Crisis Team

When a crisis is declared, the first question is not what to do but who is in the room and what they are allowed to decide. The crisis team exists to answer that question in advance: a named group of executives with the authority to spend, to stop operations and to speak for the organisation. For the chief executive, the team is the instrument that turns a plan into decisions in the first hour, instead of a queue of approvals. Without it, the response defaults to whoever happens to be reachable — rarely the people with the right authority.

In practice the team is small, typically 5 to 8 members: a leader, operations, finance, communication, IT or security, legal and HR, each with a one-page role card and a named deputy. Activation criteria and contact chains are fixed in the crisis management plan; a common target is the first coordination call within 60 minutes of declaration, at any hour. When a fire closes a distribution warehouse overnight, it is the crisis team that decides by morning whether to divert orders to a second site, what to tell key customers, and who informs the insurer and the civil defence authorities. Membership is reviewed after every organisational change, not once a year.

The most expensive mistake is a team without a mandate: it convenes, discusses and then waits for approvals, which defeats its purpose. A close second is a team that has never rehearsed together, so roles are negotiated during the event itself. In the ERGP programme, the composition and authority of the crisis team are covered in module M4, Crisis management and decision making.