Business continuance plan applied to crisis communications

Some "acts of God" that could put
your company in a very hot seat

Controlling uncertainty has been a quest of centuries for humankind, and the greatest innovations and discoveries in history have come as a result of this infinite thirst for control. Man wanted to control river flows or tidal waves and created dams; we wanted to control human behavior and we created laws; we wanted to control distances and we created boats, trains, cars and planes. All things and situations both natural and manmade, that posed a challenge in this quest for total control have been duly analyzed, understood and overcome. Nonetheless, even after centuries of careful analysis and research our efforts to master every single adverse situation 100% have been futile.

Crisis management it’s a relatively new discipline born in the 1980´s with the aim of exercising a comprehensive control on unforeseen developments that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public. Although exclusively related to the industrial world in its genesis, it is now widely use in all human activities.

As mankind became more educated and better informed, value was assigned to intangibles such as image, brand, perceptions and opinions. As a logical outcome, Crisis Management became intrinsically linked to the protection of this intangible values whenever they are in dire moments and the discipline of choice for this efforts is communications.

Crisis Management Communications is not an exact science that could be implemented with a “one size fits all” approach. Most of the time, if you are dealing with the communications department in any kind of organization, the crisis will arrive when you least expect them; even if you and the whole organization have foreseen it and made the “appropriate” plans for that moment. 


As an anecdote that could exemplify my statement I can recall that while I was serving as a diplomat in Brussels, a colleague was working really hard in order to shake off a generalized perception the EU had about his country’s bad record on human rights violations; everything was working smoothly, some doors where finally opening and the lobby for better access for this countries products, along with much needed development cooperation was yielding very good results, when a rather opaque electoral process in that country shifted the whole lobby strategy from washing off past sins to keep at least minimum diplomatic relations alive.  To sort things out the initial strategy, that was producing excellent results, diverted into many parallel strategies with EU institutions, Member State, the media and the public opinion in general changing constantly along the way.

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In both private and public organizations keeping up with communicational crisis is a very uncertain and ghastly task, but new management tools may provide, if not a solution, a very scientific prophylactic method of planning for this crisis. Business continuance (sometimes referred to as business continuity) describes the processes and procedures an organization puts in place to ensure that essential functions can continue during and after a disaster. 


Business continuance planning seeks to prevent interruption of mission-critical services, and to reestablish full functionality as swiftly and smoothly as possible.

Just like Crisis Management the origins for a Business Continuance Plan is industrial and addresses the need to maintain operational capacity in a production line or in the provision of a service.  Notwithstanding this industry/service roots, I truly see plenty of useful tools and techniques perfectly applicable to Crisis Communications, for instance:

·        A business continuance plan normally includes:

o   a disaster recovery plan, which specifies an organization's planned strategies for post-failure procedures;

o   a business resumption plan, which specifies a means of maintaining essential services at the crisis location;

o   a business recovery plan, which specifies a means of recovering business functions at an alternate location; and

o   a contingency plan, which specifies a means of dealing with external events that can seriously impact the organization.

To differentiate the typical crisis communication plan from a business continuance plan in crisis communications (BCP/comm) we need to understand that the first one will try to plan in order to respond to a crisis quickly, take immediate steps to control the message and successfully regain the public's trust; whereas the later one will initially do the same tasks but would continue to accompany the organization and its stakeholders during the incident and through the business resumption process.

The BCP /comm would follow a holistic approach closely linked to the operational dimension of the organization.  Ideally it should take into consideration the following plans:

1.      Incident management plan, it would be the first line of defense and should dissect the incident and its immediate consequences. It would take into consideration all aspects of the incident starting with:  a clear identification of the personnel that would deal with the incident and in what capacity, an immediate solution to the incident, care for the person or persons directly affected, general but accurate knowledge of the cause or causes, proper identification of publics affected, immediate establishment of communication channels with  publics affected, constant briefing to publics affected,  rapid initial response to  media outlets preferably by the spokesperson and finally a very objective assessment of all the actions taken.

2.      Normalization plan, based upon the results of the assessment, the Communications Department will provide all the necessary tools in order to restore each of the institution's operative components to the fullest capacity possible. The resumption plan needs to start by putting together a normalization team and its entire necessary infrastructure; this team will ID with other departments the basic needs for total normalization and a possible timeframe for this objective. The team will audit all publics affected in order to grasp their empathy towards the organization and their willingness to find ways to keep working with it. Depending on the nature of the incident, the normalization team will create adequate messages to all audiences in order to start seeding a sense of normality. At this stage the presence of the highest authority will be of extreme importance; likewise, renowned supporters are key at this juncture.

3.      Recovery plan, some of the most valuable possessions for an organization, company or person are intangible assets such as image, reputation or credibility; recovering from a crisis that hinders all the work done to reach a solid leadership position or a good perception is one of the most important tasks of a communications director on the recovery plan. To achieve a high degree of effectiveness recovering a good public image most experts agree that communicating is the key.  Regardless of the nature of the incident and its consequences, keeping all publics well informed will guarantee a smoother transition towards total normalization.  We need to remember that the company’s or person´s reaction through the crisis is deeply scrutinized by all media, hence, by all publics.  Keeping everybody informed will surely create stakeholders’ trust that would eventually help the organization disseminate favorable messages after the initial crisis.  With open channels and the clear objective to tell the world that the organization has overcome the crisis and is ready to resume business, the organization should develop promotion and visibility opportunities such as meetings with senior government officials, big business representatives and grassroots organizations; all of this with custom made press dossiers, press conferences and interviews with relevant media outlets.

Restoring full functional capacity for the organization and reestablishing its reputation to its original state may be a difficult task, but experts on crisis management agree that making any substantial headway can only be achieved if the communications team manages to keep open channels with all stakeholders during the whole crisis.  In summary a business continuance plan in crisis communications will provide you or your company a scientific methodology to plan, organize and lead your organization through a crisis with the objective of reaching some degree of control on the flow of communications to your benefit before others take the advantage from you by default.