Implement Crisis Management Best Practices


Don’t be another example of what not to do. Implement an effective crisis response plan to minimize the impact on business continuity, reputation, and profitability.

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Major Business Pain Points

  • There’s a belief that you can’t know what crisis will hit you next, so you can’t prepare for it. As a result, resilience planning stops at more-specific planning such as business continuity planning or IT disaster recovery planning.
  • Business contingency and IT disaster recovery plans focus on how to resume normal operations following an incident. The missing piece is the crisis management plan – the overarching plan that guides the organization’s initial response, assessment, and action.
  • Organizations without a crisis management plan are far less able to minimize the impact of other crises such as a security breach, health & safety incident, or attacks on their reputation.
Implement Crisis Management Best Practices-Pain Points

Recommendations

Key Points

  • Effective crisis management has a long-term demonstrable impact on your organization, long after the crisis is resolved. While all organizations can expect a short-term negative impact when a crisis hits, if the crisis is managed well, the research shows that your market capitalization can actually increase long term.
  • Crisis communication is more science than art and should follow a structured approach. Crisis communication is about more than being a good writer or having a social media presence. There are specific messages that must be included, and specific audiences to target, to get the results you need.
  • IT has a critical role in non-IT crises (as well as IT crises). Many crises are IT events (e.g. security breach). For non-IT events, IT is critical in supporting crisis communication and the operational response (e.g. COVID-19 and quickly ramping up working-from-home).

Approach

Implement Crisis Management Best Practices-Recommendations
  • You can anticipate the types of crisis your organization may face in the future and build flexible plans that can be adapted in a crisis to meet the needs of the moment.
  • Identify potential crises that present a high risk to your organization.
  • Document emergency response and crisis response plans that provide a framework for addressing a range of crises.
  • Establish crisis communication guidelines to avoid embarrassing and damaging communications missteps.

Methodology and Tools

Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should implement crisis management best practices, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

  • Implement Crisis Management Best Practices – Executive Brief
  • Implement Crisis Management Best Practices – Phases 1-4

1. Identify potential crises and your crisis management team

Identify, analyze, and prioritized potential crises based on risk to the organization. Set crisis management team roles and responsibilities. Adopt a crisis management framework.

Example Crisis Management Process Flowcharts (Visio)

  • Example Crisis Management Process Flowcharts (PDF)
  • Business Continuity Teams and Roles Tool

2. Document your emergency and crisis response plans

Document workflows for notification, situational assessment, emergency response, and crisis response.

  • Emergency Response Plan Checklist
  • Emergency Response Plan Summary
  • Emergency Response Plan Staff Instructions
  • Pandemic Response Plan Example
  • Pandemic Policy

3. Document crisis communication guidelines

Develop and document guidelines that support the creation and distribution of crisis communications.

  • Crisis Communication Guidelines and Templates

4. Complete and maintain your crisis management plan

Summarize your crisis management and response plans, create a roadmap to implement potential improvement projects, develop training and awareness initiatives, and schedule maintenance to keep the plan evergreen.

  • Crisis Management Plan Summary Example
  • BCP Project Roadmap Tool
  • Organizational Learning Guide

All resources on this page are provided to Cyber Leadership Hub members under license from third parties including Info-Tech Research Group Inc, a global leader in providing IT research and advice.