CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Protecting Your Organisation
Crisis demands action.
In challenging times, we need leaders most of all.
Foresight, judgment, compassion.
Bring strength and be resilient.
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EXECUTIVE CRISIS COACHING
Expert advice to help you lead in a time of crisis
In times of crisis, it can be challenging for a leader to make the sharp judgment calls required to ensure both the ongoing survival of the organisation and the wellbeing of their people.
If you are in the middle of a crisis situation, the value of experienced executive support can be invaluable. Our one-on-one executive crisis coaching service provides a regular ‘second opinion’ for you to test challenging scenarios with.
How: Regular phone-based coaching sessions during a crisis can help you test theories, explore options, prioritise responses, and uncover unexplored risks and opportunities. Frequent check-ins during the crisis period can provide meaningful feedback, reassurance and fresh thinking.
Executive coach Hamish Park has been a key adviser to government during terror attacks, bushfires, floods, cyber attacks, air crashes and toxic hazards, helping state cabinet and senior staff to prepare for and respond to crisis events. He is also a designer of postgraduate-level university crisis training, and studied best practice crisis management at Harvard University.
Start by booking a free consultation call, to help you feel more in control as you handle the evolving situation.
CRISIS MANAGEMENT TRAINING
Learn how to handle a crisis
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When crises hit, teams look to their leader. Your ability to rapidly build situational awareness, diagnose immediate problems, and mobilise resources for action – all while sustaining team morale, keeping a calm demeanour, and communicating clearly – will mark you out as a star crisis manager.
With crises of all sorts – from pandemics, natural disasters, criminal activity, and workplace scandals – sent to test leaders, the sooner you and your team are trained to manage crises, the more prepared you will feel when the real life test arrives.
How: Our Online Crisis Management Training has two parts – firstly, an interactive workshop where leaders and their teams learn the necessary elements of crisis management through studying case studies of real life crises, learning from the successes and failures of others. In phase two, your team explores a mock scenario, an immersive and memorable experience of a realistic crisis, where you and your colleagues will be tested and challenged to respond, and given meaningful feedback and reinforcement.
Both elements of the training are suitable for entirely online delivery via the Zoom platform to accommodate socially-distancing teams working from home.
Start by booking a free crisis preparation readiness phone assessment.
CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS
Getting your crisis messaging perfectly pitched
When a challenging situation emerges, your messages to the organisation, your customers, and the public are critical. Knowing what to say, and how to convey your intent clearly can be the difference between an effective and a disastrous response.
Having an external crisis communications expert available at a critical time provides a valuable independent source of advice from someone adept at responding to challenging situations. Sometimes the best advice is what not to say.
How: Our crisis communications service can help you craft and prioritise your key messages across a range of channels – including internal e-mail updates, media releases, sharemarket updates, customer bulletins, and website content. We work with you to gain absolute clarity on the message required for each audience, and how to craft that message in easily understood text. The correct sequence, timing and priority of each message is considered in light of the changing environment.
Start by booking a free consultation call to explore the right communication techniques to suit your current challenges.
BUSINESS CONTINUITY ASSESSMENT
Reviewing and testing your crisis management plans
Despite our best intentions, leaders can never know the full range of likely scenarios likely to test our organisations – by definition, an unexpected crisis will test even the best crisis management plan. In every crisis there is the opportunity for reflection, learning and growth. When live tested, our plans flush out areas of weakness, inadequate preparation, and room for improvement.
Every leader should look to review their crisis management and business continuity plans after each crisis episode, so that the organisation can be better prepared to survive and grow next time the unexpected hits.
How: Our crisis management plan review conducts an assessment of your preparedness and response capability, providing a valuable independent source of advice to your executive team on how to get ahead of future crises before they arise. We examine your business continuity approach, to ensure you are adequately prepared for future challenges.
Executive consultant Hamish Park has been a key adviser to government during terror attacks, bushfires, floods, cyber attacks, air crashes and toxic hazards, helping state cabinet and senior staff to prepare for and respond to crisis events. He is also a designer of postgraduate-level university crisis training, and studied best practice crisis management at Harvard University.
Start by booking a free crisis response assessment call, to begin work now before the next challenge hits.
CRISIS RECOVERY SERVICES
Returning to 'normal' and building back better
Once the adrenalin of an immediate crisis event passes, it can be common for leadership teams to take their eyes off the ball, instead dealing with the next emerging issue and ignoring the hard work needed to recover from a crisis.
Mature organisations know that returning to ‘normal’ is not easy following large disruptive events. People can be displaced and grieving, supply chains interrupted, key infrastructure damaged, and customer demand patterns altered. Taking time to plan your return to business-as-usual with the advice of an independent crisis management expert can help to accelerate your recovery.
How: our Crisis Recovery consultation service helps your executive team think through the range of impacts your organisation has and will face during the transition from crisis to recovery – and build practical plans to overcome them. Scoping, and prioritising a comprehensive suite of responses will help your organisation to make smart decisions about the most impactful strategies to adopt in recovery mode.
Executive consultant Hamish Park has seen crisis recovery first hand. He served as Chief of Staff during the state government response to the Black Saturday bushfires, supporting the minister responsible for community recovery. Over many months he worked with local, state and federal representatives, government departments, statutory authorities and community leaders as health, housing, economic and educational needs were addressed in grieving communities.
Start by booking a free phone call to assess your recovery capability and start the crucial work required to respond to the emerging recovery issues.
CULTURE REFRESH
Building better teams beyond the crisis
Once our organisation experiences a true crisis, our people are not the same. Extremely traumatic events leave emotional scars, prolonged absences alter team dynamics, and the needs of the organisation in recovery mode may not match the skills and abilities of your team as it existed pre-crisis.
Transition points provide opportunities to leaders. Leaders can use post-crisis recovery periods to make deliberate decisions about which elements of team culture add value and should stay - and which should not.
As staff return to work following pandemic self-isolation, leaders can take the opportunity to consciously improve workplace culture, driving valuable new behaviours in line with organisational values.
How: as you consider how to re-onboard your team as the pandemic eases, engage the independent advice from an expert in culture refresh. Hamish Park has worked on several cultural refresh engagements across his 20 years' consulting experience in the public and private sector. Seeing what works – and what definitely does not – enables him to provide candid advice to leaders wanting their teams to fly higher in the wake of a crisis.
Start by booking a free consultation call to discuss your team dynamics and start building a plan to refresh the culture as the crisis eases.
WORK PATTERN RE-DESIGN
Emerge from crisis with strong new ways of working
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many organisations hastily sent staff home to work remotely. Some organisations were well set up with remote working norms, adequate online collaborative technologies, cloud-based document access, and sophisticated ways to check in on and support colleagues. Other organisations were not so well prepared.
As the pandemic crisis eases, many leaders will examine whether continuing some forms of remote working would make sense for their team. The benefits of balancing work, life and health needs, reducing commute times, allowing uninterrupted periods of task concentration, and reducing the floorspace needed to accommodate staff are all drivers in the trend towards remote working. Executives will want to harness this opportunity in a way that delivers organisational benefits across the spectrum.
How: our Work Pattern Re-design service can help you deliberately design the future of work, rather than simply returning to old patterns as the pandemic eases. We work with you to determine which roles and tasks can work well remotely, and the appropriate tools, support and training needed to make it effective. We also advise on the best ways to make your team feel connected when some staff are working away from others.
Start by booking a free discussion on the possibilities of remote work for your team.
