Balanced Scorecard Toolkit for Crisis Management

Whenever business entities face crises or disasters, such incidents or occurrences are marked by four main elements, namely, a threat to the operations or the image of the company, an element of surprise, very brief time in taking appropriate decisions, and a need for changing and adapting to the failures, crises, disasters, or incidents. Normally, all crisis management plans contain 3 phases. They are 1) the diagnosis of the danger signals or impending problems, 2) Choice of appropriate turnaround strategies, and 3) implementation of the processes of change and continuous monitoring of the implementation.

Apart from the above 3 phases, 6 leadership competencies had also been identified for facilitating organizational restructuring in all crisis situations. The management should:

• Build an environment of faith and trust within the organization and with all the stakeholders connected with the company
• Reform the mindset of the organization to meet all crisis situations
• Identify both the obvious and obscure weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the business
• Make rapid and intelligent decisions, including prompt and courageous actions without hesitation
• Learn from past disasters or crises for effecting immediate changes when situations warrant
• Develop effective human and material resources to meet crises and provide boost to the competency of the company

Along with the above steps, companies should also develop contingency plans well in advance as part of their crisis management plans. The first step in this plan is to ensure that the company is properly prepared for all crisis situations.

There should be a separate crisis management team and the team should rehearse various possibilities of crises by developing simulated scenarios and conduct practice drills to counter the crises. The company should inform all its employees that only designated people should make public utterances during crisis situations. In all crisis situations, the first few hours or days are the most crucial. Hence, the crisis management team should be able to respond to the problems with efficiency and maximum speed, without getting panicky. There should be defined plans for performing each crisis management function.

Accurate information should be provided inside and outside the company, since manipulated or incorrect information could backfire on the company and exacerbate the situation even more. Further, all crisis management plans should have concrete steps and approaches not only for short-term but also for long-term effects of all the decisions taken during the crisis. Apart from crisis management plan, each company should also have a strong plan of continuity of the business during and after the crisis situations.