We were still moving when the smoke swallowed the road ahead. Thick and acrid, it hid the country in front of us, so the radio was the only thing telling us where we were. “Looks like we’re flying blind,” I said into the handset, my eyes scanning the dense smoke. “Keep your head on a swivel, we don’t know what we’re driving into.” A voice came back from the back of the truck: “Roger that.” The chatter among the crew died down after that because we were about to drive into something unpredictable and ever-changing.
That’s the part of a crisis nobody plans for. You rarely get a clear picture before you have to act. The smoke hides the fire, the reports are thin and the clock is already running. What carries a crew through is knowing who is in charge before it reaches the scene.
A fire doesn’t care who is in charge. It keeps moving while people sort out who gets to decide. So on the fireground we settle command before we arrive, not during the fight. Everyone knows who is running the show. Everyone knows who takes over if that person goes down.
That’s what crisis management really is. It isn’t a thick document or a list of risks on a whiteboard. It’s how your business decides things when normal life has stopped working.
06:50 Monday: two people giving orders, nobody in charge
A burst water main has flooded the ground floor overnight. The power is off. It’s 06:50 on Monday and your first staff are arriving to a wet building and no lights.
Two of your senior people are already on site and giving different instructions to the same team. One wants everyone to start moving stock to higher ground. The other wants the team to find the electrical panel and the shut-off valve first. Both instructions are reasonable. Both are being followed by different people at the same time.
Nobody is sure who is actually in charge because the owner is stuck on a call and unreachable. Meanwhile a customer is ringing the after-hours mobile wanting a straight answer about today’s delivery. This is the moment that decides how the next week goes. The water isn’t what matters. The command is.
Command is a decision, not a title
Most small businesses assume the boss will handle any big problem. That works right up until the boss is on a plane, in a hospital bed or simply out of phone range. Then a room full of capable people stand around waiting for permission that never comes.
Command isn’t a job title. It’s a decision about who makes the call when the normal rules are off. You either make that decision in advance or you make it in the middle of the flood with everyone shouting over the top of each other.
There’s a second trap that catches owners too. Many people think a crisis is the same as a bad day. A bad day is when you’re short staffed or a delivery is late. A crisis is when the problem threatens the whole business and the usual fixes don’t work.
Research published in the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management in 2022 backs this up. Fasth, Elliot and Styhre surveyed 1,000 small-business leaders and found 68% had no crisis group and 72% had no continuity plan before trouble hit. Most said they solved issues as they arose instead of deciding what mattered most.
The research is global rather than Australian. The pattern still shows up everywhere. It matters because a bad day is handled by routine while a crisis needs command.
Three things command must fix in the first hour
When I take command of a section, I don’t try to solve the fire. I do three things first and I do them fast.
The first is to put one voice in charge of the response. One person decides the priorities and everyone else works to them. Two people giving orders is worse than none because the team splits in half and neither plan gets done properly. If the first person in charge is doing a poor job, you replace them at a set time and you tell everyone that’s the plan.
The second is to set one list of priorities. In the first hour there should be no more than three things that matter. Anything else can wait. That list is what every decision gets measured against, so the team can act without checking back for every little thing.
The third is to keep one record of decisions. On the fireground we write down times and calls because later on someone always asks why we did what we did. In a business crisis the record does two jobs. It keeps the story straight for staff and customers. It also gives you something to work through afterwards, which is the Debrief and Analyse part of the DADA process.
Australia’s own small-business guidance agrees. The Australian Government’s business.gov.au says your emergency plan has to name the team and set clear roles for each person. It also says to train those people before the emergency rather than on the day.
One more thing belongs in that first hour: deciding when command ends. A crisis that nobody ever declares over becomes a permanent state of emergency. Name the person who says the response is done and business is back to normal.
Fight It, Flank It or Let It Burn
Back to Monday morning. Here’s how I’d divide the three fronts.
Fight it: the flood. Water and power are the real danger and they come first. Get the power isolated, find the shut-off and protect anything that can’t get wet. This is the fire that will do the most damage if you let it run, so it gets your best people.
Flank it: the customer’s call. You can’t promise a delivery time you don’t know yet. What you can do is take control of the message. Answer the call, say exactly what has happened and give a real time for the next update. A customer who is kept informed is far easier to deal with than a customer who is left guessing.
Let it burn: the routine reports. The weekly report and the internal meeting can both wait a week. Tell the people expecting them that they’re paused and why. Letting something burn is a choice you make on purpose. Forgetting about it isn’t the same thing.
Now the team has one voice, three priorities and a clear reason why two jobs aren’t happening today.
The 15-minute Business Fire Drill
Get your team together, set a timer for 15 minutes and work through these questions out loud.
- If the owner can’t be reached, who takes command? Does everyone know who it is?
- How does the rest of the team find out who is in charge?
- Who talks to customers? What do we tell them first?
- Where do we write down the decisions we make during a crisis?
- When does command hand back to normal business? Who decides that?
If any answer is a shrug or a “we’d work it out”, you’ve found the gap worth fixing this week. Write it down, give it an owner and set a date to test it again.
Expect the unexpected, then decide who leads
You can’t predict the water main, the cyber attack or the day your best customer walks. That’s not a failure of planning. It’s just how these things work. What you can control is whether your team spends the first hour arguing about who decides or getting on with the job.
Make that call now while everything is calm. Say the name out loud. Tell the team who it is and what happens if that person isn’t there. When the next bad Monday arrives, the only thing left to sort out will be the problem itself.
Run this drill with your team this week. Want it facilitated? Book a Business Fire Drill at areyoudisasterready.com.
FAQ
What is crisis management?
Crisis management is how your business makes decisions when something serious threatens normal operations. It covers who takes command, how the team is told what to do first and how you communicate with staff and customers. It’s less about the document and more about the decisions people can make under pressure.
Who should take charge in a business crisis?
The best person to take charge is whoever can make clear decisions and is available when the crisis starts. It doesn’t have to be the owner. What matters is that everyone knows the name in advance and knows who steps in if that person can’t be reached.
What is a crisis management plan?
A crisis management plan sets out who is in charge, the first priorities, who talks to customers and where decisions get recorded. It should be short enough to use under pressure. Test it with your team so the plan is something you’ve practised, not just something you’ve written.
How do you communicate during a crisis?
Communicate early and keep it simple. Give staff one clear set of priorities and give customers one honest message with a time for the next update. Use the channels your people actually check and always say when the next update is coming so nobody is left guessing.
When does a crisis response end?
A crisis response ends when the person in command decides normal operations can resume and says so clearly. Name that person in advance. Without a clear ending, the response can drift on for weeks and wear out your team long after the danger has passed.
