Prevention is better than cure. How to avoid a crisis!

 Who would have thought it?

What a difference a week makes!

Last week I decried the lack of consequences for the top people involved the News of the World scandal. This week the world righted itself and the Chief Executive resigned. But that was simply the lid coming off the pot. We also saw the resignation of the two top policemen at the Metropolitan Police. And who knows what else is to come!

It's like an atomic bomb. You get the initial spectacular blast but the after-effects continue to wreak even more havoc long afterwards.

So what lessons are there here for your business? Certainly there are some pretty big ones. And while I am sure there will be more as events unfold there are obvious ones you would do well to heed immediately. 

Firstly, you should always have a disaster recovery plan. Of course, in developing that you need to plan for the worst. That is the only way to ensure that you have everything you need when disaster strikes. That way when faced with a crisis you start by preparing for the worst and acting as though it is what is happening. It is always easier to slow down and scale back than it is to accelerate and ramp up. In this case failure to recognise that has made the response more inappropriate, inadequate and embarrassing.

Secondly, you cannot contain pressure. No matter what you do, at some stage it will find a way out. It has to, because a wrong premise will always lead to an incorrect conclusion. Thus the more you try to contain it, the bigger the ultimate blast will be! In that regard this situation is not unlike the recent banking crisis. Things that were not right inevitably had to surface. Earlier efforts to conceal them simply resulted in an embarrassing situation turning into an unmitigated disaster. Are you sure that there is nothing similar bubbling in your organisation?

Of course the best form of disaster planning is to ensure that you don't have a disaster in the first place. That is why we have the old adage that "prevention is better cure." So the key question is, "How do you do that?" It is particularly difficult in a large organisation with hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people. Of course you cannot monitor everyone's actions. So how do you mitigate against inappropriate behaviour? 

Ultimately, there is only one way you can do this. It is to build an organisation around shared principles and values where you quickly identify and root out non-aligned behaviour. And that has to happen at any and every level of the organisation.

That is also not easy in the modern organisation, with all the internal conflict, petty rivalries and silo thinking. Even if the ultimate goal is the same and the cause is worthwhile, a couple of bad apples can contaminate the whole.

I don't know what you think, but the only solution I can see is employee ownership: to make everyone in the organisation an owner. That way they have a vested interest in how the business performs, and see any activity that works against the business' best interests as a personal affront. It is a perfect solution? Possibly not, but can you think of a better one? It will ensure employee engagement and avert the crisis of ownership I described last week.