Rick Pietzak is a leadership and crisis readiness adviser whose work focuses on how individuals and organizations think, decide, and act when pressure is high and consequences are real. He is widely respected for helping leaders develop the mental readiness required to navigate crises—not just through plans and protocols, but through disciplined decision-making, trust, and alignment when uncertainty is greatest.
Rick’s expertise centers on the human dynamics that determine whether a crisis response succeeds or fails. He works with leaders and teams to understand how stress, ambiguity, and competing priorities affect judgment, communication, and coordination across an organization. His approach emphasizes that even the strongest crisis plans depend on how well people think and work together when the facts are incomplete and time is compressed.
Throughout his career, Rick has advised organizations on crisis preparedness, leadership behavior under pressure, and the transition from readiness to real-time response. He is particularly focused on helping teams avoid predictable decision-making traps—such as hesitation, overcorrection, or misalignment between leadership, communications, legal, and operational functions—that can slow response and erode trust at critical moments.
Rick is known for translating complex behavioral and organizational challenges into practical frameworks leaders can apply before and during a crisis. His work highlights the role of trust as an operational asset, showing how credibility, clarity, and shared understanding enable faster decisions and more disciplined communication when stakes are high.
In his work with executives, leadership teams, and communicators, Rick consistently reinforces a central principle: crises expose how organizations really function. Mental readiness—at both the individual and team level—is what allows organizations to move from intention to coordinated action, maintain control of the narrative, and make decisions that hold up long after the immediate pressure has passed.
