We are on a Friday or any weekend, and suddenly an event happens that affects us, that affects the operation of our company, our environment, and that captures the attention, first of my neighbors, then of the authorities and then of the media.
If there are victims of any kind in the situation, relatives will come and defense groups and neighborhood protest groups will be created.
Within the company, whether public or private, at the high levels of decision-making there is no or little information. Many times, both the relatives of the victims and senior company executives are the last to find out. In fact, on many occasions these two groups that I just mentioned find out about the situation through the media and do not know whether to believe or not.
They do not have access to truthful, credible and detailed information, nor do they have any idea how to act.
Suddenly, somewhere in the operation, in a branch or at headquarters, someone asks a question… “Does anyone know where the Crisis Manual is? It’s a big folder… I know it was somewhere…”
As you can imagine, we are describing a crisis situation.
An issue that must always be kept in mind, when we talk about a crisis, is that, as the great philosopher Ortega y Gasset would say, any crisis could also say “It is me and my circumstance” and as Ortega y Gasset completed his sentence, many of us forget to quote and understand the profound meaning of his thought. “If I don’t save her, I won’t save myself either.”That is, the way you experience the crises you face will have a close relationship with what you have done previously to prepare yourself.
At the beginning of this article I described a typical period. It is a chaotic moment, where things are out of control, affecting the operation of the institution. And as Murphy’s law anticipates, “If something can go wrong, it will go wrong, and at the worst possible time”Therefore, during crises, in addition to the focal point of the crisis, other parts of the system are put to the test and the chances that the situation will become more complicated are increasing.
In that chaotic DURING, anything that helps me resolve the situation is going to be important and there, having a GOOD CRISIS SITUATION MANAGEMENT MANUAL plays a key role.
When did I make the Crisis Manual…? In the BEFORE.
When I became aware that something in my operation could fail, and that that failure was going to cost me a lot in people, products, supplies, capital and reputation, I decided to make a Crisis Management Plan for my institution.
Investing that time and money to make the plan will benefit me because, if a crisis happens, or if my contingency alerts are activated, and I see a crisis coming, I will be able to:
- Activate the crisis team and all collaborators quickly.
- Collaborate in a coordinated and effective manner between the different levels of the organization.
- Respond with Speed
In plan it starts with the RISK ASSESSMENT
The objective is to identify all possible crises that could affect or interrupt business processes. The idea is to ask all the STAKEHOLDERS (interest groups or interested parties). We need to talk to leaders and workers, ask customers and neighbors, consult business associations similar to mine and state regulatory bodies, and list all the relevant threats and vulnerabilities that could affect us.
The list of risks can be:
- Perceptions and public relations errors
- Operational damage to facilities and equipment that may cause injuries to workers, customers, suppliers or neighbors
- Failures in our products or services
- Environmental damage
- Financial and administrative illicit
- Technology failures such as cyber attacks and data breaches
With our list of risks we must then make a BUSINESS OR INSTITUTIONAL IMPACT ANALYSIS.
In this analysis we quantify the impact that each of the potential risks we identify may have. We do this evaluation in terms of:
- Loss of income due to production suspension or delays.
- Dissatisfaction or failures in customer service and attention.
- Reputation damage.
- Increased expenses to resolve failures (for example, as a result of paying overtime or to expedite shipping of products)
- Fines and lawsuits for violations of regulations
It is this Impact Analysis which will allow me to assess each risk in relation to its probability of occurrence, its costs and its institutional impact and it will be the basis of PLAN OF ACTION. This analysis is vital as it can help present the importance of preparing for crisis prevention and control to anyone who does not see the value in investing in these plans.
All these previous steps will allow us to DESIGN THE ACTION PLAN that must contemplate common actions for any crisis and specific actions for the corresponding scenarios with the risks that we identify as the most relevant.
In the plan I will consider my general crisis policy, who the members of the institution’s central crisis committee are and how they work, and if the company has several locations, the same definitions for local crisis committees.
I am going to define, for each risk, what the warning indicators are to try to prevent possible failures and I must also define when to declare that the crisis has started.
Then I am going to detail the crisis solution scenarios and how I am going to meet the requirements of my different Interest Groupsremembering that I have to resolve the event that is affecting the functioning of the institution and, at the same time, I have to communicate some key messages that show my culture and my values and rescue my reputation.
Within the plan I must previously select and properly train the crisis spokespersons and the teams of internal and external experts who will collaborate with me to solve the situation.
Finally, in the plan, I will outline the parameters of the process of returning to normal.
The set of:
- Crisis scenarios
- Equipment operating standards
- Procedures and guidelines for action, according to each crisis scenario
- Equipment operating instructions
- Forms and templates for reporting, progress and status documents
- Contact lists of all important representatives of the Interest Groups
They form the famous Crisis Management Manual, that we remember having seen it and that we know that it exists, but that, when crises break out, we do not remember where it is.
The next steps, after making the plan that culminates with the writing of the Crisis Management Manual, have to do with divulge that the manual exists and use it in drills to practice Because, if I don’t simulate the main crises and practice how to react properly to deal with them, when a crisis really breaks out, I won’t even remember where the manual was…