When you have an incident that is building rapidly and don’t have a good handle on the situation, it is important to conduct disciplined briefing cycles. If your briefing cycles are disciplined, the management of the crisis will run smoother. The goal is to create order from what could be a chaotic situation. In this…
In any crisis, the first few minutes are the most important. That is why it is so important to have a process in place for activating your crisis team. This includes sending out emergency notifications and organizing communication among team members. Without an activation process, you risk wasting valuable time trying to get your team…
To ensure that your team is ready to respond in a crisis, you need an activation process. Some teams use emergency notifications like text or e-mail; others have systems like OnSolve’s advanced critical communication tool to activate members. No matter what process and technology you use, it is imperative that the team be activated in…
The number of cyber-attacks has been on the rise in recent years. In most cases, organizations fail during a breach because they were not prepared for it. Crisis management teams are often disorganized and lack clear direction, which leads to less than desirable responses and management of incidents. In this blog post, we will discuss…
Guest contributor: Jo Detavernier, SCMP, APR – Owner of Detavernier Strategic Communication When crisis communications teams work perfectly together, they will achieve great results. When such alignment takes on the form of “groupthink” however, the results will often be far less than optimal, and possibly even disastrous. Groupthink happens when in a group of people…
This is a common list of things we do throughout the tabletop exercise engagement. During this process we will: Assist in the refinement of exercise objectives in coordination with your organizations exercise coordinator Tailor the scenario to address stated exercise objectives Develop an overview of the scenario story line (a start, middle and…
Quickly Assembling and Organizing your Crisis Team is Critical to the Success of Your Response. A Crisis Coordinator is Essential! What is a Crisis Coordinator? Each member of a crisis team has a functional role – e.g. Corporate Security, Human Resources, Corporate Communications, etc. The Crisis Coordinator plays an organizing and facilitating role for…
Rob Burton recently wrote an article on LinkedIn, “10 Key Elements to Good Crisis Leaders“. Within the article, Rob outlines what these ten key elements are: Honesty & Integrity Confidence Inspiration Commitment and Passion Good Communication Decision-Making Accountability Delegation and Empowerment Creativity and Innovation Empathy Related: The Role of the Crisis Leader Versus the Crisis Communicator…
Lone-actor gun attacks against populated areas such as arenas and crowded places such as schools can challenge first responders and those organizations or educational institutions that are impacted. Now think about increasing the number of attackers and adding explosive devices, more weapons and other arms. Consider a Paris or Brussels style attack in the heart…
Simulated crisis tabletop exercises are like a flu shot: The vaccine won’t prevent the illness one-hundred percent of the time, but if you do get the flu, the vaccine will greatly reduce the illness’ severity and bring you back to health more quickly. The potential illness in your organization is, of course, a crisis….