The ACID Test of Crisis Capability

As consultants we think it’s important to be able to add value when a client asks “What can we do to manage a crisis better?”.

As a result we have developed and constantly refined a crisis management benchmark which we use to evaluate every organisation we work with - and that’s over 300 organisations of varying sizes, sectors and levels of capability. 

We call this the ACID Test, which is an acronym for Activation, Communications, Information Management and Decision Making - the four components we believe define an effective crisis response. We then go on to apply a variety of metrics to these four core capabilities.

We constantly refine and develop these metrics and use them to shape the reports we write after crisis exercises. This enables us to set out a roadmap for the organisation detailing how to improve their crisis response. It also helps organisations validate their investment in business continuity and crisis management, and to identify areas of the business where they need to raise the bar.

We can also use this analysis to identify ‘best in class’ characteristics as opposed to ‘good’ or ‘below average’. Interestingly, not all organisations want to be ‘world class’. For some ‘good’ is perfectly acceptable in terms of where they want to be, which enables us to guide them on a proportionate level of investment in resilience. 

Over the next few weeks we will share some of the insights we have uncovered and hopefully you will find them useful and interesting. Please feel free to add to the discussion, whether you agree or disagree!

Download the ‘Activation’ check list on our Resources Page.