Crisis readiness

The best-prepared organisations we work with have a plan that fits on one page and a board that has rehearsed using it. Most have neither, and find out on the worst possible day.

Readiness work begins with a question we ask every new client: if something went badly wrong at six this evening, who would you call, who would decide what you say, and who would say it? Few organisations can answer all three without a pause, and the pause is the risk.

We review existing plans, and usually shorten them. A crisis plan that runs to sixty pages will not be read during a crisis; a page of names, numbers, decisions and thresholds will. We then test the plan in an exercise built around the client’s own business, run in real time, with telephone calls, a simulated press and social media feed, and a regulator who telephones at the least convenient moment.

Exercises are uncomfortable by design. They end with the board reading back everything it said in the preceding four hours, which is the part clients remember.

What it involves

Review of crisis, incident and business continuity plans, and a one-page version that people will use
Scenario mapping: the dozen things most likely to go wrong, and the three that would do most harm
Live exercises for boards, executive teams and site teams, from two hours to two days
Holding statements and first-hour materials prepared in advance and kept current
Spokesperson preparation for the people most likely to be asked
An annual readiness review against our board readiness survey

In practice In 2025 we ran exercises for the boards of eleven listed companies. In nine of them, the first statement the board approved during the exercise said something it later had to correct.

Crisis readiness

What it involves

Who to talk to

Case studies

From the Journal