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The COVID-19 pandemic has been a not-so-gentle wake-up call for unprepared businesses. Companies of all sizes, reputations, and global scales have taken a hit from government lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders.
Businesses without a plan didn’t stand a chance: many that were caught off-guard went completely under, and some are still struggling just to survive (and will for months, and maybe even years). And even those businesses with well-developed contingency plans weren’t prepared for the unforeseen impacts of COVID-19.
Next time, though, you’ll be ready.
Regardless of what happened, the past is in the past—it’s time to start planning for the future. COVID-19 has taught us some valuable lessons about how to prepare for the unexpected, and we’ll use those brutal teachings to prevent catastrophe when the next crisis strikes.
Whether your business escaped the coronavirus crisis unscathed, crawled out from its wreckage, or is about to open for the first time, this guide will walk you through all the steps to create a complete crisis playbook to protect your business from the next disaster.
COVID-19 challenged every business in different ways—but even if you came out on top, a post-mortem is invaluable. Post-mortems are meetings to uncover lessons learned (both good and bad) from a project, event, or launch.
As soon as possible, gather the key players responsible for making decisions and executing tactics to have a post-mortem. Here are some of the questions to ask:
This session’s purpose isn’t to assign blame—it’s a meeting to discover holes in your business’s operations, figure out how to patch them, and prevent new leaks.
Take the opportunity to answer these questions and come up with solutions. And once you figure out what went wrong, dive deeper to find out why. After you have the why, discuss how to remedy the problem.
Document this discussion and its takeaways. You’ll use these post-mortem findings to create your updated—and upgraded—crisis playbook.
Decisions determine the fate of your business. Making good, timely choices doesn’t happen naturally—it requires clear roles and responsibilities. You need to decide now who has the “D.”
Businesses have come up with various models to clarify decision-making roles and assign responsibilities, and one of the most popular methods is called RAPID. RAPID stands for 5 primary roles: recommend, agree, perform, input, and decide (the D):
The end goal of RAPID: to unclog the decision-making process, creating improved coordination and faster response times. RAPID is just one model for making it happen. You may choose a different method entirely, but your goal should be the same—to eliminate bottlenecks and empower your business to make (and execute) informed decisions quicker.
Don’t wait to form a Tiger Team when disaster is imminent or has already befallen your business. Be proactive and create your crisis management team now. This team should include key decision-makers from around the company: an executive team, a communications manager, human resources staff, etc.
If you’re using the RAPID method, assign roles and responsibilities to each member of your crisis management team. Clarified roles will help prevent any hiccups or speed bumps when you need to make decisions quickly.
Your small business should already have a business plan (if it doesn’t, start with this step-by-step guide), but what happens when a wrench is thrown into it—like a global pandemic? Make sure you have a backup plan—and a backup plan for your backup plan. Even with all this preparation, you should still be ready to scrap all your ideas and start over again.
This planning is a lot of work, but it’s much better than trying to come up with solutions on the fly. Temporary fixes act a lot like Band-Aids—they cover up the problem, but they don’t mend anything. Planning gives you time to research, anticipate, and test your theories before putting them into action.
No, you won’t be able to anticipate everything—few businesses were fully prepared to have a worldwide pandemic shut down the global economy. However, you can make potential plans to respond to a variety of scenarios. The actual real-life situations might not match your use case precisely, but you’ll have already done the research to adapt your plans easily.
Pre-crisis planning is what you’re doing right now. It’s the process of making plans, having post-mortems, and clarifying roles and responsibilities.
These are the plans for how you’ll respond during the crisis. These will include your communications strategy, business alternatives, and emergency funding.
Your post-crisis plans explain how you’ll recover once the crisis has passed. It details how you’ll rebuild your business and restore a sense of normalcy.
One of the most essential elements of your plans will be your communications strategy. This strategy details how you’ll communicate with different audiences, which channels you’ll use to do so, the frequency of your messaging, and who’ll be doing the sending.
During a crisis, there are numerous parties who need to stay informed, but they all require different information:
The channels you use will vary based on your audience, but here are a few of the most powerful mediums at your disposal:
Don’t wait until a crisis arrives to establish these channels. Sign up for an email and SMS service provider. Create your social profiles. Claim your company in Google My Business.
Start sending routine communications to your different audiences so they become familiar with the messages you send and the channels you use. For example, if customers have an issue with Wendy’s, a company that’s extremely active on Twitter, they know the quickest way to get a resolution is to send the fast-food joint a tweet—not an email.
Not too much and not too little—you want to send just the right amount of messages to your community. Whether you’re communicating with employees or customers, getting your messaging frequency wrong can lead to confusion and irritation. Or worse—you might just be ignored.
For example, nearly everyone can relate to having received hundreds of COVID-19 emails from businesses near and far just a few days after the outbreak started. The first few emails probably were opened and read—but once the 10th and 20th started rolling through, they likely remained unopened or were sent straight to trash.
Plan for how you’ll communicate in different situations. If you and your industry are suffering a crisis, sending out weekly emails may be justifiable. However, if the whole world is experiencing a pandemic, frequent messaging could lead to communications fatigue.
COVID-19 has shown us that businesses need to be creative and flexible to deal with ever-changing conditions. Yoga studios are offering online classes, small restaurants are providing delivery and take-out, hairdressers have broadcast DIY hair-coloring classes to their buyers, and other businesses have gotten downright clever to keep their doors open.
You’ll need to think outside the box to keep your doors open, but that’s easier said than done if the crisis has already arrived. Start planning now to make your business more adaptable to change.
Beyond just planning for how you’ll operate under the next quarantine or similar scenario, start implementing new practices now. Here are a few ideas for you to get started:
Start building up your rainy-day fund now. It’s challenging to balance the need to invest in your business and save for the future, but COVID-19 has been a rude awakening for many businesses without a cash reserve.
On average, international airlines only had 2 months of capital to cover working expenses when COVID-19 hit. On the other hand, Apple had enough cash to cover 6 years of expenses. Now, we’re not saying you need to build a 6-year cash cushion—but you should save enough to comfortably survive a storm or slump, preferably more than 2 months’ worth.
Here are a few ideas to start building your rainy-day fund:
You might not be able to save a substantial amount now—and that’s okay. Beginning to build healthy savings habits is the most critical step. Do what you can for now, and increase your contributions whenever opportunity permits.
It’s also not a bad idea to secure a line of credit. A line of credit is there if you need it, but you’re under no obligation to use it—which makes it a great emergency working-capital solution.
While the cliché might be painful, it’s also painfully true. If you don’t create a crisis playbook, you’re leaving the fate of your business to chance—and chance isn’t always so kind.
Take action now to future-proof your business. Hours now could save you time, money, and even lives later.
It’s easy to think that a crisis can’t get worse than COVID-19, but the truth is, things can get a lot worse. Next time, you’ll be ready. With your personalized crisis playbook in hand, you’ll be prepared to respond to whatever the world throws at you.
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Jesse Sumrak is a Social Media Manager for SendGrid, a leading digital communication platform. He's created and managed content for startups, growth-stage companies, and publicly-traded businesses. Jesse has spent almost a decade writing about small business and entrepreneurship topics, having built and sold his own post-apocalyptic fitness bootstrapped startup. When he's not dabbling in digital marketing, you'll find him ultrarunning in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Jesse studied Public Relations at Brigham Young University.
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10 min read • Aug 19, 2022