Crisis management: preparation makes the difference

Why you must prepare for a crisis, how to do it and why drills matter more than the document.

Interview summary

Jorge Luis García reminds us that managing risk aims to reduce the probability of an adverse event, not to eliminate it: sooner or later bad things will happen, which is why you must be ready to act. The difference between reacting with preparation and improvising can be the difference between continuing to operate and losing market share and clients, and also avoiding reputational damage.

He describes preparation in steps: identify the threats specific to the institution, estimate their probability and impact, prioritize them, plan the response with limited resources and test it with drills, from very realistic exercises to conversations such as "this is happening, what would you do?". The plan is then updated with what was learned. The contingency plan must be agile and easy to follow, not a document of thousands of pages: who is responsible, how decisions are escalated, what response tools exist and who communicates, with what strategy. He concludes that practice is essential: whoever has run drills knows immediately whom to talk to and what to say, even without being able to consult the plan.

Topics covered

• Why prepare: minimizing a risk is not eliminating it
• Identify, quantify and prioritize your own threats
• Plan the response with limited resources
• Drills to test and improve the plan
• Agile contingency plan: responsibilities, escalation and communication
• Update the plan with lessons learned