Most of the time when a big company launches the product, they have also done testing on it and they also do planning for a crisis. But many of the startups don’t even think about this, which may affect them negatively while a crisis occurs. So, planning for a crisis is a necessary thing.
What’s in it for me?
What is meant by the crisis in business?
We don’t mean to be ready for fluid, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. by saying planning for a crisis. We are talking to do planning for a crisis, which is similar to the crisis listed below:
- You started the company, After some months or years, you are facing a problem related to funding. So it can be classified as a financial crisis.
- Imagine you are owning a company that makes medicines, what if any side effect is done on the consumer by your drug? People will start boycotting you. This can also be classified as a crisis in business.
- Sometimes maybe, your products are getting banned, because of the war between the two nations.
- What if the smartphone your company has made will blast into the hands of the customer.
- Maybe for some reason, your company’s reputation falls down.
- What if some workers in your factory get injured, the public will criticize your company. Maybe someone will do a court case on you.
- Starting an online service and the website crash!
These are some examples of how the crisis looks like in the business world!
Planning for Crisis
According to your field and business type, your crises can be different. Here, we will discuss in general terms and will take some examples of any field for understanding planning for a crisis well.
Analyze the type of crisis that we might face in future
Let’s consider that you have started a website on which you are providing ebooks and many other similar things. The first step of planning for a crisis is to make a list of the risks.
What can appear as a crisis in the future in this particular example?
Maybe, your site will counter a cyber attack by hackers. The site’s server can be down sometimes, what if the site got hacked, what if the site’s data is lost, what if someone does spam on your site. And hundreds of other possibilities are there.
So, this was just an example. You can relate it to your business. The one thing I wanted to explain to you is you should make a list of what type of crisis can occur. This is the first step.
You should know that not every time a future crisis is visible to us, that simply we have to research particular business and find out the most number of crises that can occur.
Find multiple solutions for the crisis
One of the properties of a crisis is, whenever it comes, you will not have enough time to find out the best solution. Therefore, after making a list of possible crises, you have to research an individual crisis and learn about it. Finding effective solutions for future crisis is an important step in planning for a crisis. Also, read about the companies which have gone through it. It will help you to better understand and find the best solution.
Because you don’t know which resources are gonna be available to you at that time, what will be the conditions, so try to find more than one solution for each.
Let’s continue with the example of a website; If your website is crashed, in such case you can upload the backup you have stored before. You can change the hosting services etc.
Make a CMT that do more than just planning for crisis
If your company can afford it, you can make a CMT (Crisis Management Team)
That team has to work only on managing crises. Now, you will be thinking that a Crisis will happen suddenly, so why should we spend the resources for CMT?
So, not all crises are sudden. In business, there are many things in which you have to keep your watch.
Let’s get back to the example of the website;
Suppose that your website has become a big brand, and you have also assigned a Crisis Management Team (CMT). So now, you don’t have to fear crisis. CMT will do all the things to avoid crises. And whenever it looks like a crisis is coming they will inform you and start solving that. Keeping watch on such activities is also a work of CMT.
What do I mean by the things on which we have to keep our eyes? If we consider an example of a website, there may happen that competitors are spamming to your website so your website will become slow, functionality will not run completely and your rank on Google or any other search engine will fall down. So, if you have CMT they will keep watch on this kind of activity.
Don’t ignore feedback and complaints
Your team should be regularly viewing the feedback of the product. Because it happens many times in history that the brands have lost their brand value because of one bad product.
For example, Apple has updated the MacBook’s keyboard and most of the users don’t like it. They complained to Apple. So Apple company changed the new MacBooks with the same old keyboard and also started a replacement program of the keyboard for the users who bought it recently.
So, Apple is known for its consumer-oriented service. Now, what if Apple ignored the complaints of their customers? Obviously, the MacBooks sales will start falling down. And Apple’s brand value would also be spoiled a little bit.
There are many other examples available on the internet that prove the great planning for the crisis of that particular company.
Test your plan if possible
Some of the time what happens is, CMT had found the solution for the crisis when they were planning for the crisis. But still, they fail to tackle the crisis. The main reason behind it is, CMT had not tested the plan before. So, when the team fails to exercise the plan it seems that they are not able to fight against the crisis.
Conclusion
We should be ready for the crisis by identifying them before they impact us very strongly. Make a list of crises that would come and find their multiple solutions, that whatever the condition is but you can come over that.
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