At some point, nearly every organization will experience a crisis. For many, unfortunately, their crisis planning strategy is denial: “that will never happen to our company.” Except that it probably will. Sooner than you think. When all hell breaks loose, consider these “truths” of a crisis as you wade in to manage your organization’s reputation,…
There are many skills and personal traits that leaders should have in everyday business. During a crisis, a leader needs to have a range of specific traits that are crucial to the management of the incident. Here are three of those traits based on my personal experience from both the military and corporate environments: 1…
In those first few moments of a fast-paced incident, it is essential that the Crisis Management Team (CMT) comes together quickly in an organized and disciplined manner. It is in these early stages of the incident when discipline is incredibly important. If discipline is lacking in the early stages of an incident, the management of…
So, what is situational awareness? There are many definitions all of which explain what situational awareness is in a similar way. The term we use is as follows: Situational Awareness is “closely monitoring what is going on around you in a complex and dynamic environment”. Closely monitoring what’s going on around you will help you…
Communicating during crises is important, especially in today’s world of fast-paced social media and mobile communications. Knowing what to say, and how to say it, is probably something that many organizations don’t practice enough. In this episode, we interview Erik Bernstein of Bernstein Crisis Management. During the podcast, we discuss several areas of corporate crisis…
When you establish your crisis management capability, conduct crisis management exercises, or actually go through crises, what are the most common issues or gaps that are uncovered? Within this article, I define a few of the more common issues that we see when conducting simulation exercises within the corporate space as well as reviewing reports…
In this episode, we interview Dan Gortze who is security expert and keynote speaker. We discuss the following: Cyber-security challenges Cyber threat actors Insider threats and the Common cyber-security gaps base on real events The importance of incident management simulation exercises Including critical vendors in cyber-attack preparedness planning Dan Gortze on LinkedIn
Communities are not just made up of homes and apartments. Many communities have businesses that provide jobs and other services to those communities. Major cities have businesses that are heavily integrated into their communities and so do some smaller cities and even towns. It’s imperative that businesses understand their communities and it is equally important…
As the fall out is being assessed from this year’s major wildland fires on the U.S. west coast and in the Canadian context, the most costly disaster in Canadian history “the Fort McMurray Fire” risk assessors and public policy analysts are re-considering our planning and preparedness models. Wildfire incidents in North America are increasing in…
Being able to prepare for, manage and recover from a crisis, is becoming a necessity for every organizations. As an incident starts to unfold, crisis team members need to act quickly to ensure they are in a position to manage the event in a cohesive manner. The pace and intensity of a crisis can be…