During an incident it is imperative that the CMT (Crisis Management Team) has good overall Situational Awareness throughout the whole event.
This will allow leaders to better understand the situation enabling them to make well informed and accurate decisions. Here are some questions that should be asked on a regular basis throughout the response to a crisis:
1. What has changed?
Distinguish between what is known, unclear and presumed about the changes that have taken place.
2. What is happening?
Identify variations in the character of events, their extent and their tempo or severity.
3. What is changing?
It can be helpful to look at the inverse of events and consider what might be expected but has not (yet) been observed.
4. So what?
This is the critical question. A diversity of perspectives and viewpoints will add value.
5. What might happen?
Look forward and visualize potential scenarios, using axes of time (short, medium and long term) and severity (best case to worst case).
This technique is taken from the Crisis Management Guidance and Good Practice standard BS 11200:2014