Quite right Manoj. It's often very difficult to make the connection between identifying the financial impact of a crisis, which can be tangibly by using tools such as impact analysis, and the human and reputational damage, that are harder to measure. Yet the latter will invariably bring a company down if they are not addressed.
There are numerous case studies of companies that have managed to ride out the immediate financial hit of an adverse incident - yet they did not survive the loss of public confidence that their inadequate response created. Or companies (and we have seen this recently at first hand) where they have responded very well with respect to those affected externally, and yet have neglected to address the impact on their own staff who have been "fire-fighting" in the name of the company - and subsequently have lost critical staff as a result of this.
Crisis management is not solely about making sure a business can keep functioning come what may - it is about responding to an incident in a compassionate, coordinated and holistic way. A good response to a crisis has been shown time and time again to actually ENHANCE a company's reputation and brand.

Lord Browne of BP comes to mind, as one of the crisis that was badly managed. In this case, brought on by the Leader himself. This type of crisis is different from those brought on by natural disasters, or union disputes. This suggests to me that "crisis management" touches almost all companies, both small and large, and should be a topic that need regular discussion. I am excited to learn more!

Best regards
Manoj

I've just taken delivery this morning of a new mattress at home. Unfortunately, the two delivery guys refused to carry it upstairs to the bedroom, citing "health and safelty" rules. This seems to be typical of a mushrooming trend in the UK. Let's be honest; ten years ago, health and safely were not exactly top of the list for most companies or businesses. Now there has been a significant change in mindset, and as a result, there has been a burgeoning of the health & safety industry. My sense is that a similar sea-change needs to take place around crisis management planning. Sadly I have to agree with Manoj when he observes than many companies don't even think about crisis planning until crisis hits. While I don't advocate the extreme development and application of yet more rules & regulations (sometimes H & S seems to have lost the plot completely!), it does seem to be logical, common sense and expedient to have basic measure in place for dealing with a crisis. My own bias is towards the human impact of dealing with a crisis. In my experience, companies which prepare well vastly improve on their chances of post-crisis recovery. Of course, it is initially cheaper to play the ostrich game; hoping it will all go away.

Larry, sorry to hear about your troubles with the mattress delivery. Interesting comment you made with bringing H&S into the conversation. This raises two issues:

1. We ought to have a special interest group on H&S. Let me know if you know anyone who might be interested in championing this group
2. The change in society, both consumer and business ends with respect to extreme application of guidelines related H&S, environmental, waste, etc regulations. Whilst guidelines and regulations have created a positive culture, its cost impact on both businesses and consumers are significant. You no longer can do most basic operations without significant involvement of H&S planning, risk assessments, etc. In addition, you have the emergent of a litigation culture looming in the horizon.

The discussion of these topics with relevant documents is one of the benefits edocr provides, free of charge. I hope everyone will rise and use tools such as edocr to bring greater awareness to topics that are making significant inroads to corporate and consumer worlds

Best regards
Manoj