Building a Robust Crisis Management Program During Turbulent Times

The modern landscape is turbulent and often frustrating, demanding organizations, communities, families, and individuals be prepared for disruptions that can strike from any direction. Crises can upend operations and erode trust, whether it’s a sudden economic downturn, a pandemic, a natural disaster, or a cyberattack.  

However, those who invest in thoughtful preparation and robust management strategies often find resilience and opportunities for growth in the face of adversity.  

Let’s explore the key components of an effective crisis management program, providing actionable insights to ensure your organization is prepared to navigate even the most challenging times.  

Proactive Planning: The Foundation of Preparedness

Effective crisis management begins with proactive planning. A well-crafted Crisis Management Plan (CMP) is the roadmap for navigating crises, outlining roles, responsibilities, and procedures to ensure all team members understand their duties. 

• ACTION ITEM: Clarify or establish core response processes within your CMP, including alerting, escalation, situational awareness, and decision-making authority, to ensure consistency and appropriate alignment and support. 

Aligning with current organizational objectives, key risks, and specialized operational response procedures—such as food recalls, cyber breaches, or adverse reputation incidents—enables organizations to develop flexible responses within their established crisis response framework and processes. 

• ACTION ITEM: Review current organizational objectives and key risks to ensure the year’s resiliency materials and focus areas appropriately reflect these factors. If your organization does not provide internal or public visibility to key risks, consider reviewing the annual reports of publicly traded competitors or similar organizations. Alternatively, incorporate questions into your lifecycle or governance discussions with key stakeholders.

Strong Leadership and Governance: Guiding Through Uncertainty

Strong leadership is the cornerstone of effective crisis management. Establishing a Crisis Management Team (CMT) with representatives from key departments ensures swift and informed decision-making under pressure. Clear roles and responsibilities within this team prevent confusion while empowering leaders to foster decisive action and resource allocation. 

For example, organizations with strong response structures during the COVID-19 pandemic adapted rapidly, securing necessary resources and equipment and implementing remote work policies and safety measures to navigate unprecedented challenges. 

• ACTION ITEM: Establish or review the composition of your CMT, focusing on appropriate representation of the whole organization, critical subject matter expertise, and equity of employee levels to ensure a broad view, proper depth, and open dialogue during challenging situations. 

Effective Communication: The Lifeline of Crisis Management

Communication is vital for maintaining trust and transparency. Internally, timely updates reduce anxiety and ensure alignment among leaders and employees. As part of the CMP, procedures for establishing a cadence of updates are vital; this helps prevent disparate conversations and actions that inhibit the organization’s ability to respond effectively and manage resources. 

Externally, consistent messaging safeguards the organization’s reputation, fostering stakeholder confidence. Companies that openly address issues—such as product recalls—often retain customer loyalty more effectively than those that remain silent or evasive. 

• ACTION ITEM: Establish or review the processes for communicating updates, including the cadence and routines for CMT response meetings and senior leadership briefings. 

Agility and Adaptability: Responding to Change in Real-Time

Flexibility is critical during crises. Organizations must adapt plans as situations evolve, avoiding rigid responses that exacerbate challenges. Streamlined decision-making processes and empowered leaders enable rapid adjustments, such as rerouting shipments during supply chain disruptions or reallocating resources in emergencies. 

Crisis management plans are most effective when designed as all-hazard frameworks. This approach provides a solid foundation and core processes that foster confidence and consistency within an organization. At the same time, it allows for the flexibility needed to address the specific details of any incident that may arise through incident-specific annexes or appendix materials. 

• ACTION ITEM: Consider the following questions for your organization’s CMP:  
• Is the plan designed with an all-hazards approach?  
• Does it clearly outline the necessary authorities and procedures for an effective and decisive response within the organization? 
• What specific types of incidents may require a more detailed response approach and should be included as annexes (or “sub-plans”) to support the CMP? (Examples of specific annexes include data breach, hurricane, activism/protest, active assailant, public event disruption, etc.)

Training, Exercises, and Learning Lessons: Building Confidence Through Practice & Turning Challenges into Opportunities

Regular training and crisis exercises enhance preparedness by testing the effectiveness of Crisis Management Plans (CMPs) and familiarizing employees with response protocols. These activities help identify gaps and lead to continuous strategy improvement. 

• ACTION ITEM: Determine the appropriate type and cadence of crisis exercises your organization should undertake annually. While this will depend on the maturity of the organization’s crisis program and team, it should conduct at least two to four tabletop-style exercises a year.  

While quarterly or biannual exercises for the Crisis Management Team (CMT) and annual training sessions are essential for the success of a crisis management program, they should not be the only methods used for improvement.  

Organizations that excel in crisis management actively seek opportunities to practice and enhance their skills throughout the year. They do this by reviewing lessons learned from recent internal and external incidents, engaging CMT members innovatively, and aligning with other internal training or testing opportunities. 

Conducting after-action reviews is critical for continuous improvement. By analyzing what worked and what didn’t, organizations can refine their CMPs and training programs, thereby strengthening their resilience against future crises. 

• ACTION ITEM: Does your crisis management plan include a process for capturing lessons learned? Review whether this process is regularly used, effectively records action items for improvement, specifies who is responsible for implementation, and outlines how these items will be communicated to CMT members, senior leaders, and other relevant stakeholders.

