Crisis Management:An Overview

Crisis Management:

Does your business have a War Room?

How much of your cash flow is automated?

Do you have ready access to a corporate decision making map?

Crisis Management:

When conditions get worse, how much worse will they get?

How do you know?

Crisis management is the discipline and science of managing breakdown and recovery

Three examples ...

Crisis Management:If you’re executing an employee reduction program, do you:

Lay off staff to meet cost requirements?

Lay off staff to match the productivity stats of your competitors?

Lay off staff to bring new people with new ideas into the corporation?

Crisis Management:If you’re corporation is moving into a new business, market, or location , do you:

Plan to expand what you already know?

Plan to capture the benefits of the new business, market, or location?

Plan to start a conversation between the old and the new?

Crisis Management:

If you’re watching a movie in a theatre and someone yells, “Fire!”, do you:

Panic?

Remain Calm?

Account for all of the panicky people in the theatre?

Crisis Management:Mastering crisis management requires mastering three kinds of learning:

Informational Learning - find problem, run solution

Motivational Learning - “I’ll be fine as long as I’m better than the next guy”

Transformational Learning - “I am new.”

Crisis Management:Mastering the three kinds of learning requires knowing what they are and knowing when to use them:

Informational Learning - efficient answers, cost / benefit, normal operations

Motivational Learning - energize and know the limits of your environment, your team, and yourself

Transformational Learning - Non-Linear, throw out the normal rule book, head for the war room

Crisis Management:Crisis management operates on multiple levels at the same time:

Corporate - Large, complex organizations are less able to manage a crisis because they are large and complex

Professional - Knowing a specialty or discipline well makes it harder to “jump outside your own box”.

Personal - You can’t see what you’re not equipped to see; you can’t do what you’re not equipped to do

Crisis Management:Fundamentals: Crisis management recognizes the choice between competitive, cooperative, and structural thinking

Competitive - “We will kill or capture Bin Laden”

Cooperative - “It’s time to sit down and talk with the Taliban”.

Structural - “we can adapt what we learned from the Anbar awakening to Afghanistan.”

Crisis Management:

Use the principles of crisis management during normal times

Keep your plans efficient and set in a larger context

Keep your planners motivated and creative

Better preparation leads to better performance

Crisis Management:

Choosing a crisis Management specialist

broad background - education and experience

experience matters, depth and breadth

Test their methodology and their creativity

Crisis Management:

When you need a crisis Management specialist

If you’re ruminating, you haven’t defined the depth of the crisis, seek assistance

It may feel like you’re walking off a cliff

A crucible requires enough heat to change the ingredients but not so much heat as to melt the Pot!