Some crisis can be predicted and practiced – some always remain an exception. But are crisis really crisis? Crisis drag businesses into nervousness, taking irrational decisions and then spending more time in recovery of those irrational decisions, rather than recovery from crisis. That is where firms lose out … because every crisis presents a hidden opportunity.
The key focus that derives the organization is the top management vision and values. Organizational vision and values should be moreover linked to positivism, reliefing the pressure from the employees so that their focus is towards business and problem solving rather than the crisis ‘fear’. Crisis fear is
- What employees encounter when they see brand going in crisis
- Job security issues
- Brand sustainability question
- Management decision making
- Future of the business
- Survival strategy
- Probability of success of survival strategy
A question may arise; why should there be crisis fear? since it always about some sort of disaster or damage. Because every crisis presents a hidden opportunity. It could be an opportunity to bring some innovative changes or an invitation to make major and dynamic strategic changes in the organization.
It is often said that “angry customer is always an opportunity”. This statement initially makes people laugh as the sole purpose of a business is to have happy customers. A deeper dig into this statement leads to the fact that a customer’s anger regarding dissatisfaction of a certain product gives the brand an opportunity to bring improvements. In case there is any incident that occurs, it ends up creating a soft tissue of memory inside the customer’s mind which results in making them highly vulnerable. There are several brands who can easily take advantage of such a scenario especially the potential competitors. They can jump in and take charge of the whole situation by grabbing the attention of the dissatisfied customers of their competitors.
Let me share an incident of my childhood when one day the window air conditioner was removed and it was replaced with a split air conditioner. Those window air conditioners consume a lot more space than a split air conditioner, so there was this huge rectangular odd looking space left in the wall. Initially the suggestions were to have it sealed up, but I did not agree to that idea. What I did is I made a simple but catchy book shelve to cover up that very space in the wall. I suggest that we should not keep looking at crisis as the wall that requires to be sealed shut. One must learn ways to utilize everything in a more constructive and better manner, in order to avail the advantages often hidden within a crisis – shall we?
From the content presented so far, it has been attempted to rationalize on not to avoid crisis, rather be proactive on crisis – businesses should face them but not letting them deepen. Crisis should be faced with courage and not fear, because crisis present opportunities.
The next write ups shall be aimed towards crisis management issues …
