According to the Institute for Crisis Management, the number of “newsworthy crises” has grown from just over 6,300 in 1996 to more than 10,500 in 2005. Increasing technological complexity and “tight coupling” of events and consequences make accidents more likely or “normal,” meaning inevitable and expected, in organizational life, and technological systems are becoming even more interdependent, vulnerable, and problematic in their intended and unintended consequences. Globalization is exacerbating these trends as distances shrink, people and goods move faster and farther, communication networks become more complex and indispensable, and technological advances spill over one from one domain into another almost effortlessly.Yet levels of crisis readiness among organizations remain low and poorly understood. A 2007 survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that while almost 50 percent of top executives’ organizations had experienced a crisis such as “a hurricane, an infrastructure collapse, a shift in regulatory mandates or armed conflict” in the prior three years, only a quarter of the surveyed executives expected a “major occurrence within the next three years.”
A free-to-download report from New York University entitled Predicting Organisational Crisis Readiness examines the special characteristics that appear to distinguish those organisations that are physically and "intellectually" equipped to successfully manage a crisis from those that are likely to suffer significant long-term impact. The report focuses on several areas of readiness, including:
- Monitoring trends in the external environment and risk mapping
- Proactively developing external relationships
- Scenario planning
- Building strong internal teams
- Authority sharing and flexible decision-making process
- Establishing and equipping a crisis management team
- Building in structural redundancy
- Providing strong day-to-day leadership
- Not letting risk aversion drive all decisions
- Conducting vulnerability assessments
- Institutionalising concerns of the community and other stakeholders
To download a copy of the full report, go to http://www.arc-tc.com/pages/resources_publications.asp#C and navigate to the heading Crisis Management. Then click on the second link under this heading.
Crisis management is covered in detail as a one-day workshop during Security Management Stage 1. Click here for details. To discuss your in-house crisis management training needs contact Phil Wood MBE.
