Creating a Culture of Preparedness: Best Practices for Building a Crisis-Resilient Organization 

Unless you’re a fortune teller, it is increasingly hard to predict what twists and turns might arise in any given year. Businesses have learned to adapt to the changing external environment, accounting for variables from inflation and supply chain disruptions, to labor disputes and policy shifts. Those that tend to thrive in uncertain moments are flexible and adaptable — knowing that they must evolve to meet the moment at hand now yet be able to pivot towards the next.  

Truly resilient businesses know that just as their financial plans must be adaptable, so must their crisis plans. The days of creating “The Crisis Playbook”—as official a handbook as an appliance operating manual—once and calling it a day are long gone. Famous quotes about preparing to face a crisis paint the approach as black or white: is your business prepared or not? Our current reality has shown us that even those that have plans in place can flounder in a crisis if their plans are not up to date. 

As the famous business mogul Taylor Swift once said, “just because you made a good plan, doesn’t mean that’s what’s gonna happen.” So, what does success look like? The organizations that are the most crisis-resilient are: 

• Maintaining a living crisis framework. Developing a crisis framework is not a set it and forget it exercise. It needs to be able to meet the ever-changing landscape and evolve alongside it, not sit in a drawer collecting dust. Many organizations have top-notch response plans in place for operational issues that can require regulatory intervention, such as natural disasters or manufacturing incidents. However, many others are unprepared for reputational threats or newer issues, from artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes to enhanced cybersecurity attacks. You don’t need to have a laundry list of items of potential scenarios in your plan, but rather have a common approach that can be applied to any type of issue. 

• Creating a culture of preparedness. Just like an annual wellness checkup for your health, your organization should be conducting an annual training to ensure familiarity with your crisis framework. Members of your crisis management or response team should know their roles and responsibilities inside and out. Those outside of that team should also know who those individuals are in case they receive inquiries or become otherwise involved. Ensuring issues and crisis management becomes part of your day to day makes it easier to stand up your response quickly, if/when something does occur. 

• Staying alert for emerging threats. Effective crisis management begins long before an incident occurs. Very few incidents pop up out of nowhere and are usually simmering somewhere on the backburner before they burst into flames. Organizations with a proactive issues management approach can identify threats early on and be prepared to mitigate and address them long before they become a significant, overwhelming concern.  

• Learning from mistakes. No one’s perfect; mistakes can and will happen, even with the best-made plans. While significant failures can ultimately define a crisis response, those minor concerns can serve as learning lessons to update and refine the crisis framework. This ties back to the culture of preparedness and ensuring that organizations are continuously pressure-testing their framework; what works in 2024 may not in 2025, 2026 or beyond and the earlier we can learn from our missteps, the better off we’ll all be.  

Whether the times remain unprecedented or go back to some semblance of status quo, those organizations that prioritize flexibility and preparedness will find themselves well positioned to face whatever may come next.