Crisis Management

Crisis is an unstable event or change that can affect an individual, group, or the whole society that require them to make decisions in a short shocking time. In the business environment, crisis affects both organization and its stakeholders. It can either lead an organization to a dangerous situation or give organization some opportunities. Nobody knows when a crisis will exactly hit an organization. Furthermore, organizations need to be able to deal with it quickly when it shows up. Therefore, organizations need to build some strategies to prepare themselves to manage crisis. The process by which an organization deals with a crisis called crisis management.

Crisis occurs not only in the business environment, but also in the daily life. In our daily lives, different people face different crises everyday. Let’s say high school students. They have to face crises in their daily routines at school, for example when the teacher gives them an unexpected test. In this case, there are only two options, whether the test is a threat or an opportunity for them. If they studied and prepared themselves to face this kind of crisis, the test would be an opportunity for them to get the highest scores but if they didn’t study, the test would be a danger that they may get bad scores from it. So it depends on how they prepare themselves to anticipate the crisis.

Another example is a business man. He drives to the office everyday. One day, on his way to office, suddenly there’s a problem with his car which lets him arrive late at the office. If he prepared of this kind of crisis, for example by leaving home earlier, he wouldn’t come late to the office. In the fact, he left home at the usual time so he arrives late at the office. This case is the same with the high school students case. It always depends on how someone prepares themselves to deal with the crisis.

These days, managers have to face many kinds of crises such as natural disaster, technological crisis, criminal acts, confrontation crisis, the crisis of skewed management, and other crises that occur in either expected or unexpected ways. In some cases, managers can be so surprised when a crisis hits their companies. The only reason why a crisis shows up surprisingly is because the people in the companies have no idea of what crisis will occur, when, and why it may happens. Therefore, they have to be ready to face the crises that may happen to their companies by preparing the key steps that may help their companies to deal with crises. A manager may set some steps for the company to do before the crisis, during the crisis, and after the crisis so the company can survive and keep moving forward even in the crisis situation.

Before a crisis occurs, a manager can build a crisis management team who takes the responsibility to manage and prepare the company and predict what crises may occur in the future by analyzing the recent news, events, conditions, and stability. Company can also try to practise making decisions under stress so the leaders and the managers can still think positively and take the best decisions for the company during the crisis. When a crisis occurs, a manager must be able to react quickly. A manager has to inform the director about the crisis as soon as possible, then analyze what happened, how it happened, and what actions company should take. After the crisis, a manager needs to evaluate the crisis management programmes and build some action plans to make sure the same crisis will not happen again in the future.

Crisis management is important not only for companies, but also for everyone around the world. When someone or an organization can’t deal with a crisis, the crisis will lead them to failure and desperatation. However, when they can face it, it will lead them to success and give them experiences so they can be more proffesional and well-organized while solving another crises.