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Shelter Chieza Change Management
I am now convinced that bad news sells fast. For several days now the major stories making the headlines on regional and international televisions and newspapers have been on the missing Malaysian airplane and the live broadcast of the Oscar Pretorius trial.
My attention however has been more on the issue of the missing Malaysian aeroplane.
It is still a mystery how an aeroplane can still be missing for more than two weeks given the level of technological advancement in the world.
It got me thinking of our state of preparedness for incidents as a country or as companies? In our case the Tokwe-Mukosi disaster exposed shortcomings in the Civil Protection Unit.
Mr Madzudzo Pawadyira and his team were literary caught napping despite warning by the Meteorological Department of possibilities of flooding.
What should companies do in such kind of crisis? You do not need an outsider to define and inform you that your organisation is going through a crisis.
A company should be able to define what it believes is a crisis even if it’s a 10 percent drop in sales or the resignation of a chief executive.
When you have a crisis in your company it is the duty of management to issue danger or warning signs before employees or customers notice that there is something that is amiss.
Crises by their nature can be quite damaging and can unfold at such an alarming rate to the point that there might be no time for carefully considered reactions.
Usually a crisis has an unfolding of unforeseen circumstances that might not have been considered as you were crafting your disaster preparedness policy.
One thing that a crisis does both at company and individual level is test your leadership skill and preparation.
It’s true that someone’s true nature comes out in times of a crisis. A crisis such as the one created by the missing Malaysian airlines can be very stressful for company officials and the relatives and friends of the passengers.
A lot of resources and time were channelled towards locating the missing plane until it was finally located.
The number of countries involved in the search and rescue operation continued to increase, which brought new challenges of co-ordination and diplomacy to the search effort.
This crisis presented a turning point for the airline’s business and reputation. There is a possibility that the airline might not recover from this crisis.
However some observers had said that if authorities handled this crisis well, it could enhance their reputation and spur some needed dialogue and change.
What is key in a crisis is communication. I remember reading about one airline called JetBlue that had a “no-cancelled flights policy”.
While this policy is bold and effective in bringing in more customers, it is a bit over ambitious given the vagaries of whether and the possibilities of mechanical failure.
It is therefore important to be realistic when you craft your Crisis Handling Methods. It could seriously impact your reputation and bottom line.
Most businesses expect that when a crisis hits, customers should empathize with them. Remember the BP Shell oil spill; scientists say that the deep corals appear to have been seriously affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The general approach to crises by business is to contain information from leaking, hoping the problem goes away.
However if people do not have most of the facts they tend to speculate which is very dangerous.
Consider how your clients would be affected by each potential crisis. It is therefore critical to draw up a business continuity plan setting out in writing how you will cope if a crisis does occur.
It should detail the key business functions you need to get operating as quickly as possible and the resources you’ll need to deal with the emergency.
Shelter Chieza is an Advisor in management issues. She can be contacted at [email protected]
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