode here** ](https://www.hiddenbrain.org/podcast/you-2-0-the-ostrich-effect/?ref=discernibleinc.com) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ae/fc/aefcd8de-a3c5-4631-8da8-b86ceabbc317/content/images/2026/06/Discernible-Logo_CMYK-1.webp) Discernible Inc, 1717 N Bayshore Drive, Suite 108-15, Miami, FL 33132