|
||||
| Effective
crisis management: Are we ready?
The trained crisis communicator had already gathered the best available information of the incident and was able to respond. "The suicide bomber is a terrorist said to have attempted to take the life of Mr. Douglas Devananda and this is said to be a failed attempt. Mr. Devananda's office is located close to the Kollupitiya Police Station, the PM's residence, and the UK and US Embassies. There is not much difference in this and what has been happening in Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Wellawatte or Mt. Lavinia, where informants and political opponents have been slain in the past. It is indeed a sorry and sad thing that human life is lost with terrorists getting into action. It will do the country and the economy and all of us good, if we presented these facts to our friends and to the world". His response was factual and truthful. It was with the objective of managing the various responses to the crisis to minimise its impact in the interest of the country. Later in the afternoon, there were other colleagues with various political alliances providing all sorts of biased analysis as to the causes and impact of the incident. Their minds were naturally marred by which divisive point of view, each held. They were mostly speculative and only fringed on facts. The common impact of all of this to the country, its economy and the well being of the people is that, it culminates to being an exercise that is self-destructive. No one who is a right minded leader, except a terrorist, will allow the country and her people to undergo undue suffering. No good leader will want to gain power sieving through the ashes left behind of a devastated country and her people. Right minded leadership, the likes of whom we have seen with all time greats like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, have done all they could, with the singular resolve to prevent or minimise, such suffering by their people. Crisis management and crisis communication is an art and a science that must be learnt by all, at various levels of management in government, business and civil society. In a crisis, there is little or no use for overdue official releases or delayed responses which awaited consensus of opinion or clearance by superiors. A single individual or a small team of designated persons at each institution must be able to trigger the operation of a previously designed and tested crisis management plan. This must be done within a few minutes of the occurrence of any incident of crisis proportions. There need be the ability to rapidly gather facts, analyse them, mobilise resources, prepare and disseminate appropriate responses to manage the crisis and to communicate its nature and the impacts to the different publics with confidence and decidedness. Being prepared for effectively managing the different types of crisis and setting in place systems for effective crisis communication at each institution, can indeed minimise the damage done to the country, the economy and lives of people. We are a country that has lived through, crisis after crisis, during the past few decades. An analyst once called Sri Lankans, a nation of 'Crisis Junkies', who have much resilience to withstand its impacts. What happened on Wednesday may be considered to be yet another incident, compared to the string of LTTE attacks in the past on the Colombo airport, the Central Bank and several key political leaders. But the fact is that we, as a nation need to be prepared, to not only prevent crisis from occurring, but also effectively managing them and communicating the truth about them to the world at large, as rapidly and as effectively as possible. There is no scarcity of good crisis management models and learning materiel from all over the world. What we need to do is to equip ourselves with the skills and be prepared for swift action. |
||||
Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
