Strategic Crisis Leadership

When a critical incident or an unexpected disruptive event threatens your organization—including your people, reputation, assets, finances, et cetera—your executive team must respond effectively with a combination of caring, expertise, commitment, and communication.

 

While you must prepare tactically (i.e., emergency response, evacuation, notifications, communication, accommodating media), it is even more important to prepare strategically before a situation emerges.

 

Strategic decisions are at the heart of any crisis response. Make them well, and you can lead your organization swiftly toward successful crisis resolution and enhanced reputation. Make them poorly, and your organization can spiral into deeper entanglements and increase the damage.

 

Our strategic crisis leadership consultants focus on empirically-researched and field-tested methods that help organizations protect their reputations and core assets in the face of unexpected threats. Our world-renowned crisis thought leaders and senior level consultants have decades of experience you can count on to help you prepare for and respond to strategic crises of all kinds.

 

Ready for the worst

The last of the employees returned to work yesterday, making it the first time since the hurricane six weeks ago that the production plant had returned to business as usual. Make that, business as “the new normal,” thought Joe Davidson, VP of operations for ABC Manufacturing company, for complete recovery could still take months. Ever since the hurricane was forecasted to hit the coast, the company had been on high alert. And even though the plant was located inland, the threat from the storm was far-reaching.

 

As was feared, rain from the slow-moving hurricane dumped large amounts of water on the coast and inland. Even rivers and creeks located several hours west of the coast overflowed, damaging homes and businesses along the way. ABC Manufacturing’s production plant and the many employees who lived nearby weren’t spared. Many initially evacuated as flood waters rose, only to return days later to try to recover their belongings and begin the long process of cleanup.

 

But it wasn’t just the employees and their families who were affected as they dealt with assessing and fixing storm damage. Parts of the production plant also flooded; trucks had to wait a week before roads were clear enough to deliver supplies, and that had an impact on the entire area’s infrastructure. Every aspect of the business and of the employees’ lives was affected by this crisis.

 

Still, it could have been worse, Joe recalled. First, none of the employees were seriously injured during the storm and recovery efforts. Second, once it became clear the storm was not going to shift its direction away from the area, the executive team implemented the strategic crisis plan that had been developed the previous year.

 

Joe remembered when the CEO, Margaret Spence, first discussed the need for such a plan with her executive team. “We already have an emergency plan,” Joe had said at the time.

 

“Yes, and that’s critical, but it doesn’t cover everything that we need if we encounter a major crisis,” Margaret said. “We need to go beyond tactical and consider the bigger picture. Who is going to be affected, both upstream and downstream if we have a crisis? And how do we manage it so that our employees, customers, and other stakeholders are in the best position for moving forward after something happens? We need a plan,” she said.

 

That strategic planning helped ABC develop procedures that enabled the executive team to anticipate and respond to issues far more quickly and effectively than they would have otherwise been able to do.

 

Partnering with your current plan

Strategic crisis preparedness integrates your existing crisis controls into a comprehensive strategic crisis plan with a trained crisis leadership team and an exercise and maintenance program. Strategic crisis response is available 24/7 with rapid access to our most senior and experienced crisis consultants for incidents of any type.

 

Are you prepared?

When a crisis occurs, ramifications can be far reaching. Beyond the obvious aspects of a crisis, who and what else can be affected? How do you address the needs of various stakeholders and ensure everyone is appropriately informed as needed?

 

R3 Continuum helps you create a detailed crisis leadership strategy, tailored to your organization’s needs. We draw on our many years of experience, with the goal of ensuring you are in the best position before a crisis occurs so you can fully recover from it afterwards.

 

For three decades, R3’s strategic crisis leadership preparedness and response consultancy has helped executives and organizations worldwide protect reputation and other core assets when unexpectedly threatened. By turning crises into positive outcomes in the best manner possible, we help you effectively manage and recover from the unexpected.