In response to the pandemic, executive leaders may find themselves in one of three situations:
Executive leaders who are already in a declared crisis can use Janellis’ 7-Step Decision Support Tool.
For more than ten years, senior leaders have used the tool to navigate through some of their most complex challenges.
Organisations in critical infrastructure industries such as Aviation, Banking and Finance, Energy, Insurance, Transport and Water use this process to:
The value of using the 7-Step Process is that it provides rigor in decision-making and allows everyone in the team to progress at the same pace through ‘critical decision points’ and to develop contingency plans.
Step 1 – Determine if the ‘situation’ is internal or external. External may be a Government directive; internal may be supply chain issues.
Step 2 – Ensure the right people are in the room with a cross-section of experience from across the business, to fully understand the impacts. Bring specialist expertise in if you need to.
Step 3 – The team needs to separate facts from assumptions. Internal facts related to the current impacts need to be provided to the team and external facts need to come from trusted sources and include Government directives. The team may receive written or verbal briefings on the facts and communication should be succinct and without ambiguity.
Assumptions need to be captured as they may be used to inform decision-making if information is incomplete.
Before going onto the next step, the team needs to reach consensus on the ‘main issue’.
Step 4 – The team should consider most likely, best-case and worst-case outcomes and be prepared for a range of potential scenarios.
Step 5 – The most likely and worst-case scenarios need to be considered across a range of impact areas specific to the organisation including: people; operations; supply-chain; strategy; financial, reputation etc. This should be done exhaustively to manage all risks.
Step 6 – This step is the opportunity to distil the information into an agreed list of actions to be completed now and later and this helps the team to prioritise.
Step 7 – The final step is the communications strategy which should consider all stakeholder groups, internal and external and the best ways to communicate.
Following these steps gives the team a ‘common operating picture’ from where they can make decisions.
The output of this process should be a Situation Report (SITREP) which should underpin the overall communications response strategy.
If there is insufficient data from across the business to inform decision-making, other teams may need to meet and follow this process. Teams can meet hourly, daily or weekly depending on the situation. Teams should all use the SITREP process to share information within the organisation.
Communicating well, even if the news is not ideal, can provide assurance and build confidence.
The 7-Step Process can also be used in scenarios where the organisation is not in a crisis but needs to be prepared for one. In these situations, teams have more time to gather and verify data and to spend more time developing contingency plans.
This structure can be used to manage a range of emerging threats including operational; strategic; financial and reputation, global, environmental and political.
The process would be the same 7-Step Process as the team would during a crisis, but the output would be more related to planning and contingency plans rather than a Situation Report (SITREP).
For organisations who recognise the need to build the capability to respond to a range of potential cascading threats to the organisation over a longer period, we recommend:
A Quick Reference Guide can be developed for team members to be used as an aide memoire. The Quick Reference Guide includes the 7-Step Process which is used alongside the three-tier response framework.
The 7-Step Process combines strategic and critical thinking skills from draws upon a variety of perspectives from to solve complex problems.
The tool is designed to help senior executives through critical decision points , high levels of scrutiny, consequences and compressed timeframes.
The value of using the tool is having a structured and intuitive process that is oriented to drive action. It is used to:
The process gives teams the agility across all three of these scenarios and enables an adaptive capacity to respond to a range of changing circumstances.
For example: On Monday a team may find themselves in a declared crisis and by Friday be in a scenario where the immediate threat has passed. Or they may be in a scenario where there is no imminent threat on Monday and by Friday they are in a crisis.
Using the 7-Step Process helps organisations to become more resilient for a range of potential threats in the longer term, not just COVID-19.
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