By Eric J. McNulty, Strategy-Business.com
It’s no secret that the world can be volatile and violent. Shootings and bombings in public places. Floods, fires, droughts, and other dangers amid an uptick in severe-weather events.
Any of these could be a threat to your organization, its people, its customers, and its suppliers. And although senior executives contemplate the likely impact of these phenomena in risk-analysis meetings, far fewer take the time to participate in real drills, instead designating someone else as a stand-in. After all, it’s tough to get an operational dry run on the calendar of a CEO, CFO, or other executive.
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That is an enormous mistake. Executives who let someone stand in during practice set themselves and their teams up for failure when the worst happens: The first crisis may be beyond your control, but that is not the case with the second, highly avoidable crisis that results from a fumbled response.
Participating in a rigorous, well-crafted, scenario-based drill is the closest you’ll get to experiencing the emotional tension and challenging ambiguity of an actual event that may involve fatalities, skittish investors, and intense media scrutiny.
I’ve seen many occasions in which seasoned executives who start an exercise confident, even joking, wind up sweating amid the flurry of high-stakes decisions to be made in a response drill.
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If you are a senior leader, you don’t need to attend every exercise, but you should make time for at least one in your calendar each year. It is the only way you’ll know what to expect in a true emergency — and the only way you’ll be able to judge whether those engaged in the nitty-gritty of the response are capable of succeeding.
Executives who let someone stand in during practice set themselves and their teams up for failure.
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An exercise is your chance get to know your emergency team, how it works, and where you fit in. It is also a chance to ask seemingly naive questions. If you are wondering about something, chances are someone else is, too. A drill will likely trigger important realizations or gaps you wouldn’t have known needed to be addressed had you not been in attendance. It will provide a real window into not only what a crisis might look like, but what the recovery will be in the weeks after.
Here are three frames to help you get the most from your investment of time.
