Agile Crisis Management

19-03-2020

You Need to Run Ahead of the Crisis instead of Running Away from It!

Every crisis has a huge impact in our lives. Nowadays, while we are dealing with a 1^st in line strange global virus pandemic, we all expect / foresee how our organization structures may change and what effects can be on the culture. This pandemic -spread unexpectedly so fast- had a huge impact in our relatively safe lives; maybe disrupted the notion of ‘taken for granted’ for modern humanity. A pandemic had become an unusual suspect to be a game changer.

As consultants -who had a wide experience on crisis management- we wonder if it will be the last driver to force us to become more agile, but also more resilient? Or should we prepare for a different game plan as soon as possible?

agilecrisismanagement

Shortly, Crisis Management is indeed a Field Organization Work (like political campaigns, wars, disasters, strikes, etc..) where a chaotic environment is born with the involvement of a lot of mixed parties. This is the place where you’re obliged to practice your best with full capacity to win within a fierce competition.

The types of crises may change (from financial to natural disasters etc.). Even though there are standardized crisis management plans, the best approach is to stick at ‘critical thinking’ and be really aware of your unique conjuncture:

Act according to your own strategy,
Analyze well your structure,
and thrive from your own cultural strengths.

In times of crisis, people are on high alert for danger signals. Rumors, misinformation, and panic spread with alarming speed. As a company, you need first to manage your employees’ feelings and behaviors so that they can serve at best to your customers. Here, the crucial point is that in order to keep the best towards your external stakeholders you need to work best with your internal stakeholders.

Here, we prepared a very short summary of what are the crucial parts and main challenges in a crisis management.

CRUCIAL PARTS	MAIN CHALLENGES
You will need to observe in a fastest way the patters and act spontaneously. This requires full integration of data sources. You need your employees to act & serve your customers.	You have very limited time to act. So, you need a very efficient crisis management team to overcome. You need to keep the sentiment (both customers’ & employees) is the biggest challenge.
Communication It is important to provide the correct information on time. If you don't, others will surely do the work for you. Create hierarchy for sharing information on the crisis.	You must persuade parties to communicate. (at the beginning there might be resistance) You need constantly inform all stakeholders. Collaborative knowledge is essential but not full transparency. You may need to hide some info if necessary, to control the spread.
Teams Team of teams should be established (including informal leaders) The teams should be trained to solve problems and their skills should be developed.	You need to find these influencers very fast and correctly. But these can also be your detractors. You need to act and stabilize the crisis. You will not have a time for training. With short cycles, on the job, you will teach them.
Employees Your employees at critical touch points need to behave correctly to their customers	But they are also affected by the crisis, and to keep calmness is not easy for them too. Spend time to manage it.
The key idea that you need to keep in mind; yes we do not own the humans but in crises situation someone always own the moment!

For more information please contact with us.

Inanc Civaz

inanc.civaz@hagaconsultancy.com

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