- There’s a belief that you can’t know what crisis will hit you next, so you can’t prepare for it. As a result, resilience planning stops at more-specific planning such as business continuity planning or IT disaster recovery planning.
- Business contingency and IT disaster recovery plans focus on how to resume normal operations following an incident. The missing piece is the crisis management plan – the overarching plan that guides the organization’s initial response, assessment, and action.
- Organizations without a crisis management plan are far less able to minimize the impact of other crises such as a security breach, health & safety incident, or attacks on their reputation.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Effective crisis management has a long-term demonstrable impact on your organization, long after the crisis is resolved. While all organizations can expect a short-term negative impact when a crisis hits, if the crisis is managed well, the research shows that your market capitalization can actually increase long term.
- Crisis communication is more science than art and should follow a structured approach. Crisis communication is about more than being a good writer or having a social media presence. There are specific messages that must be included, and specific audiences to target, to get the results you need.
- IT has a critical role in non-IT crises (as well as IT crises). Many crises are IT events (e.g. security breach). For non-IT events, IT is critical in supporting crisis communication and the operational response (e.g. COVID-19 and quickly ramping up working-from-home).
Impact and Result
- You can anticipate the types of crisis your organization may face in the future and build flexible plans that can be adapted in a crisis to meet the needs of the moment.
- Identify potential crises that present a high risk to your organization.
- Document emergency response and crisis response plans that provide a framework for addressing a range of crises.
- Establish crisis communication guidelines to avoid embarrassing and damaging communications missteps.
Implement Crisis Management Best Practices Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should implement crisis management best practices, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
- Implement Crisis Management Best Practices – Phases 1-4
1. Identify potential crises and your crisis management team
Identify, analyze, and prioritized potential crises based on risk to the organization. Set crisis management team roles and responsibilities. Adopt a crisis management framework.
- Example Crisis Management Process Flowcharts (Visio)
- Example Crisis Management Process Flowcharts (PDF)
- Business Continuity Teams and Roles Tool
2. Document your emergency and crisis response plans
Document workflows for notification, situational assessment, emergency response, and crisis response.
- Emergency Response Plan Checklist
- Emergency Response Plan Summary
- Emergency Response Plan Staff Instructions
- Pandemic Response Plan Example
- Pandemic Policy
3. Document crisis communication guidelines
Develop and document guidelines that support the creation and distribution of crisis communications.
- Crisis Communication Guidelines and Templates
4. Complete and maintain your crisis management plan
Summarize your crisis management and response plans, create a roadmap to implement potential improvement projects, develop training and awareness initiatives, and schedule maintenance to keep the plan evergreen.
- Crisis Management Plan Summary Example
- BCP Project Roadmap Tool
- Organizational Learning Guide
Workshop: Implement Crisis Management Best Practices
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
1 Identify Potential Crises and Your Crisis Management Team
The Purpose
Identify and prioritize relevant potential crises.
Key Benefits Achieved
Enable crisis management pre-planning and identify gaps in current crisis management plans.
Activities
1.1 Identify high-risk crises.
1.2 Assign roles and responsibilities on the crisis management team.
1.3 Review Info-Tech’s crisis management framework.
Outputs
List of high-risk crises.
CMT membership and responsibilities.
Adopt the crisis management framework and identify current strengths and gaps.
2 Document Emergency Response and Crisis Management Plans
The Purpose
Outline emergency response and crisis response plans.
Key Benefits Achieved
Develop and document procedures that enable rapid, effective, and reliable crisis and emergency response.
Activities
2.1 Develop crisis notification and assessment procedures.
2.2 Document your emergency response plans.
2.3 Document crisis response plans for potential high-risk crises.
Outputs
Documented notification and assessment workflows.
Emergency response plans and checklists.
Documented crisis response workflows.
3 Document Crisis Communication Guidelines
The Purpose
Define crisis communication guidelines aligned with an actionable crisis communications framework.
Key Benefits Achieved
Document workflows and guidelines support crisis communications.
Activities
3.1 Establish the elements of baseline crisis communications.
3.2 Identify audiences for the crisis message.
3.3 Modify baseline communication guidelines based on audience and organizational responsibility.
3.4 Create a vetting process.
3.5 Identify communications channels.
Outputs
Baseline communications guidelines.
Situational modifications to crisis communications guidelines.
Documented vetting process.
Documented communications channels
4 Complete and Maintain Your Crisis Management Plan
The Purpose
Summarize the crisis management plan, establish an organizational learning process, and identify potential training and awareness activities.
Key Benefits Achieved
Plan ahead to keep your crisis management practice evergreen.
Activities
4.1 Review the CMP Summary Template.
4.2 Create a project roadmap to close gaps in the crisis management plan.
4.3 Outline an organizational learning process.
4.4 Schedule plan reviews, testing, and updates.
Outputs
Long-term roadmap to improve crisis management capabilities.
Crisis management plan maintenance process and awareness program.