The Noggin Blog

We’ve said it time and again, but comprehensive, crisis management planning, while essential, is only the first step towards crisis preparedness. No matter how brilliant, dynamic, or intuitive your crisis plan is, when the time comes to execute, staff still needs to be comfortable performing assigned tasks. And that entails, regular training in crisis-like conditions. How, then, to create those conditions?

Over the last few years, companies have taken major steps to get their crisis preparedness house(s) in order. For instance, the 2016 Institute of Crisis Management (ICM) Annual Crisis Report found that only half of all global organizations had crisis management plans in place. Fast forward to this year, when Deloitte released the findings of its global survey of 500 crisis management executives. That study, “Stronger, fitter, better: Crisis management for the resilient enterprise,” showed that no less than 84 percent of companies had crisis management plans in place. Not the same sample set, to be sure, but still a major jump in crisis management preparedness. But though companies seem to have cottoned on completely to the crisis threat, they’re not out of the woods quite yet. That’s because the reality of crisis is completely different than the ersatz version you’ll find in crisis plans and simulations.

When compliance aims drive your crisis planning, they do so to your detriment. I know, sounds a little counter-intuitive, especially when regulators mandate that businesses prepare emergency plans for the workplace.

It’s December, and the new year approaches. But before we usher in 2019, let’s take a look back on the year in corporate crisis.

The crisis threat is here – most likely to stay. According to the ODM Group, nearly 80% of business leaders think their companies are only a year away from crisis. They’ve good reason to: roughly four in five Crisis Management, Business Continuity, and Risk executives have had to mobilize their teams at least once in the past two years.

These aren’t the old days. Business leaders have finally gotten serious about managing topline risk at their companies. Just in time, too. Risk storm clouds have been gathering for a while now.

For retailers, the holiday season means big bucks. Last year's, the most robust in a decade, saw sales top $690 billion in the U.S. alone. Add in European sales, and that figure jumps up to one trillion dollars.

AIIMS is the Australasian Inter-service Incident Management System. The nationally recognized incident management structure in Australia, AIIMS has wide command, control, and coordination applicability in fire, land management, and other emergency situations, as well as for non-emergency incidents.

How prepared are organizations to tackle critical issues and major crises? That’s the question we at Noggin alongside our partner Deloitte posed to invited customers in an inaugural series of breakfast seminars exploring the theme of overconfidence and crisis preparedness.

California is ablaze. Northern California’s Camp Fire has already become the deadliest in the state’s history. The Woolsey fire, rampaging through heavily-populated Los Angeles and Ventura counties, is comparable in size to the city of Denver. For crisis leaders, it’s past time to dust of those corporate crisis plans and get serious about severe weather preparedness.