Organizations are responsible for creating an environment in which effective crisis leadership can operate. Poorly structured and disorganized groups will struggle to successfully manage a crisis, even with highly competent and experienced crisis managers in place. The following organizational principles support effective crisis leadership.
§ Clear responsibilities.: The company should establish clear responsibilities within the crisis management organization to avoid duplication of effort, or gaps and shortfalls within crisis leadership responses. Clear responsibilities can also remove some of the internal company politics when a crisis occurs.
§ Training and education.: Companies should set aside time and resources to ensure that key crisis leaders are educated and trained in how to best manage a crisis event, and how to best utilize the policies, systems, tools, and protocols within the BCM Plan.
§ Practice and rehearsals.: Crisis management groups should practice crisis responses, whether this is a practical exercise or table top discussion. Practice and rehearsal creates familiarity with the BCM Plan, develops confidence in the plan as well as with the crisis management team, and identifies any shortfalls or friction points.
§ Empowering leadership.: Crisis leaders should be empowered to take decisive action within sensibly established parameters. Training and practice will create corporate confidence in empowering crisis teams and thus allow some elements of control to be decentralized, enabling more effective management to brought to a crisis situation at the local level. Crisis managers without the ability to make decisions or take action will be significantly undermined in their ability to successfully manage a crisis.
o Delegation. As part of the empowering approach, management should seek to delegate (sensibly) to the lowest levels crisis decision making abilities so that a structured and streamlined management system is emplace, rather than a centralized, unwieldy, and ponderous crisis management structure. This forms a core component to empowering leadership.
o Authority lines. Clear authority lines, permissions, and authorities should be in place to enable swift and sanctioned decisions within the crisis management organization. Managers should know who to ask for permission, rather than try to attempt to identify decision makers during a crisis event.
§ Established systems and supporting mechanisms.: Companies should create effective systems and supporting mechanisms prior to a crisis occurring which will assist crisis leaders in logically guiding their decisions and supporting them in being efficient and effective in responding to an emergency. It will also ensure some degree of consistency in the response and provide confidence to managers that certain actions are automatically ongoing, and that defined information is being gathered and transmitted to predefined groups.
§ Innovation and flexibility.: Companies should understand that while crisis management systems and policies support crisis leadership, each crisis event will be unique and will require a tailored approach to achieving resolution. Innovation and flexibility are the cornerstones of effective crisis leadership—using established policies, plans, and protocols as tools, rather than crutches.
§ Leveraging.: Companies should always look both inward and outward to resources, knowledge, and capabilities which can be used to support effective crisis resolution. Those companies which do not leverage external resources will invariably miss opportunities to augment the effectiveness of their response.
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