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.
- 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.
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Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst
Get the help you need in this 4-phase advisory process. You'll receive 11 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation 1: Identify potential crises and your crisis management team
- Call 1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.
- Call 2: Identify potential crises, and your crisis management roles and responsibilities.
- Call 3: Establish a crisis management framework.
Guided Implementation 2: Document your emergency and crisis response plans
- Call 1: Document your emergency response plans.
- Call 2: Document crisis response plans for potential high-risk crises.
Guided Implementation 3: Document crisis communication guidelines
- Call 1: Review crisis communication best practices.
- Call 2: Identify communication channels.
- Call 3: Pre-define communication messages based on best practices.
Guided Implementation 4: Complete and maintain your crisis management plan
- Call 1: Complete your Crisis Management Plan Summary document.
- Call 2: Create a Project Roadmap to close gaps.
- Call 3: Schedule plan reviews, exercises, and updates.
Contributors
- Melissa Agnes, Crisis management speaker and consultant, President and co-founder of Agnes + Day Inc.
- Timothy Coombs, Professor and Crisis Communications Expert, 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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