Crisis Planning – The Basics

This post builds on my Crisis Management preamble post.

If you are not going to do crisis management the right way, don’t do it, please don’t waste your time, go find something better to do. Ok, got that out of the way. Now we can cover the basics.

Item 1) Who owns Crisis Planning:

Many will argue that HR should, Some will Argue that IT should, Maybe PR, or “The Brand Manager”, or Maybe the VP of Operations.

My Recommendation: None of the above. Crisis planning should be owned by a dedicated person reporting to the CEO, if your company is large enough this person (believe me) will be busy enough to do this Full Time. If your company is small, find someone who will handle this and on that task report to the CEO.

Item 2, Who is this super hero who will own this?

This super hero should have the following characteristics.

1. Must be a Generalist: Some one who can talk to anyone about anything. From IT to Operations to PR
2. Must be willing to talk to anyone
3. Must not be intimidated easily, even if the IT manager goes on for 3 hours about some SQL query doing something that no one cares about.
4. Must not get hung up on detail
5. Must ask a lot of questions
6. Must be street smart and able to think on their feet, must be able to think of things that no one cares to think about.
7. Must be calm calm calm under pressure, you need a super steady hand, Someone who is a ex-military type would be good to have on board
8. Must have a sense of humor and must use it in a crisis
9. Must enjoy the confidence/trust of the CEO and all staff, must be easy to talk to and very approachable about everything under the sun. Must be someone your staff can talk to about very personal issues.
10. Must be consultative but decisive.

Item 3, What does this person need.

This person needs few things, but I must warn, they are not easy to get

1. A budget, a plan does not happen out of nothing.
2. Time, a plan needs time and proper roll out and maintenance.
3. Empowerment from management and the ability to effect change across the organization.
4. Commitment from everyone in the organization

Now that we covered the basics, the next blog post will cover the plan and how to put one together. But before this post is done, I am going to state and repeat something that is very important, almost critical.

Disaster Recover, Business Continuity, Crisis Management are not things you do when a crisis hits. Crisis Management requires a complete change in the culture of the organization, even beyond the organization. Do not go down the path of Crisis Management planning if there is no commitment from everyone especially the C-suite to CHANGE THE WAY WE DO THINGS.