Implement Crisis Management Best Practices
Don’t be another example of what not to do. Implement an effective crisis response plan to minimize the impact on business continuity, reputation, and profitability.
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Contributors
- Melissa Agnes, Crisis management speaker and consultant, President and co-founder of Agnes + Day Inc.
- Timothy Coombs, Professor and author in the field communications and crisis management, University of Central Florida
- Tim Hickernell, Independent Consultant
- Deb Hileman, CEO, Institute for Crisis Management
- Ann Hutchison, Senior HR Advisor and Crisis Communication Instructor, Western University
- Bernard Jones, Owner/Principal, B Jones BCP Consulting, LLC
- Larry Liss, CTO, Blank Rome LLP
- John A. Parnell, Belk Chair of Management and author in the field strategic and crisis management, University of North Carolina-Pembroke
- Tony Ridley, CEO, Intelligent Travel
- Kevin Warner, Security and Compliance Officer, BRIDGE Healthcare Partners
Your Challenge
- Business contingency and IT disaster recovery plans focus on how to resume normal operations following an incident. The missing piece is how does the organization initially respond to and assess an incident, including whether to execute the BCP/DRP.
- Organizations that don’t have a crisis management plan are far less able to minimize the impact of other crises such as a security breach, health & safety incident, or attacks on their reputation.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- “Soft costs” from ineffective crisis management (e.g. reputational damage) have a significant impact on the bottom line, as measured by a drop in shareholder value.
- The Target and Home Depot security breaches illustrate the impact of poor crisis management (Target experienced long-term bottom-line impact) versus effective crisis management (Home Depot experienced minimal short-term impact).
- IT leaders are a critical resource for crisis management, not only for IT-related incidents but also to support crisis response activities such as communications.
Impact and Result
- Create a crisis management plan that provides a framework for responding to any crisis, from health and safety incidents to business disruptions to reputational damage.
- Establish a hierarchy of crisis management teams to expedite crisis assessment and response.
- Pre-plan for likely potential crises to improve your ability to respond to those crises and implement a structure that can be applied to a wide range of other potential crises.
1. Identify and prioritize potential crises
Determine relevant smoldering and sudden crises and prioritize them according to highest threat.
2. Identify crisis management gaps
Use a tabletop planning exercise to discover gaps and vulnerabilities in the organization's crisis management plan.
3. Create crisis management teams (CMTs)
Document all the necessary members of the CMTs and identify third parties that will assist the organization during a crisis.
4. Define emergency response and situational assessment plans
Create pre-determined crisis frameworks that establish processes for the crisis.
5. Establish the ethical base communication plan
Develop a specific set of communication documents that will address the base level crisis communication needs.
6. Define a plan for reputation repair
Devise a tailored crisis response strategy that will be most effective in dealing with the crisis.
7. Test the crisis management plan
Conduct tabletop plans based on a crisis from the prioritized list and a worst-case scenario involving compound crises.
8. Leverage lessons learned to improve the crisis management plan
Establish action items to further optimize the ideal crisis management plan.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is a nine call advisory process.
Guided Implementation #1 - Identify potential crises and crisis management gaps
Call #1 - Identify and prioritize potential crises
Call #2 - Identify current capabilities and gaps
Guided Implementation #2 - Define initial response and assessment plans
Call #1 - Identify CMT roles and responsibilities
Call #2 - Define your situational assessment plan
Guided Implementation #3 - Develop a crisis communication plan
Call #1 - Understand “ethical base” in your strategy
Call #2 - Define your ethical base and reputation repair communication strategy
Call #3 - Implement crisis communication best practices
Guided Implementation #4 - Optimize the overall crisis management plan
Call #1 - Plan your crisis management tests
Call #2 - Implement an organizational learning process to leverage lessons learned from testing and actual crises
Book Your Workshop
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Identify Potential Crises and Your Crisis Management Gaps
The Purpose
- Identify and prioritize relevant potential crises.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Enable crisis management pre-planning, and identify gaps in current crisis management plans.
Activities
Outputs
Identify and prioritize smoldering crises
Identify and prioritize sudden crises
- Prioritized list of potential crises
Evaluate current crisis management process and identify gaps
- Current crisis management plan status and gaps identified
Module 2: Define Initial Response and Assessment Plans
The Purpose
- Define your crisis response framework.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Enable a timely and effective initial response to wide range of crises.
Activities
Outputs
Identify the crisis management teams as well as roles and responsibilities
- Teams and contact information documented
Define an emergency response process
- Notification and escalation process
- Emergency response process
Define and document the situational assessment process
- Situational assessment process
- Overall crisis response framework
Module 3: Develop a Crisis Communication Plan
The Purpose
- Define a crisis communication process and overall strategy.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Minimize reputational damage through effective and appropriate crisis communication.
Activities
Outputs
Establish the ethical base communication plan
Define a communication plan for reputational repair
- Crisis communication process flowchart
Implement best practices for internal and external communications
- Crisis communication templates for pre-planned messages
Module 4: Optimize Your Overall Crisis Management Plan
The Purpose
- Implement a process for continuous improvement of your crisis management plan.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Improve your crisis management capability by learning from previous crises, plan reviews, and testing.
Activities
Outputs
Test your crisis management plan against the identified potential crises as well as a worst-case scenario
- Post-crisis review (organizational learning) process
Formalize the post-crisis review process to ensure lessons learned are identified and addressed in your crisis management plan
- Crisis management plan review and testing schedule
