Crisis Management

A ‘crisis’ is an incident which, because of its scale or impact, is beyond the scope of resolution by normal mechanism or decision making authority within acceptable time scales.

Ever since the volcano ash cloud crisis of 2010, which directly threatened the success of my first core professional conference organiser (PCO) event for our major European Association client, I have been fascinated with event crisis management and am responsible for creating a crisis management group within my agency PCO Bioscientifica, but also for each client event we manage.

As a professional conference organiser, I have experienced my fair share of crises in my 20 year career. Some crises, fortunately not many, were major incidents that, considering the definition above, threatened the success of the event. I term these the ‘great white sharks’ as they are very frightening, but they only actually kill six people a year. Others, which are more commonplace, have been less impactful and can be managed without major disruption however they can cause just as much pain in the short term. I term these the ‘mosquitoes’, much more common (killing over 650,000 people a year), we’ve all been bitten by them and they are terribly irritating. What all such incidents have in common though, is that they were unexpected and needed dedicated management by a team made up of the right people in the right place with the right information to ensure they could make the best decisions.

Sharks vs. Mosquitoes

Major incidents that threaten the success, or even the continuation of your event are, thankfully, very few and far between. An events manager may experience one or two in their career, they include the terrorist attack, the burning down of the venue, the ash cloud that cancels all flights, a major political situation in your host city, a demonstration that will make the national news.

Major incidents that threaten the success, or even the continuation of your event are, thankfully, very few and far between. An events manager may experience one or two in their career, they include the terrorist attack, the burning down of the venue, the ash cloud that cancels all flights, a major political situation in your host city, a demonstration that will make the national news.

More common place incidents that threaten the success of your event, are often overlooked and not considered a ‘crisis’. However, they should be. Such incidents can be just as dangerous, as damaging and cause the same pain to event managers as a major incident, certainly in the short term and you will experience these far more often. These common, more troublesome incidents include the speaker that doesn’t show, the aircon in the venue that is broken, the power cut, the caterer going bankrupt. They are the minor problems that, if you are not prepared for them, will be as difficult to manage, and as devastating as a major crisis – if not handled with precision and confidence.

It is of course important to be prepared for these ‘shark’ incidents, however they are unpredictable and infrequent, so how can you gain experience of managing such crises and build an appropriate plan? Ultimately a good crisis plan is built on the foundations of how your crisis team will approach the tasks involved in managing the crisis and its impact on your event. These foundations will be the same for a shark or mosquito and will have the ability to be scaled to deal with the type of incident in question. I categorise different types of crises into three types of response required:

1. Be aware
2. Be prepared
3. Take action

Where do you start?

When we consider the priorities during a crisis the following list describes what is important:

• Protect Human Life – is there a credible threat to human life. Are you onsite, has something happened?
• How are you going to manage the crisis, who is going to be in that room, who are you going to call – Ghostbusters? I don’t think so.
• Can you maintain business continuity today, tomorrow, next week?
• What steps are you taking to protect the client’s reputation – if they continue to run the event, how will this look to delegate, members, sponsors, speakers?
• Same question for the professional conference organiser’s reputation, will you be considered supportive and knowledgeable, do you have their trust, do you have the experience, who are they talking to?
• When will things return to normal? What will normal look / feel like?

Crisis management is about being prepared, but not over preparing. It is not helpful to spend time walking through the scenario of every conceivable incident that could threaten an event. You cannot estimate how any given audience will react, nor can you anticipate your own reaction, or those of the suppliers on whom you will rely; the venue for example. A good crisis management plan will outline:

• What is considered a crisis, and the different levels of severity of an incident;
• What trigger will activate the group of people who will come together to make the decisions and manage the crisis;
• Who will be in that group, where and how they will gather;
• What responsibility each member of the group will have.

A good crisis management plan will be continuously updated and kept in multiple places to ensure it is accessible event if the computer systems are down, or you are travelling. I have a copy of mine on the local hard drive of my laptop and a printed copy in my work bag. The crisis team will annually be refreshed on the details of the plan and whilst we have a standard master plan for our PCO agency, we also create a condensed plan for the individual events which identifies the individuals from the client’s organisation that would also be involved in the crisis management plans. The agency plan would be activated first, and the client plan would cascade down from this.

The crisis team will be made up of the individuals who are able to step away from the business as usual and the operational responsibility for the event in question, they will also be those with the power to make decisions, including authorising additional expenditure. It is crucial that the crisis team can be mobilised quickly, which may not be possible for the onsite lead event manager to free up time to join an unplanned meeting. It’s equally as important that the tasks involved in managing a crisis are removed from the team on the ground trying to continue to deliver the event. In separating out the responsibilities of the events team and the crisis team, you will benefit from the dedication of the crisis team to the tasks at hand whilst being safe in the knowledge that the operational requirements of the event will not be neglected. This is important as once the situation returns to ‘normal’, the event can continue without further delay.

This article was written by Kate Sargent, Deputy Managing Director, Bioscientifica Ltd