- There’s a belief that you can’t know what crisis will hit you next, so you can’t prepare for it. As a result, resilience planning stops at more-specific planning such as business continuity planning or IT disaster recovery planning.
- Business contingency and IT disaster recovery plans focus on how to resume normal operations following an incident. The missing piece is the crisis management plan – the overarching plan that guides the organization’s initial response, assessment, and action.
- Organizations without 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
- Effective crisis management has a long-term demonstrable impact on your organization, long after the crisis is resolved. While all organizations can expect a short-term negative impact when a crisis hits, if the crisis is managed well, the research shows that your market capitalization can actually increase long term.
- Crisis communication is more science than art and should follow a structured approach. Crisis communication is about more than being a good writer or having a social media presence. There are specific messages that must be included, and specific audiences to target, to get the results you need.
- IT has a critical role in non-IT crises (as well as IT crises). Many crises are IT events (e.g. security breach). For non-IT events, IT is critical in supporting crisis communication and the operational response (e.g. COVID-19 and quickly ramping up working-from-home).
Impact and Result
- You can anticipate the types of crisis your organization may face in the future and build flexible plans that can be adapted in a crisis to meet the needs of the moment.
- Identify potential crises that present a high risk to your organization.
- Document emergency response and crisis response plans that provide a framework for addressing a range of crises.
- Establish crisis communication guidelines to avoid embarrassing and damaging communications missteps.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
9.8/10
Overall Impact
$50,532
Average $ Saved
33
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Equitrans Midstream Corporation
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
5
The Alberta Teachers Association
Guided Implementation
10/10
$25,000
10
City Of Bakersfield
Guided Implementation
9/10
$2,599
6
City of Birmingham
Guided Implementation
10/10
$123K
110
It was very nice to meet with Jeremy and Andrew. They gave valuable insight that saved us a lot of time and effort. I can't thank them enough.
Tamkeen Technologies
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
Independent Health
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
5
The entire process was very positive. Frank was able to effectively facilitate the tabletop exercise which helped ensure great participation from t... Read More
Griffith University
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
N/A
It was an advisory discussion.
Workshop: Implement Crisis Management Best Practices
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 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 Team
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 high-risk crises.
- List of high-risk crises.
Assign roles and responsibilities on the crisis management team.
- CMT membership and responsibilities.
Review Info-Tech’s crisis management framework.
- Adopt the crisis management framework and identify current strengths and gaps.
Module 2: Document Emergency Response and Crisis Management Plans
The Purpose
- Outline emergency response and crisis response plans.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Develop and document procedures that enable rapid, effective, and reliable crisis and emergency response.
Activities
Outputs
Develop crisis notification and assessment procedures.
- Documented notification and assessment workflows.
Document your emergency response plans.
- Emergency response plans and checklists.
Document crisis response plans for potential high-risk crises.
- Documented crisis response workflows.
Module 3: Document Crisis Communication Guidelines
The Purpose
- Define crisis communication guidelines aligned with an actionable crisis communications framework.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Document workflows and guidelines support crisis communications.
Activities
Outputs
Establish the elements of baseline crisis communications.
- Baseline communications guidelines.
Identify audiences for the crisis message.
Modify baseline communication guidelines based on audience and organizational responsibility.
- Situational modifications to crisis communications guidelines.
Create a vetting process.
- Documented vetting process.
Identify communications channels.
- Documented communications channels
Module 4: Complete and Maintain Your Crisis Management Plan
The Purpose
- Summarize the crisis management plan, establish an organizational learning process, and identify potential training and awareness activities.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Plan ahead to keep your crisis management practice evergreen.
Activities
Outputs
Review the CMP Summary Template.
Create a project roadmap to close gaps in the crisis management plan.
- Long-term roadmap to improve crisis management capabilities.
Outline an organizational learning process.
- Crisis management plan maintenance process and awareness program.
Schedule plan reviews, testing, and updates.