The majority of public and private sector companies, as well as many local, state and Federal agencies pay lip service to preparing for a crisis: but only a small percentage has taken the tangible and ongoing steps necessary to ensure that a product liability case, natural disaster, an act of work place violence or other catastrophic event doesn’t cause an internal and external crisis-based meltdown. Please read through the questions below—and see if your organization, its executives and managers are truly ready to effectively manage a crisis and lead employees, investors and the public successfully through it.

Crisis #1:
Are you prepared to lead your organization through a crisis relating to work place violence?

Work place violence is not limited to the Post Office. It’s more common than you think. What has your organization done to prepare for this calamity which can easily morph into a full blown crisis?

Crisis #2:
Product liability issues or a lack of public trust in your company’s products?
Remember the recent issue with Wendy’s in California? A woman customer claimed that she found a part of a finger in her chili? It turned out to be a lie, but it still cost Wendy’s millions of dollars in lost business. You don’t have to sell food or drugs or dangerous toys in order to be the victim of product liability claims that can derail your marketing efforts, drag your organization’s good name through the mud: or cause the loss of millions of dollars in revenues – and millions more in added legal expenses.

Crisis #3:
Corporate compliance and financial irregularities.

For public companies, corporate compliance issues aren’t just the domain of Sarbanes-Oxley and the SEC. The disclosure of even minor accounting irregularities can lead to a full blown crisis in confidence of your company’s stock or your organization’s credibility and integrity. Does Fannie Mae ring a bell?

Crisis #4:
Corporate culture that encourages employees to disregard ethical considerations.

Often times, an organization’s culture can be the root cause of employees creating false and misleading data with regard to their company’s actual performance. Managers and executives who insist on blind loyalty from their subordinates create an environment in which employees feel pressured to cook the books to meet financial benchmarks or release new products before they are ready. Did I hear someone say Ken Lay? Enron? WorldCom? Bernie Ebbers?

Crisis #5:
A terrorist attack, a company specific attack, natural disaster, or other catastrophic event.

The 9/11 Public Discourse Project (the successor, non-government investigative panel to the 9/11 Commission) headed by Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton said this in a recently released report: “Standards are only beginning to find their way into private sector business practices.” They graded the private sector over all with a grade of “C.” Can your organization afford to maintain that grade point? Ask yourself, “What would happen if…? We don’t think you’ll be satisfied with your own answers.

That’s not the question you should be asking us. The better question is: “What can Maverick do to assist us in preparing our organization today, for a crisis that may arise in the future?

Maverick can help any type of organization properly prepare and practice for any kind of crisis. Dr. Martin D. Cohen, the head of our crisis management team and the Firm’s Director of Behavioral Integration Management™ (BIM) has been planning, preparing, and simulating catastrophic scenarios—and governments’ response for over twenty years. Often left out of crisis management and crisis leadership is the need to assess and address the concerns of employees, vendors, shareholders and the public. (Just look at how Toyota’s botched crisis management efforts have impacted a broad range of stakeholders.)

And remember, crisis leadership does not always come naturally: a great CEO may be a terrible leader during a crisis. Maverick can first assess, and then coach your organization’s executives and managers to become capable, effective and inspirational leaders during a crisis. And if you need us on-site during a crisis, we can have a team on the ground within hours-and available by phone within minutes.

Most organizations don’t want to spend the money to prepare and plan for scenarios that seem so unlikely to occur. And a one-time effort to create a “management preparedness committee” that writes a white paper on crisis management; that gets little attention and ends up in the circular file is a complete waste of your organization’s time and resources.

Training your executives and managers to be leaders during a crisis takes both time and money. Analyzing potential risks to your company or organization also takes time and money. And continuously up-dating and simulating crises of all kinds against your company and employees takes, that’s right, time and money. So why do it? Because the costs you’ll incur when something does happen will be exponentially greater than if you had prepared and practiced in advance.

Maverick’s crisis management practice includes the following services:

• Executive Coaching
• Management Assessment & Coaching
• Crisis Leadership Training
• Real Time Crisis Response Teams On-site
• Crisis Preparedness / Strategy and Tactics
• Planning, Execution and Analyses of Mock Crisis Scenarios
• Modeling and Simulations
• Building High Performance Crisis Management Teams

Dr. Martin D. Cohen is a licensed clinical psychologist with over thirty years in practice.  In addition to his leadership role at Maverick, Marty is also the Clinical Director for Response of the State of Florida’s Disaster Behavioral Health Response Team, which prepares for and provides psychological first aid to individuals and communities in the event of a terrorist attack, hurricane or other disaster.

The same experience, skills and perspectives that Marty brings to the citizens, first responders, and visitors in the state of Florida and around the world (he was recently invited to be the keynote speaker on a crisis management panel sponsored by the Chinese government), he brings to our client organizations.  The goal being, of course, to mitigate the adverse effects of traumatic events -- whether from natural disasters, workplace violence, accidents, or more psychological traumas such as death of co-workers, lay-offs or reorganizations.   By promoting and restoring psychological well-being and daily life functioning, corporate productivity can be most effectively maintained.

Contact Maverick today to learn how we can provide professional crisis management services to your organization.  Just provide us with some basic information and one of the Firm’s partners will contact you directly.Click Here.

To read Marty’s latest article titled, A New Model for a Statewide Disaster Behavioral Health Response Plan Click Here, or to read his article Leading in a Crisis Click Here >>

To view our pilot video on Crisis Leadership produced for Business Week Online, Click Here >>