The most critical part of a crisis strategy isn't in the strategy

In our experience as crisis management consultants, organisations seem to be in very varied states of crisis planning preparedness: Do they have issues/crisis definitions; Do staff know their crisis roles and responsibilities; What platforms and technologies help with crisis response; Are crisis management reporting tools fit-for-purpose; Are all key stakeholder matrices and crisis templates updated etc?

Advance readiness often reflects on any company’s ability to handle crisis situations - or even crisis management drills - in ways that will minimise the impact on those affected and on the entity’s own trading ability.

We memorably recall one organisation insisting that it did have a crisis plan somewhere - but that no-one had seen it for around eight years. Another hadn’t invested in any formal crisis management software because it ‘had already appointed a pretty good PR person’. Just recently, we were ‘crisis consulting’ to a sizeable merged company that had no common or agreed understanding of how to define crisis, as the two separate entities viewed issues and crises in distinct and different ways.

In delivering the latter company’s best-practice crisis management strategy, we also gave them a supplementary document - separate from the strategy manual - which was, to us, way more important to the business than just the crisis strategy itself.

“What was it?” I hear you cry. Or perhaps that was just the dog looking for an afternoon feed!

The most essential part of this organisation’s crisis response ability was actually a 5-part activation plan we had developed to help them prioritise the key actions needed to get them to the start line of crisis readiness.

Now, at over 20-pages thick the bespoke manual we had created for them - artfully typeset with triage diagrams, workflows and lovely big QR codes - featured some of the latest digitised tools for interactive crisis management. And while a sub-sectioned ‘ACTION PLAN’ lead users to a digitised incident management toolkit, our 5-point ‘To Do Next’ list reminded them of some essentials which needed urgent attention; functional building blocks that needed to be put in place to build their crisis response strategy upon.

Look; a crisis management strategy or crisis response plan - configured for today’s complex circumstances - is a critical crisis planning template which every organisation should have and know how to activate and use. But if it only lives in a server or on a shelf, it’s not going to work if unsupported by actions that fill deficits existing within your business.

Any crisis strategy must be accessible and readily referenced when issues or crises loom into view or when your organisation is running crisis simulations or crisis drills. But any crisis ACTIVATION PLAN (showing which activities need to be prioritised) or crisis ACTION PLAN (to act as a strategic cheat-sheet when the ship hits the flan) can be even more useful to the business trying to create or reinvent its ability to be ready for any kind of serious issue or organisational crisis.

If you’d like a free crisis audit or free crisis consultation to help gauge your crisis response capability, email freeadvice@thedrill.com.au and we’ll contact you for some preliminary ideas, with zero obligation!