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Crisis Management: Plan, Plan, Plan
by
dreid
—
last modified
2007-01-10 10:21
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Now that we’ve discussed what may constitute a crisis and the risks and rewards of handling a crisis well, here are some tips for handling a crisis:
Plan, plan, plan
Like a bad performance review, a crisis should rarely sneak up on you. The best organizations and corporations out there *know* what their risks, exposure and liabilities are, and plan for contingencies and unknowns. This doesn’t mean that you need to be omniscient, just smart. Sit down with your board of directors, advisors and colleagues and make a list of all of the things that could potentially befall your organization. Consider the internal and external environment of your organization and take stock of where a crisis might come from, and how it could impact your organization and constituents.
As part of your planning process, walk through each type of potential crisis and rate it according to (a) the likelihood it will actually happen, and (b) the severity of the impact if and when it does. Then you’ll want to “stack rank” these potential crises in priority order and start to build scenarios and action plans for dealing with them should they occur. You don’t need to detail every single step you’ll take for every possible crisis that might rock your world, but you should know how you’ll handle the most likely crisis and have at least a skeleton action plan in place for your top 5 most likely/high priority crises.
A crisis management plan will include several components – again varying by type of organization/business and type of crisis. Some common aspects of a crisis plan include:
• Communication plan. Who needs to be communicated with and when? Who will own creating, managing and delivering all communications?
• Action plan. What needs to happen to avert, divert or manage the crisis? What steps are needed to deal with, fix or address any negative impact or harm brought on by the crisis? Who needs to take each particular action? You’ll likely divide the action plan into phases and departments – each step of managing a crisis may require different people (see recommendation #2 next week for additional discussion).
• Decision tree. Depending on the scope and scale of the crisis you’ll have major decisions to make at various points. Think back to the Tylenol crisis; there were any number of steps Johnson & Johnson could have taken – from denying the problem was theirs, to settling lawsuits quietly, to recalling just a certain lot number of Tylenol capsules that may have been linked to the deaths, to their final decision/action: recalling all Tylenol capsules and replacing (at no charge) customers’ current bottle of capsules with a new packages Tylenol tablets. For your plan, identify at what points in your crisis response you’ll need to make decisions, what they might cost/gain your organization, and who will take the lead on that decision.
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Diana L. Reid, Conscious Communications
Plan, plan, plan
Like a bad performance review, a crisis should rarely sneak up on you. The best organizations and corporations out there *know* what their risks, exposure and liabilities are, and plan for contingencies and unknowns. This doesn’t mean that you need to be omniscient, just smart. Sit down with your board of directors, advisors and colleagues and make a list of all of the things that could potentially befall your organization. Consider the internal and external environment of your organization and take stock of where a crisis might come from, and how it could impact your organization and constituents.
As part of your planning process, walk through each type of potential crisis and rate it according to (a) the likelihood it will actually happen, and (b) the severity of the impact if and when it does. Then you’ll want to “stack rank” these potential crises in priority order and start to build scenarios and action plans for dealing with them should they occur. You don’t need to detail every single step you’ll take for every possible crisis that might rock your world, but you should know how you’ll handle the most likely crisis and have at least a skeleton action plan in place for your top 5 most likely/high priority crises.
A crisis management plan will include several components – again varying by type of organization/business and type of crisis. Some common aspects of a crisis plan include:
• Communication plan. Who needs to be communicated with and when? Who will own creating, managing and delivering all communications?
• Action plan. What needs to happen to avert, divert or manage the crisis? What steps are needed to deal with, fix or address any negative impact or harm brought on by the crisis? Who needs to take each particular action? You’ll likely divide the action plan into phases and departments – each step of managing a crisis may require different people (see recommendation #2 next week for additional discussion).
• Decision tree. Depending on the scope and scale of the crisis you’ll have major decisions to make at various points. Think back to the Tylenol crisis; there were any number of steps Johnson & Johnson could have taken – from denying the problem was theirs, to settling lawsuits quietly, to recalling just a certain lot number of Tylenol capsules that may have been linked to the deaths, to their final decision/action: recalling all Tylenol capsules and replacing (at no charge) customers’ current bottle of capsules with a new packages Tylenol tablets. For your plan, identify at what points in your crisis response you’ll need to make decisions, what they might cost/gain your organization, and who will take the lead on that decision.
###
Diana L. Reid, Conscious Communications
