Crisis management is crucial for any organization. Organizations who waste precious time at the beginning of a crisis can expect to see a loss in revenue and dropping stock prices. The organization's most vital asset – its reputation - is at stake. However, public perception of risk appeals a constant threat to an organization's reputation. In the case of a poorly handled crisis, it may take years to reestablish a company's reputation.

When crisis strikes, most companies are unprepared and poorly lever the situation. They might try handling the situation, toughing it out or pretending the crisis will pass. It is hopeless to mask the truth from the public because finally someone will start a fire. For instance, Firestone continued to sell defective tires when they knew there was a problem with the product. After numerous deaths, Firestone recalled millions of tires, and the public wondered how long Firestone knew about the problem. Now Firestone is on the edge of announcing bankruptcy and going out of business because they made poor crisis management decisions.

Crisis management planning enables organizations to be better prepared to handle unanticipated events that may cause serious or irreversible damage. Scenario planning is a strategy that companies are implementing to help plan for unforeseen events.

Judy Larkin and Michael Regester in “Risk Issues and Crisis Management: A casebook of Best Practice” (2005) give us a whole depiction of how a crisis can be dealt and how to ensure the survival and continuity of the business enterprise. Having a successful and continuous experience in crisis management practice, they think, that the key to crisis management is crisis prevention, whether the vigilance and preparation is self-motivated or enforces by legislation. But if a fire does break out, comprehensive contingency planning can minimize the catastrophe; and a policy of open communication can minimize damage to corporate and individual reputations.
Here is a plan to be considered while managing a crisis, outlined by Judy Larkin and Michael Regester:

• Ensure all key players keep a copy of the crisis management plan with them all the times
• Have background information prepared
• Set up a press centre
• Ensure executives are trained to manage successfully press conferences, television, radio and print interviews – against crisis scenarios
• Establish trained telephone response teams to cope with media and relative calls
• Keep news releases coming thick and fast; time and number them
• Don’t forget employees – they are the company’s ‘ambassadors’
• Coordinate the response of the company and third parties
• When it’s all over, review the organization from top to bottom in the light of lessons learnt- lightning can strike twice

Al Tortorella, Managing Director, Crisis management at Ogilvy, offers a set of principles to be considered when dealing with a crisis: to understand media interest in your story, define the real problem and determine strategy accordingly, manage the flow of information, assume the situation will escalate and get worse, remember all your constituencies, measure results in real time.
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