Your Crisis Management Action Plan
What factors do you look for to determine if and when a crisis situation may occur? What would be your first plan of action?
phillip,
When planning your crisis management plan you should be aware of the entire surroundings. Your physical plant, employees, community, media presence and most of all what potential crisis could affect your organization. All crisis plans should be created and revisited on at least a quarterly basis. All of these variables change and need to be kept up to date.
Dr. Gary Carlson
Reviewing the history of both the schools organization and the specific campus you work at, would give you a lot of information as to what crisis may be encountered. That would allow a crisis team to see how things were handled in the past and what changes could be implemented in the future.
William,
Crisis come in all sizes. You are correct when we handle them to be aware of the level.
Dr. Gary Carlson
To me, a crisis is anything that is out of the norm which has the potential of causing damage to the environment or productive function of the process.
A crisis can come from a big or small issue.
To begin addressing a crisis, I think you must first access the situation. Having a check list of things to be aware of would be helpful.
Margaret,
Leaders often standout because of their demeanor and personality. When leading the personal side comes out with honesty, integrity, consistency and fairness.
Dr. Gary Carlson
I like this. I think employees need to see the leader as a "person" as well as a supervisor/manager.
Margaret,
I have used a saying that will fit exactly with your statement. It is that people don't care what you know until they know that you care.
Dr. Gary Carlson
I agree completely with these statements. Having a positive working relationship with your employees and students at all times, will serve to help the whole company during an actual crisis. They will be interested in assisting the leader to make sure all goes as smoothly as possible.
Lani ,
We are a business and existence of peoples lives. Our responsibility is to protect people at all cost. We need as a society to feel safe. When we as leaders can give this assurance for our ability to plan and prepare with a purpose will help us to endure all crisis as they come forward. Our plans are for the safety of our staff and students.
Dr. Gary Carlson
Jeannie,
Making yourself available and known to your staff and students is key to having the trust level when people need to talk with you. This accessibility for your staff to you will help in the time of crisis when it comes. The respect, trust and honesty has been earned my your ability to care and be available.
Dr. Gary Carlson
Alex,
All of these instances are definitely issues. Data is always a concern and redundancy is an answer is another sight with data protection. Just having the for thought to know what the issues could be will allow you to make a plan. Some plans never get used but having one makes the time they do come a way to reduce the impact.
Dr. Gary Carlson
Rachel,
Crisis always will have its affect on us. But a plan to reduce the catastrophe may save lives. Saving any level of lives or trauma to people is worth the time and effort.
Dr. Gary Carlson
I am in a professional school with a student body which has been effected by health and environmental disasters. In each case they have been in the category of "natural disaster" earth quakes, tornadoes, snow storms and floods. An example was the earthquake that hit central Virginia and our school. The first factors we consider is the safety, health an welfare of our students and staff. This is the focus of our plan of action.
As a result of this event, we developed a plan to handle this type of event and prevent it from becoming a crisis in the future.
Scheduled weekly and less formal daily check-ins with my key managers keeps me abreast of current situations. In addition, I am extremely active throughout my Campus in order to determine the pulse of the Campus, staff, and students. Listening is key. If and when a potential crisis looms or one occurs, my first step is to determine if I have had to react to a similar situation in the past and if there is already a plan in place.
Ideally, you would want to have a crisis handling mechanism in place. In the day-to-day running of a business entity you are, of course, observing and evaluating function, outcomes and performance. Unforeseen events and factors will challenge this functioning. It is the management team's job and obligation to determine if any of these events rise to the level of crisis. A crisis situation or potential of a crisis would include the following types of situations:injury or risk of injury to a person's health or safety; inability to serve your customers; serious loss of data; serious financial loss; serious threat to morale; etc.
Most important is to gather information and determine if in fact you have a crisis, or potential of one, on hand. You need to determine the magnitude of the crisis. You then need to get a crisis management team in place, gather more information and develop a plan. Some actions may need to be carried out quickly and immediately; some will need to be planned out and executed over time.
I agree. Some crisis would be easier to plan for. There are some situations that no matter what the plan or level of communication that we will not be ready for but as long as we plan for the things we can we will be in a better place after the crisis and will be able to conduct a post crisis meeting to learn from the crisis and our actions during said crisis.
Mark,
When people are aware of the steps to take in certain crisis instances they are cognizant of the actions. Military have set plans of actions in crisis situations. All hands on deck in the Navy is a call for all servicemen to take their places in the action plan. The same is true when we have crisis plans for certain moments. We need to have practice sessions and meetings to revisit the plans. But it doesn't have to be a daily for weekly practice. Being prepared is the key.
Dr. Gary Carlson
As a leader, I think that it is critical to follow the plan of action. This is assuming that subordinates have had input to the plna of action. I have experienced "panic" from subordinates that mat cause "stray" for the plan of action. A simple case is making the decision to open or close a school for pending weather conditions. Staying on plan will best satisfy the most constituents...knowing that you cannot make all constituents happy. After the storm is the best time to meet with the "storm" decision team to make process adjustments. Who has had a similar experience?
David,
Security and safety is definitely the reason for crisis management.
Dr. Gary Carlson
