Sooner or later, any organization faces a crisis. It can be caused by management errors or external factors beyond the staff’s control. In this article, we’ll list crisis management suggestions that will help you cope with the hard times, retaining your reputation and revenue.
5 Most Common Types of Crisis
Your company can find itself in a difficult situation because of:
- Business issues: strike, lawsuit, lack of demand for your products or services.
- Natural disasters: fire, flood, earthquake.
- Technical problems: stolen source code, data leak, a ransomware attack.
- Health hazards: public health emergencies, hazardous material spills, workplace injuries.
- Crimes: shooting, looting, robbery.
The right crisis management technique will depend on the type of problem.
Set Clear Objectives
Your strategy to help manage a crisis should start with understanding your company’s goals as well as its strong and weak sides. Create a set of documents that will outline your:
- Mission;
- Core values;
- Competitive edges;
- Areas for improvement;
- Long-term KPIs;
- List of products and services that you already have and are planning to launch in the future.
When a crisis begins, you’ll need to deal with it so that your business doesn’t steer too far away from its strategic goals.
Anticipate and Establish Preventive Measures
Now that you realize your goals well, you can predict which potential challenges you might face when pursuing them. Сreate a plan for handling the crisis, keeping your objectives in mind.
Imagine that energy costs might skyrocket in the territory where your factory is situated. You’ll have to move your facilities to a different place. When selecting an alternative location, think of your development plans. Are you planning to expand abroad? Pick a location that will ensure the optimal logistics for your new markets.
Come up proactively with at least one response to each issue that you can think of. Consider the best-case and worst-case scenarios. Thanks to such an approach, you won’t need to spend time researching how to manage during a crisis. Instead, you’ll be able to start solving it as soon as it gets shaped.
Build a Committed Team
This is extremely important hiring and management advice. All your team members will take part in:
- Forecasting crises that might affect your business;
- Analyzing the impact of turbulent times on your activities;
- Finding ways of overcoming them and working hard in this direction.
Before appointing the team’s CEO, consult your PR department. They should be able to suggest the optimal candidate to you.
While trying to overcome the crisis, the dedicated team should focus exclusively on this task. Don’t ask them to take part in other events and activities.
Ideally, the team should include a professional who specializes in anti-crisis management. They will teach and train other staff members. Every week, this person will assess the efficiency of the team’s efforts and compose reports.
During the intense work process, it’s vital to reward all the members for their respective contributions, even if they are minor. If someone has proved to be particularly efficient, consider promoting them to a higher position. Pay extra cash to others either as a one-off measure or monthly, during the crisis period.
Encourage all employees to provide feedback to supervisors. It will make them realize their importance for the company and will boost their loyalty.
Assign Tasks Appropriately
Now you know the crisis management strategies that should be applied before the problem manifests itself. It's time to find out what to do after the trouble was detected.
Assign tasks only to those team members who can cope well with them. Never forget about ethics. Regularly report your actions and achievements to stakeholders. When asking for extra financial support, back up your requests with detailed calculations and explanations on how this money will be spent.
Ensure Consistent Communication
Сrisis management for team leaders can be efficient only if they stay in touch with all the other parties involved: staff, clients, shareholders, advisors and the general public.
C-suite executives appoint the spokesperson in charge of communications with the outside world. No other employee should openly comment on the situation. If the media want to ask questions to the company’s owner or management, they should do so with the help of the spokesperson.
When talking about their issues, the business representatives should stay transparent, positive-minded and honest. It’s vital to update the employees about all the improvements to prevent an uproar.
Final Thoughts
Set clear objectives. Anticipate and establish preventive measures. Build a committed team. Assign tasks appropriately. Ensure consistent communication. These crisis management strategies used by top managers should enable you to put an end to tough times quickly and with minimum losses.
