In crisis lightning can and does strike twice!

Back
in May 2014, the Glasgow School of Art (GSA) had a major fire that caused
extensive damage to the collections, the work of artists and the building
itself. I use the social media response
by the GSA to the situation as an excellent case study of how effective social
media can be in keeping key stakeholders and the wider community informed.
Sadly,
disaster has struck again at the GSA and once again the building and its
contents have been devastated by a major fire – lightning has struck again.
Often
organisations will deal with a particular incident and take the view that
having come through their crisis think;
(a)
“We did ok, so
that’s alright then, we don’t need to change anything” and
(b)
That the chances
of it happening again are minimal
This
mind-set is a recipe for disaster. It is
vital that review and learning lessons from any incident takes place in a
meaningful way. Organisations must challenge themselves and as a part of the
follow up to an incident ask hard questions of themselves. What can we do better? What were we lucky to get away with? How
might it have been worse?
I
work alongside a number of organisations in high risk industries. They will say
that safety is integral to their culture but they also recognise that only
works if everyone lives and breathes safety. Reporting of near misses is a
challenging area for them because no-one wants to admit they made a mistake or
highlight the unsafe practice or inappropriate behaviour of a colleague. Yet the learning that comes from near misses
is hugely important and prevention is far better than cure as far as incidents
go. Organisations must take every opportunity to learn and improve if they are
to create a safe working environment, protecting their people and their public
reputation.
We
regularly hear a senior spokesperson following a crisis saying that an
organisation “will learn lessons from this.”
I believe that is exactly the right thing to be heard saying, but the
sentiment has to be backed up with meaningful action. Make sure if your organisation has a crisis
that you do learn lessons!
The
court of public opinion, never mind the media or your insurers, will be very
unforgiving (and rightly so) if you make the same mistakes twice. Your
stakeholders will lose confidence and trust in you if you are perceived to have
allowed lightning to strike twice.
“Once is
unfortunate, twice is careless!”
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