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Is Your Organization Crisis Ready? 12 Questions.

By Deborah Hileman posted 09-01-2017 04:05 PM

  

No organization is immune from the kinds of sudden crises and smoldering issues that, when they go public, can cause lasting damage to its brand, reputation, revenue and very survival.  Are you crisis ready? Take this short quiz and find out. 

  1. Is senior management committed to communicating consistently openly and effectively during good times and bad?
  2. Have you identified the most likely crises that may occur in your organization?
  3. Do you have a crisis management/ response team?
  4. If you answered yes to #3, do team members know their roles and responsibilities in a crisis?
  5. Do you have a formal crisis communication plan?
  6. If you answered yes to #5, has the plan been exercised or updated in the past year?
  7. Do you have up-to-date contact lists for all key personnel, vendors, customers and other stakeholders with whom you may need to communicate?
  8. Do you have a process in place to document every aspect of a crisis response?
  9. Do you have procedures to centralize/manage information flow during a crisis?
  10. Do you monitor media coverage (print, broadcast, web, social) of your company?
  11. Do you know which stakeholder groups need ongoing, follow-up communication about the crisis, its aftermath and the organization’s recovery?
  12. Do you have a process to evaluate the organization’s crisis response in order to make needed changes for next time?

Each of these questions represents one of several important components of an effective crisis management plan.  If you have more ‘yes’ answers than ‘no,’ congratulations!  You are on your way to being well prepared for the inevitable issues and crises that will arise in the course of doing business.

If you answered ‘no’ more often than ‘yes,’ it’s time to sit down with the management team and talk about taking action to prepare the organization to weather the crisis that is going to happen. You need to get crisis ready.  We can help. Contact ICM today!

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I just completed the Crisis Communications Certificate Program, and found this to be an excellent article on the topic!  Well done!