Crisis Leadership: Guiding Organisations Through Turbulent Times

What are the Four Core Areas of Crisis Management?

Business leaders must take immediate and definite action when faced with a crisis. Hesitation can be the difference between successfully navigating the problem and sinking without a trace. In general, you should consider four areas to focus your efforts.

Communication Strategies

Effective and efficient communication is vital to minimising the impact of any crisis on your business. A well-coordinated communication strategy ensures that everyone involved (employees, stakeholders, customers, and partners) is on the same page and understands the steps to address the situation. 

During a crisis, emotions can run high, and clear, concise, and timely communication becomes even more critical to manage anxiety and restore confidence. By keeping all relevant parties informed about the situation from start to finish, you demonstrate confident leadership and safeguard your brand’s reputation to prevent any negative implications on its future. 

Financial Management

As the Covid pandemic proved without doubt, businesses are vulnerable to crises. When there’s a sudden change in the trading landscape, companies face various financial challenges. Typically, these include decreasing cash flow, increasing expenses, inability to pay suppliers, postponing investments, or even putting operations on hold. 

In such situations, robust financial management is crucial. This may include strategies like increasing liquidity, prioritising expenses, restructuring debt, seeking alternative sources of capital, and implementing cost-cutting measures. 

Leadership Skills

Want to test your leadership skills? Navigate a crisis! It is during difficult times that true leaders emerge. Effective crisis leadership requires a combination of decisiveness, empathy, communication, and adaptability. Your team will look to you for guidance, so staying calm, composed, and confident in your decision-making is crucial.

A good leader must inspire trust and demonstrate transparency while being empathetic towards the concerns and needs of their team. You must also be ready to pivot and adapt your strategies as the situation evolves. Remember, it’s not just about steering the ship through rough waters. It’s also about keeping morale high and leading by example.

Operational Resilience

Operational resilience is all about ensuring that your business can continue its operations during a crisis and bounce back quickly once it’s over. Depending on the nature of your business, this could mean having a remote working plan in place, implementing backup systems and processes, or building supply chain redundancies.

Operational resilience involves understanding the critical components of your business and ensuring that they can withstand any potential disruption. This means evaluating your supply chain, developing backup plans for key personnel, and regularly testing your crisis response plan. Doing so can minimise the impact of a crisis and keep your business running smoothly.

How to Develop a Crisis Communications Plan

Regardless of the crisis, how a company communicates during such times can shape public perception. A crisis communication plan, therefore, is crucial for any business and can make or break a company’s reputation. Let’s consider the main steps of building one.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

In the face of a crisis, the first thing you need to do is define your goals. Why? Because without clear objectives, it’s impossible to know what you’re working towards. Defining your goals will help you identify the key messages you need to convey, the audience you need to reach, and the tactics you’ll use to communicate with them. 

So, where do you start? Begin by asking yourself what you want to achieve. Do you want to protect your brand reputation? Minimise the impact of negative publicity? Communicate essential updates to your stakeholders? Whatever your goals may be, they should be SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. 

Step 2: Identify Your Stakeholders

Your stakeholders are anyone who has a vested interest in your business. This could include employees, customers, suppliers, investors, media outlets, and the community at large. Each group will require different messaging and communication channels during a crisis.
As part of your crisis communications plan, it’s essential to identify your stakeholders and determine how you’ll communicate with each group. For example, you may use email and social media to reach your customers, while holding virtual town halls or sending memos might be more effective for internal communications with employees.

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Step 3: Build a Crisis Management Team

A crisis management team is a group responsible for managing and coordinating your company’s response during a crisis. The team typically includes key people from your leadership team and different departments, such as HR, marketing, legal, and operations.
The key to building an effective crisis management team is to ensure that each member has clear roles and responsibilities outlined in advance. This will help streamline decision-making processes and ensure effective communication within the team during a crisis.

Step 4: Develop Scenario-Specific Strategies

Not all crises are created equal. By developing tailored approaches for specific situations, you can ensure your response is timely, effective and targeted. From natural disasters to cybersecurity breaches, a crisis can take many forms. That’s why it’s important to brainstorm possible scenarios and address them in advance. By thinking through each possible situation, you can ensure your company is prepared and confident in its ability to handle whatever comes its way. 

Step 5: Create Fact Sheets and Pre-Drafted Communications

When a crisis hits, time is of the essence. That’s why it’s crucial to have fact sheets and pre-drafted communications ready to go in advance. This includes key messages, statements, and responses to potential stakeholder questions.
Preparing these materials will save you time and ensure consistency in your messaging during a crisis. It also allows quick distribution via social media, press releases, or other communication channels.

Step 6: Establish Communication Channels

Effective communication is critical during a crisis, but you must also consider how and where you will communicate. This includes both internal and external channels.
Establish a central hub or platform for internal communications where employees can access the latest updates and information. For external communications, consider which channels will be most effective for reaching your stakeholders.

Step 7: Monitor and Evaluate Your Methods

Like any plan, a crisis communications plan should be reviewed and updated regularly. This includes monitoring the effectiveness of your methods and making adjustments as needed.
Tracking key metrics such as response rates, engagement levels, and media coverage can help determine if your messaging resonates with stakeholders. If not, you may need to pivot or adjust your approach. Regular evaluation allows you to fine-tune your crisis communications plan and ensure it remains effective in any potential crisis.

Conclusion

Developing a crisis communications plan is not a one-off task. It requires ongoing attention, review, and refinement. By following these steps and investing time in preparing for potential crises, you can help protect your business’s reputation and mitigate the impact of any disruptions. Remember, failing to plan is planning to fail - so don’t wait until a crisis hits to develop your plan. 

At Martin Veasey Talent Solutions, we have decades of experience helping companies achieve their objectives. Please call us on 00 44 (0)1905 381320 or contact us today to discuss your requirements.

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At Martin Veasey Talent Solutions, we have been working with blue-chip and SME businesses for over 35 years, both in the UK and around the world. 

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