ACTIVATION
Last week here at Spearfish Security, we held an online Crisis Management (CM) seminar with myself and members of the board John Smith and Grant White. We each gave an in-depth insight into our views on challenges of running virtual CM teams, centred around the Activation, Response, and Lessons Learned from a Crisis. For our blog, we will publish each presentation, starting with my Activation session below, with Response and Lessons Learned in the following weeks.
Partnerships and Local Collaboration
Partnerships and local collaboration trends make the likelihood of a virtual team much greater, comprising of different businesses who've never managed a crisis together.
The international delivery models that we're used to are phasing out and possibly becoming obsolete. Over the last six months, clients have required a much greater emphasis on using their in-country assets or partners.
The local delivery model is advantageous not only due to feasibility but also cost and in some cases, it may be the only option for delivery (quarantine requirements, travel restrictions etc.) This model may involve:
Long term embedded consultants working with a local team
Partnerships with a local business
Division or agreement of Duty of Care needs to be discussed carefully as part of this model when putting your arrangements together. It has obvious implications for your crisis team, depending on who you are looking after.
In light of the recent budget aid cut announcement from the Chancellor, the days of flying international consultants in for short term visits ('FIFO') for quality assurance are most likely gone for now. It would be best if you used tried and tested local assets as never before. As such, there will be a shrinking of overhead costs for risk and crisis management, where businesses may reduce in-house resources either in headcount or operational budgets. However, if you can allocate assets and personnel as programme costs, it will allow the same resources to mobilise, but under a different budgeting mechanism.
What these factors will result in, is a magnification of common problems of crisis management – what I mean by that is it is one thing to structure and train a team within your organisation, but quite another to start to join different members from different organisations who might not know each other, not understanding what is expected by them, or have the requisite skills or experience to be part of the CM team.
VIRTUAL TEAM
The challenge organisations have with crisis management, is breaking out from your day-to-day decision-making structures and processes, and then implementing faster and leaner ways of working on getting something done quickly. That, to me, is crisis management. You may deploy a different set of responses to what you are used to, but it is a streamlined, dynamic way of getting things done. Doing it virtually is no different.
Lots of business are structured very differently in how they communicate and make decisions, and it is essential that whatever you choose for your company is the right fit.
CHALLENGES TO ACTIVATION
When to activate? What is a crisis, and how do we know when to trigger? Quite often, the initial phases are buried deep down at the country level and can slow burn for a while before anyone has grasped what the implications might be. If a local partner doesn't understand the broader impact, they might not know to give you a call. They might not know such a thing exists as the CM team and just haven't been briefed on the right thing to do, not out of willfulness, just a lack of understanding. If you can clearly articulate your CM resources on offer, when to be used, and how they are activated, you have a fighting chance of getting ahead of this.
Who does what? Don't try to explain the structure in the middle of a situation. You can adjust, co-opt, change and adapt by all means, but you must have the basis of a chair, ops, HR, legal and comms as a minimum. You need a leadership structure, and very often, a more direct style of management in the early stages of a crisis. How often have you seen the managing director get heavily involved in the micro-management of an incident, when they should be sitting back, looking at the broader picture and letting their team get on with the day-to-day activities. I can tell you; they will only let go of the reins if they think you have it under control.
Pitfalls in Delivery
Structures and Rhythms - How you run your team depends entirely on you, your experience and what works for the group of people you are managing. What is important is that you set out how you want to run things, and sporadic or rushed timetables confuses people and put teams under extra pressure where there is already likely to be some. Leading on from that, the flow of information from the team into the broader set of stakeholders needs to be managed, sometimes restricted, sometimes not, but always planned. People can get very nervous when they think they ought to be being told something but aren't, so set the agenda and pace.
Platform Accessibility - This can be a simple as having the right phone numbers and emails for the different team members. It's incredible how many times I have been searching through old emails to work out who is who, and what numbers they are on, generally in the activation phase when you are putting yourself and the team under more pressure. Again, plan early and get it cracked at the start of the trip. Larger organisations always struggle with personal data, and complications such as data handling laws can make things complicated. Don't forget to anticipate a lack of comms infrastructure, e.g. inadequate internet/phone coverage in your operational areas. You all know what to do, but you can't talk to each other.
Role Assignment - Finding out who is good at doing what, and playing to the team's strengths is very difficult when you don't know each other or haven't practised working together. As I said previously, you are trying to create a plan which enables good decision-making and then carry out that decision. You aren't trying to write the world's most extended set of checklists for posterity. You can only create an effective plan by working and practising together. You can judge the strengths and weaknesses for yourself in this fashion and then adjust accordingly.
Testing, Testing, Testing - Similarly, regular testing and exercising is always a challenge, and in a multi-team environment, only by testing can you become match fit. Even if you don't know who you might have on your team next month, if you have a way to induct and link them into your crisis structure rapidly and effectively, you have a fighting chance in this virtual environment.
That completes the first session; we will be publishing the second next week. If you would like to learn more about what type of Crisis Management training and support we can offer your team in person or online please contact us now.