How to spot a potential crisis on the horizon

Research shows that around 70% of corporate crises stem from issues that could have been identified in advance. Having a robust monitoring system in place can help by identifying issues before they turn into a crisis.
 
Here are a few ways to do that.
 
🔸 Media monitoring
An obvious start and one to get right. You can appoint a monitoring service to do this. What’s important is to ensure you brief them very carefully about the specific keywords you are interested in. If you are too vague or general, the service may pick up irrelevant items and fail to pick up significant ones.
 
A free alternative is to set up Google Alerts to pick up web coverage of topics.
 
And, of course, you should be scanning relevant news media yourself, including local and national newspapers, news websites, and business and industry magazines.
 
🔸 Meet key stakeholders
It is important for organizations to have periodic meetings with various key stakeholders such as the local community, politicians, industry leaders, and even competitors. Such engagements should be treated as vital because they create the opportunity to gain some feedback about how your organization is viewed by your stakeholders.
 
The occasions also enable business relationships to be strengthened and common issues to be discussed. A useful advantage if you do face a crisis situation.
 
🔸 Your employees
Employees are a key source of insight. It is crucial to pay attention to their feedback and perspectives. It is essential to create the space for them to provide sincere opinions based on what they hear at their frontline level about customers and competitors.

This can help you to understand changing customer preferences, changing expectations and habits due to changing technologies and social standards.
 
🔸 Your competitors
Feedback about your competitors is also a valuable early warning tool. This can be from publicly available documents such as community responses to projects.
 
This kind of feedback is valuable because it gives insights into what stakeholders may also want your organization to act upon, giving you an edge.
 
🔸 Market research
If you don’t have a budget to conduct market research, then consider piggybacking questions onto an existing survey.
 
Another option is to conduct your own surveys using software such as SurveyMonkey. Just ensure you have a sufficiently large mailing list.
 
💡Organisations need to do more than just analyse early warning signals. You also need to ensure you are organised to maximize your chances of responding effectively. All too often this is left until it is too late. Use these early warning systems to provide insights to help inform your crisis response strategy.
 
For more tips click here or get in touch. #Issues #Crisis
 
📷 Fernando Arcos at Pexels