Crisis, What Crisis
Crisis, what crisis? The answer is clear; the next crisis about to hit you and your enterprise is on its way and you cannot avoid it. Crisis can strike anywhere and anytime. Be it driven by social unrest, technological disruption, economic upheavals, ethical challenges, political interventions, legal shifts or ecological threats. Be it a crisis of your own making through poorly planned and implemented decisions or a crisis caused by a competitor. Be these crises the agents of volatility, uncertainty, instability, complexity or just plain ambiguity. Crisis is coming; it is a matter of when, not if. Are you ready?
The next crisis threatening your organization may already be taking shape, putting the organization’s reputation and success at risk. The way you and your enterprise deals with it will determine whether this crisis becomes a crippling disaster or an obstacle you have successfully overcome.
It could begin as a slow drip which quickly turns into a torrent or it could be an instant tsunami; these will equally challenge you and your organisation. Are you and your leadership team prepared to confront and cope successfully with such a crisis? Large, medium and small enterprises are often unprepared and usually do not have a crisis plan in place. They believe it will never happen to them. Your next crisis is on its way so be prepared for it.
In a matter of hours a badly-managed crisis can wipe out decades of hard work and enterprise-value. A well-managed crisis confirms you and your organisation has the processes and procedures in place to address almost any developing issues, increasing the value of your reputation and your economic value.
Without any doubt, crisis awareness, preparation, and resilience need to be explicit items for owners, should be on boardroom agendas and need to be important issues which ought to be addressed by the C Suite and senior management in all organisations. The identity of the organisation, its image reflected back by stakeholders and your enterprise-reputation are key elements to success and will be threatened by a crisis.
A crisis which damages your reputation or the reputation of your organisation is one in which trust has been broken, be it trust with any of your key stakeholder groups. Your job in managing such a reputation-crisis must focus on rebuilding trust if you were unfortunate or foolish enough to lose this trust. Attempting to retain trust is a vital task for those leading enterprises. Owners and executives must work hard to retain and build trust across all stakeholders for long-term sustainability, no matter what crisis may loom on the horizon or hit like a hurricane.
Before the next crisis strikes your enterprise, owners, the board, C Suite and senior management team should think about how to handle the crisis, what to do to tackle a disaster, exploring what would be the impact on employees, customers, suppliers, investors and all other stakeholders. What would be the impact on your organisation’s value?
Key to being prepared for a crisis is nurturing a prepared, higher-performing team of people within the enterprise to minimise strategic risk. If you, your management team and employees are running and operating an agile, resilient and flexible organisation, the chances are you will weather a storm much more effectively than if you were trying to manage a brittle, command-and-control run autocracy.
By changing your culture and structure, affecting how you do things in your organisation, you will be able to prevent system-breakdowns which may lead to collapse when a crisis appears. We all live in volatile and uncertain situations where changes are constant daily occurrences. Having prepared people is your best defense against the coming crisis; agile systems with devolved and delegated power through empowered employees.
Being explicitly aware of the need to prepare for a crisis involves creating a crisis management plan and core to this is selecting and then training a crisis management team. Every plan begins with broad goals leading to specific and clear objectives. These objectives ought to be about protection and survival for people and the organisation.
Ensure you create your crisis management plan when everything is running smoothly and everyone involved can think clearly. By planning in advance, all parties will have time to contemplate the best ways, or indeed - the least-worst ways, to manage different types of crises. Crises can occur as a result of an unpredictable event or as an unforeseeable consequence of some event already considered a potential risk. In either case, crises almost invariably require decisions be made quickly to limit damage to you and your organization.
Although written instructions with clear policies and procedures are useful, most important for this crisis plan are the explicit and known values of the enterprise which all employees ought to be using in their daily work lives. It is these values which will dictate how well you and your people respond to a crisis. Truth is, it is impossible to have a plan for each and every crisis which may hit but if we have prepared people who will act in the best interests of stakeholders, then you are more likely to survive, and possibly even thrive, through a crisis rather than suffer from it.
Where you can foresee those crises which could arrive, emergency response training is a positive approach, from health and safety training to fire drills and speedy mass evacuation from offices, warehouses, factories and workshops. Many individuals and enterprises often look at these activities as time-consuming and wasteful but there is an imperative in ensuring employees are prepared to address unplanned or disruptive events which could cause loss of life.
All stakeholders should be part of prevention thinking and helping to create processes for handling a crisis as they can aid in both identifying and mitigating risks caused by a crisis. A review of which stakeholders have high-power and which have high-interest in what is occurring ought to be conducted; a task you and your key leadership and key management teams should be doing on a regular basis.
As part of developing your crisis management plan, you must seek advice from your leadership team, employees, customers, suppliers, communications experts, investment bankers, lawyers and financial managers; all key stakeholders. Each stakeholder group can provide you with valuable insight which could be critical when a crisis strikes. Just as importantly, they will be closer to you when the crisis hits if you have been talking to them about your planning. Be mindful of these stakeholder-needs and keep these stakeholders close so when this crisis hits, they are with you and not against you.
As part of your openness and transparency with stakeholders, keep your employees informed; there is nothing more debilitating for people than not knowing what is going on. Maintaining an informed workforce helps ensure your enterprise is geared for continuity and sustainability.
Part of the crisis planning must include talking to customers and suppliers and ensuring they are regularly updated. Ensuring you are communicating with customers and suppliers and gaining their commitment to work with you through the crisis will help you through the worst times. You do not want customers and suppliers learning about your crisis from your competitors. Information on any crisis you and your organization are going through should come from you first.
Never try to hide a crisis from the outside world; the world knows about it at the same time you do; or at the very least, will find out within hours if not minutes. Have an open and transparent approach to handling the crisis taking full advantage of social media channels as well as historic, legacy communication vehicles such as television, radio and newspapers. Nothing generates more negative media coverage than a lack of honesty and transparency. It is better to over-communicate than to allow rumours to fill the void.
Surviving, and perhaps thriving through, a crisis ought to lead to a review of what you might have done differently. Lessons should not be lost and you ought to exhibit the best of a learning-organisation and knowledge-management so you are better prepared for the next crisis waiting over the horizon.