The Manager’s Guide to Quick Crisis Response: Effective Action in an Emergency

By Bruce T. Blythe

Avoid being “blindsided” by an unexpected emergency or crisis in the workplace – violence, natural disaster, or worse! Bruce Blythe’s The Manager’s Guide to Quick Response in a Crisis: Effective Action in an Emergency offers the time-tested skills that prepare you to act effectively – on behalf of yourself and your co-workers – in the face of threat and chaos. Blythe uses real-world case studies, examples, and checklists to help you be the top-notch leader the situation requires.

“Hope for the best and prepare for the worst” sums up Blythe’s philosophy. This short book is the essence of the basic practical counseling that he would give if he were sitting next to you at your desk. To help you figure out what to do next, he offers real-world examples of what has worked – and not worked – in his 30+ years of experience with companies just like yours.

With Blythe’s advice, you can act fast to:

• Find out the accurate facts you need to strategize and implement a response.
• Compile a checklist of immediate action items.
• Create a crisis command center (CCC.
• Select the best people for your action team and determine action steps. .
• Understand how to make good decisions in a crisis or emergency. .
• Handle the human side of a traumatic incident. .
• Set priorities in multiple timeframes. .
• Establish a “new normal” as everyone phases back into productive work after the incident.

To help you take the actions that will make a difference, the book includes:

• Practical forms, checklists, cases studies, and real-life examples.
• “Quick Use Response Guide” at the end of each chapter – all four can form a handy pocket guide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rothstein Publishing
• Release date: Aug 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781944480226

Bruce T. Blythe

Bruce T. Blythe is an internationally acclaimed crisis management expert. He is the owner and chairman of three companies that provide employers with a continuum of crisis preparedness, crisis response, and employee return-to-work services: Crisis Management International (Atlanta-based) is the preparedness arm of the three companies. CMI has assisted hundreds of companies worldwide with crisis and business continuity planning, training and exercising. CMI also provides workplace violence preparedness programs and threat of violence consultations through a specialty network of threat management specialists, including former FBI and Secret Service agents. Crisis Care Network (based in Grand Rapids, Michigan) responds to corporate crisis situations 1,000 times per month through a North American network of crisis mental health professionals. Behavioral Medical Interventions (Minneapolis-based) accelerates employee return-to-work for workers comp and non- occupational injury cases. Blythe has been personally involved in crises such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, mass murders at the U.S. Postal Service, the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, commercial air crashes, rescue of kidnap and ransom hostages, Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, earthquakes, fires, floods, and reputational crises. He serves as a consultant and certified coach to numerous Fortune executives and managers in Strategic Crisis Leadership preparedness and response. He has served in the Military Police for the U.S. Marine Corps. He's a certified clinical psychologist and has been a consultant to the FBI on workplace violence and terrorism. Widely regarded as a thought leader in the crisis management and business continuity industries, Blythe has appeared on NBC's Today Show, CNN, ABC's 20/20, CBS' 48 Hours, CNBC, NPR and others. Fast Company Magazine published a cover-story article about Blythe's leadership in responding to 204 companies onsite, all within three weeks following 9/11. He provides commentary in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Business Week, Smart Money, New Yorker, Fortune Magazine and USA Today. He serves as a keynote presenter to 50 national and international conferences per year.

Book preview

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1

Taking Decisive Action

It’s one of those things you never forget – the precise moment in time when you learned some dreadful piece of news – like the death of a loved one, the assassination of a political figure, or a fatal accident where you live or work. You probably remember the period during that incident quite vividly. Time may have slowed eerily. Thoughts and movements thickened. You felt dread and fear – a nauseating feeling that grips you and won’t let go. Even when the context is professional, the reaction is personal. As a manager confronted with a fire that’s consumed your workplace and threatened your staff, the sickening sensations are the same as those experienced by someone who learns a personal tragedy has occurred. As a leader, you have two options. Your leadership can help turn chaos into ultimate order. Or  the chaos can compound, spinning irretrievably out of control.

This chapter will help you to:

arrow1 Ask the four fact finding questions.

arrow1 Use the SIP-DE crisis decision-making model.

arrow1 Follow the general guidelines for taking immediate actions.

arrow1 Orchestrate a rapid response.

arrow1 Compile a checklist of immediate action items.

1.1 Three Ways You Could Get the News

Notification of a crisis at your place of business can take one of three forms. None of these scenarios is easier or more ideal than the others. Each has advantages and challenges. In each case, you are likely dealing with partial information that carries emotional weight for people involved, including yourself. We all have varying abilities to cope with such stress – and, of course, some do it better than others.

1.1.1 Personally Involved

You may be personally involved in the incident, and a firsthand observer. In this case, your initial perceptions and responses will be altered inevitably by the fact that your reactions will range from deep concern to being shocked, stunned, and dazed. But you’ll need to take steps to overcome those sensations more quickly than others because you must manage this unfolding crisis situation.

1.1.2 Near But Not Involved

The second way to receive initial notification is when you are near the incident scene, but not directly involved – perhaps in another part of the building.

In both the first and second scenarios, despite your proximity to the events, accurate information may be difficult to obtain. Rumors bubble up quickly. A true and accurate fact pattern may not have yet emerged. One company that I work with has a sign in the crisis command center that states, The initial facts coming in are mostly false.

1.1.3 Remote From the Incident

The third possibility is that you will be remote from the incident. Here, the most difficult challenge is to obtain accurate information and to get a feel for the situation from people who may or may not have been directly involved. Even if the person reporting to you was directly involved, the perceived fact pattern may be skewed or incorrect – consider the different stories police receive from eyewitnesses following a motor vehicle accident or crime. Be ready for timely corrections as refined information is given during the timeline of a crisis.

