Crisis Management Starts Before the Crisis

The thought

When a crisis arrives, attention naturally goes to the response: who leads and coordinates, who decides, what is said and what is done first. But much of what determines the quality of that response has already been shaped. When pressure rises, people draw on the clarity, trust and working relationships already in place.

Crisis management, in that sense, starts well before the crisis: prepare, practise, respond, recover — and learn.

Why it matters

A response plan is necessary, but it is not the same as readiness. A crisis can arise within an organisation or from events beyond it — and its effects rarely stay within one area. Plans describe what should happen. Readiness is the ability of people to lead and coordinate, make sound judgements quickly with incomplete information, and communicate with stakeholders who each see the situation differently.

Governance matters here too. When responsibilities and decision rights are unclear before an event, they are usually argued about during it. Time spent clarifying who decides what, and who needs to be informed, is time recovered when events move quickly.

From experience

Whether the trigger is operational, financial, legal, related to people or industrial relations, or comes from wider economic, social, environmental or supply-chain events, the difference between a contained event and an escalating one often lies in the first hours. Did the right people know quickly? Did leadership and coordination work together? Did messages to employees, communities and authorities align? Were leaders able to decide without waiting for permission that no one had defined? Trust and reputation can be affected across every one of these situations.

Exercises and scenario discussions frequently reveal gaps that documents do not: an assumption that someone else will call the regulator, a missing contact, two teams preparing different statements. Identifying these gaps during an exercise is far less costly than discovering them during a real crisis.

Building on the thought

Prepare by identifying the scenarios that matter most, the stakeholders involved and the decisions likely to be needed. Practise through realistic exercises that include communication, not only operations. Respond with clear roles and consistent messages. Recover deliberately by supporting people, restoring operations and rebuilding trust, rather than simply returning to normal.

Then learn. Each event, and each exercise, contains information about how the organisation actually behaves under pressure. Capturing that learning and acting on it is how readiness strengthens over time.

For a short exercise, choose one plausible disruption and introduce information in stages. Ask who would need to know, who would decide and what could responsibly be communicated at each point. Include someone who can represent the workforce or another affected stakeholder's perspective. Notice where people wait, make different assumptions or rely on a contact who is unavailable. Close the exercise by assigning the gaps to named owners and agreeing when to revisit them. The purpose of the exercise is to learn about the organisation's readiness while there is still time to strengthen it.

A crisis tests what is already there. Preparation decides what that will be.