“Lessons must be learned” said the UK Home Secretary in the aftermath of WannaCry.  But will those lessons focus on ‘cyber security’ or will you take a holistic approach to assess, review and validate your cyber resilience capability? The Cyber Challenge Most organisations conduct their...

In a previous post we explored the process associated with taking informed decisions in a crisis and hinted that in Crisis Tempo is King. In that article we raised the concept of speeding up how quickly you move through the decision making process to be sure that your decisions are both well...

Ever been presented with opinions from colleagues, when thinking about risk scenarios for your business, that convey the sense "that could never happen"? It is certainly not an uncommon occurrence in such discussions. In many cases it is perhaps a valid view to take, particularly if the risk...

Having a business continuity policy and plan is only part of the solution when it comes to developing a continuity capability. Capability is much more about people than it is about having reams of paper. You need to be sure your people have the abilities to recognise trigger events, respond...

Passing the invocation decision for crisis and incident plans to a team may help to address the individual biases outlined in our previous blog post. However there are many issues relating to Crisis Team Dynamics that could still militate a wrong decision, from the culture of the organisation,...

Spare a moment of thought for those who have crisis decision making responsibilities.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we can all be critical of such decisions in the comfort of the office or coffee room. Crisis decision making is a pressured environment in which decisions are necessary but...

Having a control centre in place does not guarantee that leaders will be properly supported in a crisis. That requires people in roles and teams that know what they are doing and that the strategic management have confidence in. To equip your control centre staff with the knowledge and experience...

“establishing the parameters for invocation and managing the process” A Barrier to Effectiveness Having a plan is one thing. Knowing when to use it, how to get it started, how to adjust the tempo and when it is right to call an end are other things all together. In our experience, and in...

The focus of the crisis control centre is the processing of information, the taking of decisions and the management of actions. However there are a number of highly important logistical tasks that need to be undertaken, particularly over a prolonged incident. 5 things to think about planning for...

So you have taken the plunge and developed a crisis control centre to support strategic leadership in a crisis. You’ve got the facility identified long with the people. The last remaining question is about the technology you need to put into the centre to support the  team? When thinking about...