Strategic Crisis Management for Professionals

Introduction

Are you 100 confident that you and your organization are prepared, if not, where do you start? Simply put, the best way of dealing with a crisis is to avoid one in the first place. But if crises are inevitable due to a growing number of factors (including terrorism) then you and your organization need to identify all vulnerabilities and map out possible crisis scenarios.

Effective Strategic Crisis Management depends on sound and swift decision-making, and neither can happen without corporate-wide and multi-agency pre-planning. Expert analysis of the business crisis finds that rushed strategic management decisions, incorrect statements, actions, or inactions have caused many of the most newsworthy business crises during or following an event.

Effective Strategic Crisis Management begins with effective decision-making. In an emergency, the first major decisions made regarding how to handle the unfolding situation are almost always the most important ones. Good initial decisions can make even a catastrophe manageable; bad decisions can fatally exacerbate an otherwise small problem. In both cases, the window of opportunity for initial decision making is extremely small and closes rapidly. Once the moment for decision making has gone, it does not come back.

Your strategic corporate response must be coordinated and effective, your strategic crisis management team-s pre-identified and fully trained.

Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, participants will

• Acquire in-depth knowledge of the key aspects of Strategic Crisis Management
• Learn how to identify incidents and crises so you can cultivate and harness the potential successes of a crisis.
• At the incident, the site learns how to avoid mismanagement and so makes a bad situation worse.
• Learn how to generate ownership and responsibility by all stakeholders to ensure your organization responds efficiently and effectively.
• Learn how to recognize and prioritize the issues that are most likely to affect corporate reputation during and after the crisis.
• Learn the fundamentals of organizing and managing Crisis or Emergency Control Centers.
• Learn how to plan and manage multi-agency exercises - and make them more rewarding and exciting.
• Take away step by step guidance on how to validate plans, to improve staff ownership, to augment training course and to raise awareness.

Target Audience

This course will be of benefit to those who find themselves responsible for leading on or implementing Crisis Management response and recovery mechanisms.

In addition, it will raise the awareness of those Senior Executives who may have been allocated -potential- or specific tasks in an existing corporate Crisis and Emergency Management course yet have had insufficient time to devote to the subject.

Industrial Security Outline

The course covers the following topics:

The course has been designed to be interactive with several case studies and group exercises. A modular approach will take Participants through the four stages of Crisis Management - Preparation, Planning, Response, and Recovery. Participative lectures will involve the use of PowerPoint, handout material, work manual with all instructor notes and slides. The use of flip-charts, syndicate workshops and reporting back sessions will encourage a fully participative and enjoyable event.

What should be in place before the event?

• Understanding Crisis Management
  • How to manage a crisis?
  • Virtually every crisis contains the seeds of success as well as the roots of failure
  • The Rationale of the Crisis Manager
• Consider the range of risks: Natural-Environmental; Hazards; Technological - loss of utilities-product-process-plant; Human Error; Sabotage and Terrorism
• Crisis Managers - Roles and Responsibilities - manage the issue before it becomes a Crisis
• Who else inside and outside the organization should be involved?
• Evaluating your risks and vulnerabilities; Consider the worse-case scenarios
• Understanding -denial-curve- and -group-think- syndromes
• ·  Who decides who sits in the -hot-seat-?

Pre-planning, who and what else should be considered?

• Who owns the mitigation process?
  • Self-evaluating questionnaires
• Developing and Implementing Emergency Plans
  • Twelve point checklist covering the whole planning process
  • Mutual Aid arrangements
  • Company-wide strategic contingency plans
  • Service or departmental plans
  • Building evacuation plans
• Crisis Management and Communications. Emergency Centre-s
• Developing and implementing a Business Continuity Management (BCM) strategy
• ·  Business Impact Analysis

Dealing with a crisis - the -communications- perspective

• Command and Control Issues
  • Operational (at the scene)
  • Tactical (at the forward control point-incident command)
  • Strategic (boardroom level-emergency operations centre)
• On Scene Crisis Management, essential elements for success
• Reputation Management - Managing the Media. -How to- sessions include
  • Organizing a Press Conference
  • Conducting Radio and Television Interviews

Incident Management and Aftermath

• Alerting and Warning. Case Studies. What can go right and what can go wrong
• Major Incident Simulation - Role Playing Workshop
  • Syndicate selection
  • Reporting back
• Potential Psychological and Welfare problems in Crisis Management
  • How to improve staff morale and confidence in the process
  • The psychological effects during and after an incident involving injuries - and worse
  • Looking after yourself and your staff
• ·  Questionnaire, are your batteries in good condition?

Leadership Behaviour and Behavioral Safety

• Validating plans and procedures
  • Discuss the four types of exercise
  • How to get the most out of an exercise
• Post Incident evaluations
  • De-briefing skills - managing the de-briefs - hot and cold
• Critique report writing, executive summaries, and recommendations
  • How to keep all -stakeholders- informed
  • Prioritizing the Recommendations
  • Examples of critique questionnaires