Crisis on Andrew Sheves

The Cost of Crisis

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

It’s always tough to answer the question, ‘How much damage does a reputational crisis cause?‘ Unlike a business interruption or accident, the cost of reputational crises is much harder to determine.

Unfortunately, whether you’re in the early stages of a crisis or trying to get a leadership team to find a preparedness program, ‘How much could this cost?’ is the kind of thing crisis managers get asked all the time.

“This will never work. Here’s Why CrisisDojo Will Fail”*

Thu, 04 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

*Is what people tell me, but here’s why they’re wrong

“This will never work.” “People won’t trust something so important to an automated process.” “You can’t develop high-quality, professional materials like this without extensive consultation.” “It can’t be done.”

These are the things you hear when you make something that’s only been available via expensive professional consultation into an on-demand service.

Except these comments aren’t just about CrisisDojo.

This is also what the founders of a small start-up heard back in 2001 when they launched their online legal services firm.

A Simple Crisis Management Plan Framework

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I want to share a simple framework for crisis response.

But, if you’re a crisis management professional or corporate communicator, you need to take a deep breath before you read this.

You’ll want to tell me that you can’t simplify crisis response.
You’ll want to tell me, ‘It’s not exactly like the standard’.
You’ll want to tell me that this won’t work for your big clients.

I understand these concerns, so there’s no need to email me and tell me why I’m wrong.

How To Run a Great Crisis Exercise

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A great exercise presents participants with a near-real environment that will apply stress to them, their plans, and their processes. Like a good gym session, they’ll finish tired, and a few things might be sore, but they’ll be better, stronger, and faster not long afterward.

However, it’s just as easy to put together a training session that leaves everyone hurt, confused, anxious, and feeling less prepared.

So how can we deliver a great exercise? One that will make a team much more crisis ready by the end?

Planning a Great Crisis Exercise

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Exercises are an essential part of skills development and, for things like emergencies and crises, the only way to build these skills outside of an actual event, events that are thankfully few and far between. But creating a successful exercise takes a lot of work and planning – you can’t just throw some problems at a group of people and hope they’ll learn from the experience.

So how do you plan a great crisis exercise?

How Often Should Your crisis Management Team Train?

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, there was a great discussion on the frequency of crisis management exercises in a forum I’m part of. What was most surprising to me was the degree of consensus on the ideal tempo.

The vast majority of folks recommended a quarterly & annual frequency.

– Quarterly low-intensity tabletops focused on skills development and team cohesion.

– Annual high-intensity simulations to reinforce learning and test teams and systems in a realistic environment.

Crisis management exercise generation using AI

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

To be successful, the process would have to:

Be faster than if I did it ‘by hand’
Produce realistic inputs
Be easily repeatable
Allow for customization to meet client needs

The outputs had to include:

Ideas for scenarios
A short video news report
Social media clips
Text for a news story

This left me with five challenges to solve:

Get ChatGPT into my workspace.
Generate scenario ideas.
Generate supporting text material.
Generate a video news clip input.
Generate social media inputs.

Here’s how the AI Crisis Management Exercise Build Hackathon* went down. (*Attendee one)

This time it isn’t different

Mon, 17 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Two major events are going to happen in US within the five years. One is a replay of the US subprime mortgage collapse which spawned the 2008 financial crisis. The other will occur when the bubble of college debt bursts. Both events – one of which may well trigger the other – will cause massive strain on US banks with potential global repercussions.

This isn’t a bold claim. There are lots of people, all of whom much more familiar with this kind of risk than I am, sounding similar alarm bells. For example, the day after I started writing this, the Financial Times’ editorial was on a similar topic. And there may be other significant events that occur in addition to these but making forecasts about what’s going to happen isn’t the point of this article.

If it looks like a duck (or a snake)….

Sun, 29 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

“The first rule of snakes [problems] is, if you see a snake, you kill it….Just take care of it” Jim Barksdale, former CEO Netscape

It’s rare for an event to be truly unexpected.

We know that our personal habits affect our health. We know that incorrect use of tools and machinery can cause injury. We know that small-scale corner-cutting leads to more serious infringements. We know that running complex systems – like drilling rigs or nuclear power stations – beyond established safe parameters can be catastrophic.

10 Tips For Crisis Management

Thu, 17 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I have been thinking about effective crisis management a lot recently and am working on a more in-depth piece on managing a crisis which I hope to publish soon. However, crises don’t wait until we are properly prepared before they strike so I put together this quick set of suggestions as a stop-gap.

Normally, I wouldn’t make a top-10 list but sometimes it’s the easiest way to share ideas. So here goes and I hope you find these suggestions useful.

Meet the expert – A conversation with Andy Cuerel

Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I have known Andy Cuerelfor a number of years and have always appreciated his in-depth yet practical approach to business continuity management. So when it was time to have someone provide a high-level overview of BCM for Riskademy, Andy was an obvious choice.

I hope our conversation helps clarify the relationship, and differences, between crisis management and business continuity management and gives you a good overview of BCM. (If you missed the last few posts, you can read more about crisis management here.)

WDYMB…Crisis?

Thu, 01 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When things go wrong

Despite the best efforts of the risk manager and senior leadership, it’s still possible that things can go wrong for your organization. Processes aren’t followed or are applied incorrectly, mitigation measures turn out to be inadequate, something unforeseen happens or, as is so often the case, someone does something they shouldn’t. At one end of the spectrum are relatively common slips, trips or falls, minor fires, or the accidental deletion of data. More significant are the payment of bribes, cutting corners on regulations or a crass, offensive comment from an executive. At the extreme end of the spectrum are crisis events, situations that can strike a fatal blow to the organization: a chemical spill causing mass casualties, widespread fraud or a toxic culture of racism, sexism or other discrimination.

Meet the expert – Crisis Communications with Price Floyd

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Meet the expert – Crisis Communications with Price Floyd

We are kicking off our ‘meet the expert’ series with an interview with Price Floyd, the founder of the Engaging America Projectand an expert in risk and crisis communications. Price has over 25 years of experience in government and the private sector and here he shares over a dozen key lessons he has learned including:

The difference between communications in government and the private sector
How digital media has improved crisis communications
Why it’s too late to call the communications team when things start going wrong
The number one skill for communicators
Why it’s important to tend the garden (and what this means)

Watch the video to hear these and many more key lessons that you can put into action today.