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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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.

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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.

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

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See how all the steps you need to take come together, with tools and advice to help with each task on your list.

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Get to Action

Identify and prioritize potential crises

Determine relevant smoldering and sudden crises and prioritize them according to highest threat.
- Storyboard: Implement Crisis Management Best Practices
- Crisis Management Risk Prioritization Workbook
Identify crisis management gaps

Use a tabletop planning exercise to discover gaps and vulnerabilities in the organization's crisis management plan.
- Example Crisis Management Process Flowcharts
- Crisis Management Plan Workbook
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.
- Emergency Response Plan Checklist
Define emergency response and situational assessment plans

Create pre-determined crisis frameworks that establish processes for the crisis.
- Situational Assessment Checklist and Metrics Tracking Tool
Establish the ethical base communication plan

Develop a specific set of communication documents that will address the base level crisis communication needs.
- Crisis Communication Guidelines and Templates
Define a plan for reputation repair

Devise a tailored crisis response strategy that will be most effective in dealing with the crisis.
Test the crisis management plan

Conduct tabletop plans based on a crisis from the prioritized list and a worst-case scenario involving compound crises.
Leverage lessons learned to improve the crisis management plan

Establish action items to further optimize the ideal crisis management plan.
- Organizational Learning Guide

Guided Implementation

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

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Onsite Workshop

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:
1.1	Identify and prioritize smoldering crises
1.2	Identify and prioritize sudden crises	Prioritized list of potential crises
1.3	Evaluate current crisis management process and identify gaps	Current crisis management plan status and gaps identified

The Purpose

Define your crisis response framework.

Key Benefits Achieved

Enable a timely and effective initial response to wide range of crises.

Activities:		Outputs:
2.1	Identify the crisis management teams as well as roles and responsibilities	Teams and contact information documented
2.2	Define an emergency response process	Notification and escalation process Emergency response process
2.3	Define and document the situational assessment process	Situational assessment process Overall crisis response framework

The Purpose

Define a crisis communication process and overall strategy.

Key Benefits Achieved

Minimize reputational damage through effective and appropriate crisis communication.

Activities:		Outputs:
3.1	Establish the ethical base communication plan
3.2	Define a communication plan for reputational repair	Crisis communication process flowchart
3.3	Implement best practices for internal and external communications	Crisis communication templates for pre-planned messages

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:
4.1	Test your crisis management plan against the identified potential crises as well as a worst-case scenario	Post-crisis review (organizational learning) process
4.2	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