What are the best practices for conducting a post-crisis analysis with your team?

Defining a clear purpose and boundaries before-hand is extremely important to bring out everyone natural selves. I have been leading many of these analysis, and I usually start like, "so XYZ thing happened, tell me one by one what can we do that something like that never happens again, and keep in mind that people are always gonna make mistakes, so it's our job to define concrete protocols, SOPs and policies around that". Then I start consolidating points that everyone says and after going through everyone in the meeting, we have enough information around why it happened and what policies can we make to prevent it in future. I avoid taking any names, and interrupt people too if they are about to, hence creating a neutral environment.

A post-crisis analysis should involve insight into why the crisis happened and concrete steps that can be taken to mitigate this in the future. Just pointing fingers at one another will not cut it. Real problem solving will.

In our rapidly evolving world, the process of post-analysis and discussion holds significant importance. It serves as a crucial mechanism for preventing the recurrence of mistakes and steering your team towards success. The optimal approach involves convening a concise meeting, clearly articulating the purpose and scope to pinpoint the root cause of the crisis. Foster a safe and respectful environment that encourages every team member to express their perspectives openly. Evaluate proposed solutions, prioritize key takeaways, conduct a return on investment (ROI) assessment, and formulate an action plan to proactively mitigate the likelihood of a similar situation in the future.

Better to assess and evaluate the response and think ahead what to do in the future and by combining all your findings with achievable resolutions.

Have morning meetings with your Management Team to define and outline your daily/ weekly/ monthly goals. Introduce the conflict that occurred. Define your crisis, discuss with them what the problem or crisis was, how it was resolved, if it was resolved and what we do to prevent it from happening again. Move to having a bigger discussion with the staff, in groups led by the department heads. Communicate the subject matter being Conflict-Resolution, then by giving examples of the conflict without pointing fingers or centering anyone out. Have the group come up with ideas for prevention, avoidance, alternate methods of communication and most of all, reinforce the company's codes of conduct and if necessary, adjust the codes.

As a department head, you must have patience and empathy for your employees. Try to understand the situation. Be discrete, behind closed doors talk to the parties about what had occurred and how it could have been handled differently. Ask for feedback, and discuss consequence's for certain actions. Dismissal should be a last resort depending on the severity of the infraction. If necessary, have a departmental meeting and allow the people the opportunity to voice their feelings, emotions and fears. To determine the level of impact and to what extent they were effected by the crisis. In the end, it may be necessary to bring in an inspirational speaker to speak about the crisis to the entire staff and try to assess the scope of damage.

Crisis counseling services was something that was implemented by my team that was really effective. It offers confidential counseling services to employees affected by a crisis in the workplace. The employees would have access to an on-site professional counselor who would help them navigate their emotions and provide support for their mental well-being as a group or individually. Crisis counseling in the workplace can help employees feel safe again and reestablish a healthy working environment.

Team leaders would gather notes from each group and put them together for analysis. You can make carts and graphs, that are easy to understand and clear to what must be done in order to create the best business model. Outline the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Use this data to help improve productivity, awareness and employee moral. Continue organizing and interpreting the data, over time make comparisons to different seasons; compare last year to this year and so on. Eventually you will see a pattern, which will lead to actionable terms for making improvements.