5 Steps to Survive any kind of Crisis

Humans are designed to survive whatever they hit and the threats are countless. It could be natural, technological or business competition related. in this post we’ll try to define the different types of crisis and how to anticipate, secure and prepare to avoid it.

What is a crisis?

Before the year 1800, the term “Crisis” was not in the common knowledge, it became more popular during the time “Greek” was ruling the world. They used it to define a period of time when a difficult or important decision must be made during a complex or dangerous particular event take place.

What are the 5 elements should be in a crisis management health kit?

If you're running or responsible of any kind of business you should be looking into the big picture before preparing a rescue plan. Imagine your business as a Lego house, you've built it with your hand. So, you should know where are the weakness points in the structure that if hit, will affect your whole house. It takes time and specific skills to have the vision of the big picture and it take along time of work to know and anticipate the critical weakness points in your business. What should you do first?

1- Build your own crisis management team

choose some people who have a wide point of view and also have the right skills to predict any kind of crisis that includes (natural, business, workplace, man-made related crisis) meet with your communication team and brainstorm, what's the worst could happen and what damage you should expect. Your communication team is the cornerstone that all your business should lean on, chose them wisely. This team should include people in C-level management, CEO to lead the team and a public relations key-person also someone from the legal division. Every business should customize its own communication team depending on the business need. 

2- Determine the right spokespersons

Every business is exposed to media some how. We are all under the radar. So you should choose the right person who would clearly explain what your business is really going through, with achieving the maximum benefits from the situation. Your spokespersons should be highly trained and has a good history of dealing with various kinds of media exposure.

So, yes! Basically, you should train your spokespersons even if he has the skill but also to feed him the business goals in that situations. 

3- Keep yourself updated

The communication team should have the knowledge for the surrounding events, without that, you will definitely fail to manage or anticipate any crisis. So, you have to establish a new system to monitor and send notifications. Knowing what being said about your business on social media, the offline media or by surveys made to your employees, customers and other stakeholders. This awareness will always allow you to have a wider view and catch the small things that could be turned into a crisis at the future.

4- Evaluate the current situation

In the middle of any crisis, ordinary people will act in a messy and unorganized way. However, we are all ordinary on some scales.

We should learn to act differently through the crisis, for these particular reasons we've planed the steps above in order to confront real time problems. It would be simple to collect the information, brainstorm ideas with the communication team and you will establish your rescue plan in no time.

5- After the battle 

You've prepared your communication team, set the rescue plan, you should be over the crisis by now. It’s time to analyze, always ask “What did we learn from this? How could we do better?” Gather data about the situation, analyze the right decision and the wrong one to avoid it next time and always remember anything could happen to anyone. So, keep yourself always prepared.

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