What is your Crisis Management Plan?

What is your Crisis Management Plan? What will you do when a Crisis occurs?

Every organization must have crisis plan. It does not matter what industry. 

I like to say, “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.” 

A crisis can take many forms it could be a natural disaster, legal, cyber-attack, faulty product, or organizational misdeed, just to name a few. Depending on the size of organization and what kind of crisis that could occur, there could be multiple impacts on business. Impacts could range from a public relations disaster or lead to bankruptcy, both are another crisis. As leaders of organizations or departments, we must have an active crisis management plan. 

Let me give you a hypothetical crisis. 

You are a global business located on the coast of Florida and it’s August.   You have been notified that a category 5 hurricane has changed direction and your company headquarters is right in the crosshair. The hurricane will reach your office location in 20 hrs. At your headquarters you have your staff, US production, accounting, sales and warehouse. Basically, most of the essential company operations will be affected. 

At this point your company has no crisis plan!

What do you do?

If the hurricane has a direct hit on your operations and levels your facilities it could cause your company to go bankrupt. 

The above hypothetical crisis is not hypothetical but real, I have experienced personally. At this time, I was not in a senior leadership role but know the consequences of not having a plan or poor crisis management plan. For me, I lost my place of work and home, due to a hurricane.

I want to say again, as leaders of organizations or departments, we must have an active crisis management plan.

When making a crisis management plan here are a few things to keep in mind. You can’t make an individual plan for each kind of crisis but make a crisis plan model that is flexible and able to adapt to most crises. In some cases, you can plan for known crisis that might occur.  When developing a plan, it’s best to get input for all departments, legal and executive staff. In developing a plan, you need to identify problem areas and discus issues and areas of concern. For more formal and specific plans, information must be accurate. Ideally a crisis management plan should be foolproof.

Remember, a crisis can occur at any time. Don’t be caught off guard. Make sure your organization has a detailed Crisis Management Plan.

After reading this article, hopefully you are asking a few questions. What kind of crisis can my company face? Do we have a crisis management plan? If your company does have a crisis plan, then what is your role? If not, then what kind of crisis management plan does your company need?

Please let me know what crises you have been faced within an organization and what the effects where? Did your organization have a plan?