Most Businesses Are No Better Prepared for a Crisis Post 9-11 Than Before, Warns Jon Goldberg at AMA Current Issues Breakfast Briefing

AMA kicked off its Fall 2002 Current Issues Breakfast Briefings series with “Crisis Planning One Year Later: Have We Done Enough?” The program, held at AMA’s Executive Conference Center in New York, was presented by Jon Goldberg, Executive Vice President of PR21 Inc.

According to Goldberg, “Having a viable crisis management plan is like buying an insurance policy. You hope you’ll never have to use it, but remember—you can’t buy insurance if your house is already on fire.” He focused on why crisis management is so important, and the most common excuses companies give for not having a viable plan in place and strategies for developing an organization-specific, workable plan.

One would assume that most companies have responded to the 9-11 terrorist attacks by making crisis preparedness a high priority. Yet, surprisingly, a recent AMA survey on Crisis Management and Security showed that 51% of the organizations surveyed do NOT have a crisis management plan in place, and 59% do NOT have written policies and procedures for crisis management.

Goldberg urges companies who have not yet implemented crisis prevention/management plans to act immediately, even if they take only rudimentary steps toward emergency preparedness. He warns, “It’s no longer a question of if we face a crisis, but when.” Planning can drastically reduce the amount of time a company needs to recover from a crisis and get back to the business of doing business.

First of all, says Goldberg, organizations need to make some new assumptions about the safety of their businesses:

• The most unthinkable scenarios can happen.
• Acts of man deserve as much attention as acts of god.
• Crisis planning needs to go beyond technical recovery and business continuity solutions and focus on crisis prevention and active stewardship of corporate image and reputation.

The basic steps in developing a crisis plan are:

• Risk Assessment—Identify all potential crisis scenarios.
• Preparation—Identify external resources that may need to be accessed quickly; establish policies and procedures for dealing with media and customers.
• Monitoring/Alert Systems—Develop early warning systems based on real-time analysis of an organization’s information sources.
• Simulation/Training—Conduct drills to simulate real-life situations.
• Feedback/Continuous Improvement—Regularly review risks and vulnerabilities; maintain continuous employee training.

“An organization can never be too prepared for crisis, but it can be well-prepared,” concludes Goldberg.

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