In a crisis everyone screams

Murphy's law of technology teaches us that, hardware will fail, systems will go down and despite your best security training someone will eventually click on that link. Last week I had the pleasure to attend the EMA | Employers & Manufacturers Association Marketing Summit (thanks Ryan). During the summit Greg Fahey presented on “Managing your brand through a crisis”. Although the presentation was about how organisations should manage a crisis, the lessons apply equally to managing internal technology issues; how well you deal with these issues will impact your internal brand.

Have a plan ready for different scenario’s. Consider the what if’s. How will you communicate with people when your network is down? Or even better get peoples contact details that are stored online?

Front foot the communications, from my experience this is key. People are much more forgiving when they understand what is going on.

Know your team and their responsibilities. When a system is down I want the key resources solely focused on fixing it, not fielding questions or doing something else. Know who is working on the issue, taking overall responsibility, managing communications or simply running interference for people just dropping by. And realise that these rolls may need to change depending on the type of issue.

If you are lucky enough not to have any issues, then simulate them. If you are (un)lucky enough to have an issue, use it as a learning opportunity. Make sure your review covers not only the technical aspects but how well you managed the issue.

The title of this post comes from a paper I wrote a few years back analysing the leadership (mine included) in a crisis I was involved in. One of my key learnings from the crisis, was that as a leader your job is to manage the crisis not necessarily solve it. The more involved you become in the technical detail, the hard it becomes to step back and look at the big picture, manage the situation effectively; the leadership can become lost in the problem solving. I am sure everyone has their own hard learnt lessons.