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Crisis Management Workshop

20 January 2009 - 20 January 2009

Hilton Birmingham Metropole
Birmingham, England

What do you consider to be the most important characteristic of an effective corporate crisis management capability? The Business Continuity Institute (BCI) suggest that leadership ability – trusted, creative, responsive and capable of making decisions under challenging circumstances – may be the one attribute that transcends all others when it comes to selecting and developing the skills necessary for members of your crisis management team.

The purpose of the BCI Crisis Management Workshop is twofold. First, to provide participants with the opportunity to refine their own views on the nature of crisis leadership: the key characteristics and its place within corporate culture. Secondly, to consider practical actions that they might put in place to support the development of the necessary skills and the learning mechanisms for continuous improvement.

The Workshop will explore the topic of Crisis Leadership via two in-depth presentation and discussion sessions:

Crisis Leadership: what is it?

BCI are pleased to welcome a number of respected thought leaders in the area of crisis management to present their personal perspectives on the importance of leadership.

Eve Coles, Senior Teaching Fellow in Civil Protection at Leeds University Business School and visiting lecturer at the Emergency Planning College has written and spoken extensively about crisis leadership. Eve will establish a basis for discussions based upon both her academic studies and research across a wide range of organisations.

Peter Power, a leading consultant and frequent commentator on crisis-related issues will draw on his many years of experience, including time spent with the Metropolitan Police where he was the primary author of the ubiquitous Gold, Silver and Bronze operational command structure.

Participants will work in small groups to identify the key messages from these presentations and to share experience and ideas with fellow professionals.

Crisis Leadership: practical aspects

The afternoon session will focus on practical aspects of crisis leadership as illustrated by the invited case studies. Participants will develop their own action plans to improve their effectiveness in a number of key areas: selection and training of crisis leaders; performance assessment; leadership as a management skill, and the significance of leadership in crisis meetings.

Afternoon contributors include:

Marion Ward, Corporate Crisis Manager for Abbey, a member of the BCI Crisis Management Advisory Panel and a regular contributor to BCI Workshops. Marion will describe how Abbey selects and develops crisis leaders at all levels throughout the organisation to ensure both rapid and effective response in the event of a crisis situation occurring.

Harry Scott, National Emergencies Planning Officer for NHS Scotland and Head of the Health Emergency Planning Branch at the Scottish Executive, will draw on his wide experience across incidents as diverse as the Scottish Government Health Directorate’s response to the terrorist incident at Glasgow Airport and coordinating Scotland's planning for Exercise Winter Willow (pandemic planning). Harry will focus on the leadership role that is implicit in the effective management of crisis meetings.

John Lee, Business Resilience Manager with Severn Trent Water, is responsible for resilience, security and information security. John will use the experience of the 2007 flooding to illustrate the importance of effective leadership in responding to major critical events.

As before, participants will work in small groups to extract the key points from the presentations and each team will be invited to present their views of the points that they have identified throughout the day.

For further details of BCI's Crisis Management Workshop see http://businesscontinuitysigs.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43&Itemid=1