12 Tips for Improving Resilience in 2023

With the start of the New Year I’ve been thinking about what we’ve seen in our training and exercises over the last 12 months. With this in mind here are our '12 New Year Tips' that cover some of the common crisis management pitfalls we witnessed in 2022.

1. Use your plans - it’s tempting to dive into ’solving the problem’ but it’s far better to set yourselves up for success by following your crisis management plan.

2. Follow your crisis management process - this will stop you jumping from issue to issue.

3. Move on from ‘why’ something has happened - focus on the impacts on the business.

4. Ensure you have a process to efficiently approve communications - Slow approval may result in losing control of the messaging. 

5. Make sure you have effective communication ‘holding statements’ or ‘Comms Plan’.

6. Make sure you communicate across Bronze, Silver and Gold to ensure everyone remains on the same page.

7. You may need to make decisions in a crisis without all the information you’d like  - don’t fall into the trap of waiting for information that may never be available.

8. Have a trained co-ordinator and note-taker to support the crisis management team and act as guardians of the process - The CMT need to be guided on the process.

9. Set a clear 'Strategic Objective’ to guide decision making.

10. Make sure you consider all internal and external stakeholders - ideally these will be in your ‘Comms Plan’.

11. All CMT members should have a voice - the loudest or most senior voice is not always right.

12. Ensure you can run hybrid meetings effectively - it is unlikely the CMT will all be in one room.  

I hope this helps and I wish all you all a great 2023.