1.2 Breaking It Down

When an event occurs that pushes us beyond our normal coping mechanisms, we enter an emotional and cognitive zone that is out of the ordinary. An automatic reaction is to dissociate or push back the information, symbolized by the Oh no! reaction common among those who take in bad news. It’s that feeling that the mind and body have become temporarily disconnected – a psychic and physical numbness.

Think about the experience of eating an apple. The only way it can be ingested is in bite-size pieces. Learning of a tragic event that affects people we know well is like asking the mind to gulp in an entire apple. The shock and sense of unreality are the mind’s way of letting you know it can’t cope with this giant intrusion.

This is a place where you should follow this series of steps:

bull Questioning to get an accurate fact pattern.

bull Input and suggestions obtained from others in a brainstorming format.

bull Options socialized and formulated for crisis response.

bull Decisions collaboratively made when possible, but unilaterally when needed.

bull Actions implemented with moral courage on a timely basis, though all facts aren’t available.

bull Corrections made in a timely and nonjudgmental manner as feedback is received.

bull A calm, assertive manner prevailing throughout the process.

You can process and respond best to incoming information by breaking it into bite-size pieces. Those pieces come in many forms and over time. They will coexist with the flashbacks, concentration difficulties, intrusive thoughts, and sleeplessness that you and many survivors of a traumatic incident may experience. But as a crisis response manager in the aftermath of a critical situation, you will have to concentrate all your mental energy on examining and ingesting all the fragments of pertinent information that come your way. Processing your personal responses will be put on hold until your managerial duties have some breathing room.

1.3 You’ll Need to Act Fast

Picture yourself as a corporate manager in an office where a shooting has taken place. Without warning, gunfire and screams shatter the morning calm. Windows shatter, doors slam, furniture is knocked around, people rush by in the hallway. You hear the shouts: Nancy’s been shot! Oh, God, Jorge is dead! Shots and screams are heard from several locations in the building, and someone yells, There are people with guns! You see one man, with a gun, run past your office, and down an exit stairway that leads to the back. The head of building security orders an evacuation, out the front doors.

Your initial notification was the sound of gunshots and screams, which informed you that something awful was happening. You saw one shooter run toward the exit. But you distinctly heard someone yelling about people with guns. Meanwhile, the employees are now congregating in the front courtyard. Should that decision be reconsidered? If a second gunman is still in the building, aren’t employees vulnerable there to further attack? What about the known gunman who ran toward the back? Could he return like Seung-Hui Cho did in the shooting at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia (Virginia Tech), in April 2007, where even more people were shot? You locate the head of building security, explain your worry, and together decide to move the group into a remote area of the parking deck away from cars and the trash bins with potential bombs. Within an hour, police and security staff have searched the entire campus and, fortunately, found no additional persons or threats.

The erroneous impression that there was more than one perpetrator – part of your initial notification – caused you to move an already traumatized group of people a second time, having them wait in the less than comforting environment of the parking deck. Additionally, the lone gunman is now verified to be somewhere outside the building. Now, after police have cleared the building, you need to rescind the order to evacuate, bringing people back inside to a place where they and their immediate emotional needs can be addressed more comfortably, away from the crime scene. This is not to suggest the order to move them to the parking deck was incorrect, based on the information at hand. It’s just that the initial information of multiple gunmen was wrong and the location of the shooter was not yet verified. The point is, typically the initial information includes erroneous assumptions and an inadequate fact pattern. You may need to revise your first response at a moment’s notice.

1.4 The Hunt for Information: Four Questions

The search for credible information is the first action step after notification of a critical incident. These four primary questions, if asked and answered efficiently, will yield the essence of the information you need to strategize and implement your response.

1. What happened?

2. How bad is it?

3. What is being done?

4. What is the potential for escalation?

These questions appear straightforward, but on closer reflection each is surprisingly multifaceted. It is essential to know what questions to ask. The information source may be frantic, injured, or downright confused. As a crisis whisperer, it’s your job to extract the most important information as quickly and accurately as possible.

Let’s examine them individually in some detail.

1.4.1 What Happened?

If you’re getting firsthand information, determine if the source has actually witnessed the events. That is the difference between verified and unsubstantiated firsthand accounting. Even with a firsthand accounting, there can be misperceptions and misinformation. A second accounting from another person might be in order, as time will allow.

If you’re getting secondhand information, find out who told your source. How did he or she know it is accurate? Did that person who told your informant actually see what happened, or has the information been passed down the line? Ask for the exact words that were used to describe the situation when your secondhand source was told.

If the information has not been verified, what steps need to be taken while verification is taking place? This could include dispatching of emergency vehicles, making internal notification, planning a statement to the media, referring to your crisis manual, mobilizing your crisis management team, and strategizing the details of your immediate response, should the incident and pertinent facts be verified. In each case, this is a point for fast action and strategically anticipating what may be coming. Respond to the immediate situation and begin preparations for anticipated outcomes, should they materialize.

Make every minute count. Have your prepared crisis manual and checklists ready so that you can act immediately upon verification. Electronic copies of your crisis responsibilities are critical. However, a hard copy of your checklists and manual is often easier to navigate for some people during crisis response. It is best if you have sufficient copies of your crisis manual stored at various locations, including at the office, at home, and in the car. I recommend that you keep copies both on your electronic handheld organizers (possibly a proprietary app) and in your computer system. Be certain you can put your hands on it within minutes no matter where you are – even