Blog Viewer

The absolute truths of crisis management

By URMIA Staff posted 11-14-2015 06:48 AM

  

Copyright DVIDSHUBBy Joe DesPlaines, Business Continuity and Crisis Response Consultant for Districts Mutual Insurance.

For most of my career, I believed there were no universal truths in the business of crisis management. Given the differences in types of crises and responses, I thought that there could not be a “truth” that would apply to all circumstances. However, I am told that with age comes wisdom, and maybe that is true as I have come to realize that there may, in fact, be some universal truths of organizational crisis management that may help in understanding and managing a crisis.

Consider the following:

The first absolute truth of organizational crisis management
An effective crisis management program that has adequate funding and management support will only be put in place when facing an impending crisis that will produce significant losses.

This truth has been around for a long time in various forms and used in loss control, risk management, employee health and safety, security, etc. Some feel this is the next generation of “closing the barn door after the horse is out,” but I believe this was first used by Noah when he was faced with a severe weather event.

The second absolute truth of organizational crisis management
Every crisis is different; if you’ve seen one crisis, you’ve seen one crisis.

The implications of this truth are clear--a college or university cannot create the perfect plan that covers every contingency. All we can do is develop a guiding structure and have the right leaders in place who have the ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

The third absolute truth of organizational crisis management
If one department is threatened by a particular crisis, all departments of that institution have the same threat and can benefit from sharing mitigation planning.

One observation I have made after working with a number of different higher education institutions is that there are functional silos within organizations that don’t interact effectively with each other, especially about risk. Some examples: hacking is viewed as an information technology problem; active threats are viewed as a security problem; slip and fall incidents are viewed as a risk management problem, etc. Yet these risks (and more) represent threats to all departments and need to be addressed in a unified, collaborative way.

The fourth absolute truth of organizational crisis management
If a college or university has a plan that has been trained and practiced, the organization can respond with urgency to a crisis and recover faster.

This truth is common sense: create a plan, train employees in plan execution and rehearse the plan, and you will have the tools to respond promptly, which means a quicker return to business functionality. Just look at the research on the recovery (or lack of recovery) of businesses located in New Jersey following Hurricane Sandy.

These are the absolute truths of organizational crisis management that I am familiar with but likely not the only ones that exist. I invite you to email me with any that you have experienced. We will develop a list and periodically update. Leave your experiences in the comments section below, or send them to joe@districtsmutualinsurance.com.

 

Previous Article | Insights Home | Next Article
0 comments
267 views

Permalink