From victim to player

The power of working with scenarios
Edited: June 06, 2024 Reading time: 4 minutes

A crisis that keeps rearing its head, no matter what you do. Sometimes it proves difficult to truly gain control of a situation. Emotions continue to run high, and doubts about the credibility of your organization only grow. Although every situation is different, there are ways to swiftly regain control. To understand how, we delve deeper into two crucial elements of effective crisis management: scenario planning and leadership.

Essentially, a crisis puts pressure on the societal support for the organization and/or the financial bottom line and hence, potentially threatens the two main pillars of your company or organization’s existence. Therefore, any crisis response strategy must always address elements of both pillars. Even if the crisis didn’t start with a physical incident endangering the continuity of operations (such as a major fire), the loss of societal support can lead to it. For example, negative media attention may cause (business) customers to leave, potential employees to reconsider applying, suppliers to withdraw, or a government to decide not to grant a new license.

Nightmare scenario

An effective crisis strategy can only be developed when the team understands the current and future impact of the issues the crisis (potentially) brings. The only way to comprehend this is by developing scenarios, starting with the nightmare scenario. This is a realistic depiction of how the situation can deteriorate over time to the worst-case scenario, including a description of how that situation looks.

Impact on stakeholders

If a crisis team develops scenarios, in our experience, teams often only identify potential developments affecting aspects such as health, the environment, production, sales, business processes (etc.), including a lot of negative media attention. The next step, namely what these developments would mean for all stakeholders such as customers, employees, governments, regulators (etc.), how they would perceive the situation, and how they would react, is rarely seen. And that is a significant missed opportunity.

Crisis leadership

Both steps – developing a nightmare scenario and gaining a good understanding of the impact this scenario has on all stakeholders in terms of expected perceptions and responses – are necessary to achieve an adequate crisis response. These insights provide the crisis leader with the opportunity to make proactive decisions and thereby steer away from the worst-case scenario and undesired perceptions, both in words and actions.
undesired perceptions, both in words and actions.

“By working with scenarios and daring to anticipate the outcomes, you won’t be surprised by new developments.”

Courage and resources

It requires courage from both the crisis leader and the board to work with a nightmare scenario. Such a scenario often quickly reveals that the situation to be addressed is potentially much larger than the actual problems you currently face. It also means that to develop a resilient response strategy, the leader must be willing to anticipate problems that have not (yet) occurred to prevent new issues or limit their potential impact in advance. All of this may require a significant investment of manpower and funds.

Continuous testing and refinement

Once the nightmare scenario is developed, it is essential to continually review it in light of significant changes in the current situation, adjust as necessary, and retranslate the implications into (adjustments to) the crisis response. Over time, a crisis team can develop several more likely scenarios alongside the nightmare scenario. As time progresses and uncertainties decrease, the added value of all scenarios compared to the current situation will diminish, and they may eventually become obsolete.

Back in control

By working with scenarios and daring to anticipate them in the crisis response strategy, an organization is not repeatedly surprised by new developments and pushed into a defensive position regarding the credibility of the crisis activities or their leadership. It enables the board to regain control of the situation and confidently steer the course for the organisation’s future. This makes the crisis strategy future-proof, reasonably addresses the concerns and expectations of stakeholders, and ensures the continuity of the business. Only in this way can an organisation dig itself out of a hole. Only in this way can an organisation dig itself out of a hole.

 

Klaartje Kluiters and Maartje Snellen

The authors are crisis management consultants and partners at The New Edge.

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