Stakeholder Engagement: Building Trust Before and During Crises

Engaging stakeholders—employees, customers, investors, and the community—is essential. Strong pre-crisis relationships and transparent communication during crises help maintain trust and support and often provide more options to resolve and mitigate impacts or seize opportunities to create positive outcomes. 

For instance, companies that quickly inform customers about data breaches and offer solutions, like credit monitoring services, demonstrate accountability and care, preserving their reputations. 

• ACTION ITEM: Do you know who your key stakeholders are? Who owns those relationships? Have you met local, state/provincial, and federal/national partners, such as law enforcement, emergency management, and environmental/health/safety?

Robust Monitoring and Early Warning Systems: Detecting Crises Early

Early detection helps prevent crises from escalating. Regardless of an organization’s size or composition, monitoring various internal and external risks, operational challenges, reputational trends, and regulatory changes are essential. 

The organization must ensure that monitoring capabilities can identify relevant anomalies, understand the importance of timely alerts, and direct who should receive the information. 

• ACTION ITEM: Assess and document the organization’s current monitoring capabilities for critical areas, such as weather, social media, physical and cyber security threats, regulatory changes, stakeholder engagement, etc.
• ACTION ITEM: Ensure CMP clearly outlines the process and criteria for alerting or escalating situations to established triage points or crisis response decision-makers. This should encompass both potential and acute incidents to enable a timely activation.

Resource Allocation: Ensuring Readiness

Adequate resources are critical for effective crisis management. Organizations should establish dedicated budgets and leverage technological tools like communication platforms and data analysis software. Physical resources, such as backup power systems and emergency supplies, ensure continuity during disruptions. 

Organizations with pre-stocked supplies and robust infrastructure, for instance, recover more quickly from natural disasters compared to those without such preparations. 

• ACTION ITEM: Document and reference the organization’s financial processes for crisis response, including project codes, budgets, insurance engagement, and authorization authorities. Ensure these are integrated into specific team materials, CMT member crisis response checklists, incident-specific annexes, and other relevant program collateral. 
• ACTION ITEM: Evaluate the current inventory and emergency procurement processes for critical resources, including computer hardware, essential life-safety supplies, and communication equipment. Ensure that relevant leaders or internal governance bodies are informed about the availability of these critical resources.

Legal and Ethical Compliance: Acting with Integrity 

Any crisis response must align with legal and ethical standards. Adhering to regulations minimizes legal risks, while ethical decision-making reinforces stakeholder trust. Transparency during financial crises, for example, demonstrates accountability and builds long-term confidence. 

• ACTION ITEM: Establish regular engagement opportunities with teams in legal, compliance, ethics, employee relations, and government affairs. This will ensure alignment and support, help identify critical priorities, guidelines, and direction, and provide context for crisis response activities. The goal is to ensure these activities are legal and ethical while maximizing protections for those affected.   
• ACTION ITEM: Collaborate with legal teams to create necessary guidelines and specific language for written materials during a crisis response. CMT members and other stakeholders should use this guidance when operating under privilege or maintaining collateral. 

Resilience Building: Thriving Despite Challenges

A culture of resilience empowers organizations to navigate adversity effectively. Promoting adaptability, teamwork, and continuous improvement fosters long-term success. Supporting employees through counseling, mental health resources, and flexible work arrangements aids recovery and sustains productivity. 

Aligning strategies with organizational values, such as investing in sustainable practices, positions businesses to handle environmental or societal crises better. 

• ACTION ITEM: Document employee assistance resources related to emergency support in the appropriate CMT member crisis response checklists or other materials. 
• ACTION ITEM: Develop a comprehensive communication and awareness strategy for the organization to enhance the visibility of the crisis response program, resiliency topics, and emergency procedures. 

Conclusion: From Survival to Strength

In an era of rapid change, the ability to manage crises effectively defines an organization’s success and longevity. A strong crisis management program doesn’t just mitigate risks—it builds trust, fosters loyalty, and creates growth opportunities. 

Organizations can turn challenges into stepping stones by prioritizing preparation, clear communication, and continuous improvement. Now is the time to reflect on your organization’s readiness and take decisive steps to ensure survival and sustained success in an unpredictable world.

Want to work with us and learn more about crisis management?

• Our proprietary Resiliency Diagnosis process is the perfect way to advance your crisis management, business continuity, and crisis communications program. Our thorough standards-based review culminates in a full report, maturity model scoring, and a clear set of recommendations for improvement.
• Our Exercise in a Box product contains 15 simple tabletop exercise scenarios that your business leaders can utilize for crisis microsimulations with minimal involvement from your team.
• With our Exercise in a Day™️  product, you’ll get a comprehensive, ready-to-execute crisis tabletop exercise developed by our team of experts in just one day. Optionally, we’ll even facilitate the exercise and write an after-action report.
• Our Crisis Management services help you rapidly implement and mature your program to ensure your organization is prepared for what lies ahead.
• Our Ultimate Guide to Crisis Management contains everything you need to know about Crisis Management.
• Our Free Crisis Management 101 Introductory Course may help you with an introduction to the world of crisis management – and help prepare your organization for the next major crisis.
• Our Crisis Management Academy®️ is the only program of its kind that provides the knowledge you need to build a strong & effective crisis management program for your organization and leaves you with the confidence that you’re putting the right program, framework, and plans in place to enable your business to manage through a critical moment.
• Learn about our Free Resources, including articles, a resource library, white papers, reports, free introductory courses, webinars, and more.
• Set up an initial call with us to chat further about how we might be able to work together.