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Monthly Archives: October 2015

Intelligence as a force multiplier in crisis management

29 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by Dimitris Agrafiotis in Crisis

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

crisis management, intelligence

information-theory

If there is something that gives confidence to professionals dealing with issues management or a crisis is knowledge of the situation and a continuous flow of reliable information. In the time of a crisis, knowledge and information are power as they enable all involved parties in an organization to make the best decisions in a short period of time. If someone thinks that a media monitoring tool is more than enough to deal with a crisis then big surprises are on the way.

The bigger an organization gets, the more important intelligence and information management becomes. Having examined different approaches on this issue, my suggestion is the integration of intelligence cycle management into the processes of an organization and more specifically into the crisis management plan. The intelligence cycle management refers to the overall activity of guiding the intelligence cycle, which is a set of processes used to provide decision-useful information (intelligence) to leaders. The cycle consists of several processes, including planning, collection, processing and exploitation, analysis and production, and dissemination and integration. Someone might say that this process of intelligence cycle management refers to political or military organizations but a lot of policies or manuals of political theory have been incorporated into the corporate practice, e.g. The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz’s On War and so on.

In order to avoid any misunderstandings, we are not talking about Business intelligence of Competitive Intelligence. My approach focuses on a centralized process of intelligence along the lines of an organization’s activity. The coordination of intelligence process, especially in the preparedness phase or pre-crisis phase, might prove invaluable when the crisis occurs. A few examples might be helpful. Every division or business unit makes a stakeholder mapping that is usually useful for its activity. A commercial division makes lists with key people in big commercial customers or industry associations, the Strategy or Regulatory team connects with official authorities, the Corporate Affairs and the Public Affairs teams connect with stakeholders in media, local authorities and so on but is there any centralized process to collect information, analyze it, disseminate it and act based on this information?

Let’s go a step further and imagine that an organization has a process which demands from all divisions their regular feedback on an issue that might evolve into a crisis based on credible sources of the market, their industry, the government, media etc. This organization would have, first, broad and deep knowledge of the external environment, second, strong alliance with stakeholders, third, the mechanism to influence key stakeholders when the crisis emerges and collect necessary information.

The most important thing is to have the right information at the right time analyzed in the best possible way. As Gertrude Stein has said: «Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense».

The basic elements in order have a successful intelligence management process are:  commitment of the management and the involved teams, a coordinator who is member of the crisis management team and leader of the intelligence process, establishment of the intelligence process and integration into the organization’s management processes.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and they do not reflect in any way those of his various affiliations.

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Do you really believe you can predict all crises?

15 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by Dimitris Agrafiotis in Cases, Crisis

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

crisis, crisis communications, crisis management, emergency management, lessons learned

Deepwater Horizon

A few days ago I read an interview of a well-known expert on crisis communications, who said that «All crises are predictable. If they are predictable, then they can be planned for» and I am afraid I have to disagree. To be honest, I tend to agree with the great Danish physicist and Nobel laureate,  Niels Bohr, who said “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future”.

The role of all the crisis management professionals and communications experts includes the horizon scanning identifying potential threats and issues which should be analyzed and then integrated into a crisis management plan. A thorough horizon scanning will definitely bring on the surface issues that might harm the reputation and endanger the business continuity of an organization. If we could find out all issues then we could establish all the necessary processes and plans to deal with them. But, it is not so simple, is it? If, in a perfect world, we could know all potential threats then there would be no crises, which means in this case that a crisis is predictable…!

For the sake of discussion, let’s say that our scanning has covered all the potential threats and we now work on a painstaking crisis management plan. I strongly believe that our plan would be complete and very detailed. If that’s the case, we have done what’s necessary in order to deal with any issue. But this is not really what happens in the real world.

Organizations with extensive experience in crisis management, detailed environment scanning that covers all aspects of operations and  very experienced staff have been caught off guard by situations that went out of hand. The BP’s 2009 Sustainability Report says: “Our goal of ‘no accidents, no harm to people and no damage to the environment’ is fundamental to BP’s activities. We work to achieve this through consistent management processes, ongoing training programmes, rigorous risk management and a culture of continuous improvement.” Does anyone believe that BP had no plan to deal with a disaster at an offshore drilling unit like the Deepwater Horizon in 2010?

There are two elements that make a crisis unpredictable. The first one is the element of surprise and the second one is the indeterminable factor. We all have read numerous reports about crises that came as a surprise to top executives, communication professionals, investors, and academics alike although they were expected and they could be avoided. Several organizations are caught by surprise because either they do not really believe that a crisis might really occur or they suffer from a cry-wolf syndrome and they make a wrong assessment at the crucial moment.

The indeterminable factor could be anything… Any unexpected change at the political, environmental, economic, social level or just a human mistake could undermine any crisis management plan.

A crisis is not always inevitable or predictable. A crisis is a situation that has to find us prepared and ready to deal with  issues that go beyond any plan or even our imagination.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and they do not reflect in any way those of his various affiliations.

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Be aware of the context and the external factors in crisis management

05 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Dimitris Agrafiotis in Crisis, politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

crisis communications, crisis management

madrid-athens-protests-sep-2012-5-1024x682

We all have read or written about golden rules in crisis management that more or less are the same. However there is one rule that it is not usually mentioned and that would be “Be aware of the context and the external factors”.

Let’s say we prepare a crisis management plan with all necessary steps and actions and we put it in the drawer.  After a couple of months or even some days, this plan might be totally obsolete. The framework of macro-environmental factors set the foundation of our crisis management plan. If we fail in our environmental scanning then our plan might be standing on a foundation of straw.

I am thinking of several examples that companies failed in their estimates about the external factors and they implemented crisis management plans that could not adapt in the macro-environment. For example a newly elected government with radical approach somewhere in the world might have an effect on different aspects of a company’s operations which should be under consideration when planning crisis management response. An environmental disaster would not create the same reaction in all the countries of the world. Some societies have more radical and strong unions than others and this something that a corporation should take into consideration when making a decision about labour issues.

A crisis management plan should be adaptable to various factors. We are not about a simple PEST analysis. The macro-environment includes political, economic, social, technological, environmental, intercultural, environmental, ethical, educational, physical, religious, regulatory, and security factors that we should be aware of.

The environmental scanning is a component of strategic management and it must be part of the daily activity of the organization. Part of the job description of the corporate communications team is to feed the management of the organization with all the necessary information that might contribute to the crisis management planning. Information of the public sphere should be incorporated in the process of preparation for a crisis.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and they do not reflect in any way those of his various affiliations.

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