Post 9 Crisis Management

I think the two key points to remember from this week's readings are the importance of planning for a crisis and crisis management tactics.

Crises can come in many forms. Be it a takeover bid, product tampering, natural disasters or terrorists attacks, they come unexpectedly. Like they always say, expect the unexpected. I am sure most of us can still remember some crises of recent years like the SARS outbreak which hit Asia, the Mad Cow disease scare which affected Europe and the bird flu epidemic which hit china hard. The Singapore government handled the SARS outbreak well, in fact it was handled so well that the government received praise. Not only was the public not in a state of panic, they were informed well enough on how to handle SARS. On the contrary, China was lambasted for trying to hide the truth from the populace; China handled the situation very poorly.

When the crisis hits, it will be too late to control much of the backlash that will happen. Therefore it is important to plan for a crisis prior to it happening. Just like a building having backup generators in case if a power failure, an organisation needs to have contigency plans.

Many of the tactics of crisis management should already be in place if the crisis does hit. So the bottomline is to be prepared.