"Like many companies over the last few years, yours has probably
done a great deal to reassess its physical, strategic, and
financial vulnerabilities. But there is a huge difference between
business continuity planning and true crisis management. Do your
company and employees have the necessary ""IQ"" not only to
withstand a crisis but also to come through it with strength and
confidence?
Ian Mitroff, recognized around the world as an authority in
crisis management, has created a plan that goes well beyond
""disaster preparedness"" to help your company get accustomed to
working in the face of some unsettling facts:
* In an age of terror, cyberattacks, large-scale corporate fraud
and more, crisis is no longer a question of if, but of when.
* Your company, no matter its size, industry, or location, is
not immune from this reality.
* Your contingency planning will only be as effective as the
human beings charged with putting it into action.
Mitroff outlines seven distinct competencies your organization
needs to handle crises effectively:
* Right Heart (emotional IQ): By accepting crisis as an
inevitability, you can process much of the shock and grief
beforehand, and avoid making the effects of the crisis even worse
through an unconstructive response.
* Right Thinking (creative IQ): ""Crises don't give a damn for
the ways in which we have organized the world,"" so out-of-the-box
thinking is essential.
* Right Social and Political IQ: Understand that your business
is subject not only to the particular pitfalls of its industry, but
also to the universal and complex challenges that threaten all
companies.
* Right Integration (integrative IQ): Realize that crises are
perceived differently by different stakeholders, and are never
simple ""exercises"" that can be ""solved."" Identify and reconcile
these perceptions now so that the path is clear when the crisis
strikes.
* Right Technical IQ: ""Think like a controlled paranoid"" to
uncover ways in which malicious forces could cause a crisis in your
company. Question every assumption about what is ""normal,""
""impossible,"" or ""absurd.""
* Right Aesthetic IQ: Reconsider the classic design of the
corporation, which is meant to address problems as they arise, and
move toward one in which crisis management is an overarching
discipline on a par with, for example, finance.
* Spiritual IQ: Reject the notion that people's physical,
mental, and spiritual beings are completely separate; recognize
that crises cause us to question the very meaning of our lives and
what we do, and establish ahead of time why our work is, and must
remain, important to us on many different levels.
Although crisis management has taken on new urgency in recent
turbulent times, the need for careful planning did not originate on
September 11, 2001. Mitroff's examples, drawn from interviews
conducted both after the 2001 attacks and during his 25-year career
as an expert in crisis management, demonstrate the need for action
-- and offer a blueprint for taking it."
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