During a recent crisis management training session a client asked me if I knew of a web based training tool which could, through a series of multiple choice questions, indicate whether your incident/crisis response was right or wrong. Search on line and of course there are. However, what such a tool can never really account for is the human factor. You might press the right button for what you should do but when faced with reality other factors, such as panic, fear and team dynamics can significantly alter how you respond in practice.
It’s true that no simulation can ever fully prepare you for the real thing either but it can help you predict how you and your team members may respond. One of my mantras for crisis management training is “anticipate to mitigate”. You need to know your own and your colleagues’ strengths and weaknesses and adjust accordingly.
I’ve often found the mild mannered, collegiate leader who wisely gathers all the information before making any decisions, is paralyzed by the prospect of rapid decision-making. Equally, I once trained a team where the senior manager and designated Team Leader, out of character, began to shout and swear at his team. It was only a training session and, forewarned, it was possible in “peace time” to diplomatically find another role for him. You just don’t have that luxury in the heat of the moment, you might be stuck with everyday hierarchy standing in the way of effective response - the “command and control” technique so often referred to in crisis management circles. That’s why crisis management practice can be such a lifesaver. The rules of engagement change and the sooner you can prepare people for that, the better.
Now back to the original question. Put another way, is there a way of predicting the unpredictable so that it can be addressed in a formulaic way. Yes and no. While there are of course exceptions, crises tend to follow a similar pattern. The immediate aftermath of the incident is the fact-finding phase. A short period of grace in which the focus is on the who, what, where, when type questions as everybody struggles to understand the scale and implications of the incident.
Hot on the heels of this first phase, however, follow the how and why, cause and blame questions. It’s often at this point that there is a fork in the road. The companies that resist the temptation to look back but force themselves to look forward, worst case scenario plan and implement, are the ones who pressed the right multiple choice button.
But what is predictable? The unpredictable human factor, the details are different but the pattern is the same. The predictable whistle blower who says they’d warned you ages ago, the regulatory agency under fire for failing to respond appropriately to a previous incident, the politician who sees a point scoring opportunity, others in your sector who fear scrutiny or competitors who seek advantage, share holders obviously and of course, last but not least, those directly affected, the “victims”. Each of these stakeholders has a different, but often predictable, agenda staking a claim to how an organization should respond. An issue only ever really starts to feel like a crisis if you’re taken by surprise by the power of external forces to dictate your own response.
So in that multiple choice where should you press yes? Have you got a tried and tested early alert process and culture, is there a clear escalation system, are teams and support functions trained in their roles and responsibilities, do the plans work, are people bored by the training because they’ve done it so often. Well if you’ve answered yes to these questions you’re on the right road. There is nothing new here, best practice crisis management has not fundamentally changed, being prepared so that the unpredictable is manageable is and should remain the primary mitigation strategy.
Oh and finally, it’s never over. In most plans I read these days there is a section on declaring the incident over. In reality what this means is going from crisis into project management phase. This takes stamina. The initial adrenalin has gone, the post mortems have begun, but the aftermath of the incident rumbles on. In May 2010, just six weeks after the Deepwater Horizon incident that left eleven men dead the CEO of BP said, “I would like my life back.” but the situation with compensation claims, recriminations and so on continues. Most importantly for the families of those eleven people, when can they declare the crisis over? Predictably, prepare for the new normal.
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