If there was a poll to reveal what training topic had been put off more than any other I’d bet that “Crisis Management” will be right up there.
Ever heard the words “Hey, things are fine, why worry about managing a crisis that may never happen?” A few times perhaps? I’ve heard that called “Ostrich management”. And sure, that’s one way of looking at it.
But how about another way? You can start with asking yourself a few questions:
1. What if disaster struck now, right now, and it meant the company was out of action? What would your role be?
2. How about the roles of the people around you?
3. Does everyone else know what to do?
4. How long would it take to get the business working again? 48 hours? Maybe longer?
If you are looking at a down time of 48 hours or longer, then you need to be doing something about that – right now.
First of all, play devil’s advocate and think about the number of things that could impact your company like a fire or a flood. Getting the picture? OK, now let’s take this a bit further. How about an IT failure? Did you know that IT-related problems account for over 50% of business disasters?
In each case, write down what you would do, and what the people around you would do. When you’ve finished you’ll find you have a plan. Now, if the idea of expanding that for the whole company is just way too scary then you can always call in a professional company who specialise in preparing Crisis Management plans tailored to you. They are fairly reasonable and, after all, they might just save your business.
Once that’s in place, test the plan. It’s no use having a fire extinguisher in the office if no one knows how to unclip it from the wall, true?
Have you backed-up your plan along with everything else? You do back up, don’t you? Make sure people know where the copies are stored. Yes, copies, plural. Heard about the company that only had the one copy stored at Head Office and couldn’t get to it because of an electrical failure on the vault door? Backing-up the back-up may sound paranoid but, in reality, is just common sense.
The one-day C3i Crisis Management workshop covers the theory of a crisis and the roles of your management team. The practical session tests that theory and puts the whole team under pressure. The lessons to be learned are endless while the planning and system development is real and builds solid working relationships within the management structure.
Contact C3i Strategic Solutions today to find out more.
