In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & Chief Executive Bryan Strawser discusses how to craft a crisis management framework for your organization.

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Episode Transcript

Hello, and Welcome to The Managing Uncertainty Podcast. This is Bryan Strawser, Principal and Chief Executive here at Bryghtpath. And in this week’s episode, I’d like to talk about how to craft your crisis management framework. Now, you’ve probably heard from us and everyone else that every organization should develop and continually revise a crisis management plan which should then be exercised regularly. Why? Well, because listing procedures and blindly walking through them are only going to get you so far. To benefit you really need to get into your organization’s DNA and your approach to managing a crisis. So I want to explain why I think you need to bother about this and to do so, we need to talk about your crisis management framework. The goal of this, as you build your crisis management tools is that you need an underlying philosophy, a framework that will make all of your crisis management parts work together. A consistent framework across your company describes how you will make communicate and execute decisions when it matters in a crisis.

Think about your governing approach now, because a crisis is no time for confusion or making things up on the spot. Crisis management aims to plan for an effective, coordinated response with the resources available and the resources that you have and internal and external communication requirements before and after the crisis. Everybody, teams, and the top leadership of your company need to know what to do, or they will make mistakes that make matters worse in the moment. An established crisis management framework ensures that your executives can expect a consistent process and consistent communication no matter the crisis, should that crisis morph and pull in others and additional teams, then everyone still approaches crisis management from the same starting point with the same goals and the same shared expectations. Let’s start with the basics. To start building your framework, you need to your organization’s mission and vision statements. Everybody in your company and your organization needs these values as the foundation for all of your crisis management activity.

The first is when is it a crisis? A primary consideration is what constitutes a crisis and who declares it. Crises often start as a minor problem in one functional area. Often functional groups can contain and solve those issues before they can expand. If not, a crisis team might step in and they may solve the problem. Usually, your executives are not involved in these localized events, but this depends a lot on just how your company’s structured. If units can’t contain an issue, then they escalate, but you need to decide beforehand what th