What are the benefits of developing contingency plans for changing contexts?

1 Why contingency plans matter

Contingency plans matter because they help you to cope with uncertainty, complexity, and volatility in the public sector. They allow you to anticipate and respond to potential risks, opportunities, and challenges that may affect your goals, objectives, and resources. They also enable you to maintain your accountability, legitimacy, and trust with your stakeholders and the public. By having contingency plans, you can avoid being caught off guard, reduce the impact of negative outcomes, and seize the advantages of positive ones.

3 How to create contingency plans

Once you have identified the scenarios, you need to create contingency plans for each of them. A contingency plan should include the following elements: a trigger, a response, and a recovery. A trigger is the event or indicator that signals the need to activate the contingency plan. A response is the action or strategy that you will implement to address the situation. A recovery is the process or measure that you will take to restore your normal operations or achieve your desired outcomes. You should also assign roles and responsibilities, allocate resources, and establish communication channels for each contingency plan.

4 How to test and update contingency plans

After creating contingency plans, you need to test and update them regularly. Testing helps you to evaluate the feasibility, effectiveness, and efficiency of your contingency plans. You can use various methods to test your contingency plans, such as simulations, drills, exercises, and audits. Updating helps you to keep your contingency plans relevant, accurate, and aligned with your changing goals, objectives, and resources. You should update your contingency plans whenever there are significant changes in your internal or external environment, or when you learn from your testing results or actual experiences.

5 How to integrate contingency plans into strategic planning

Contingency plans are not standalone documents, but rather integral parts of your strategic planning process. You should integrate your contingency plans into your strategic plan by linking them to your vision, mission, values, goals, objectives, strategies, and indicators. You should also align your contingency plans with your other planning tools, such as budgets, timelines, action plans, and monitoring and evaluation systems. By integrating your contingency plans into your strategic planning, you can ensure that they are consistent, coherent, and complementary with your overall direction and purpose.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?