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If you are responsible for crisis management, you hold a challenging role. It is your duty to adequately prepare the crisis organization, ensuring that individuals know what actions to take when a crisis erupts.
During preparation, numerous diverse facets must be considered. This renders crisis management considerably complex. Particularly if it is a new field for you, defining your role can present a significant challenge. Where should one begin?
It is crucial to prevent discovering during a crisis that your preparations are insufficient. Ideally, a checklist or a step-by-step plan should be utilized as a guide to structure the preparation process. This enables you to accurately assess your current position and determine your next course of action. This mitigates unpleasant surprises during a crisis.
To support you as a crisis professional, we have developed such a guideline. The Merlin Crisis Management Maturity Model (MCV) assists both new and experienced crisis professionals in gaining insight into the current maturity level of their crisis organization.
The Merlin Crisis Management Maturity Model illustrates all the building blocks of crisis management and suggests the optimal sequence for organizing these components.
As a starting point, we utilized the foundational building blocks common to every crisis management methodology and theory. We have supplemented these building blocks with practical components derived from guidelines, ISO standards, and our extensive experience in guiding over 150 crisis organizations.
We have arranged the building blocks sequentially based on their interdependencies. Logically, some blocks can only be addressed in a specific order. For instance, it is impossible to alert the correct personnel if the roles within your crisis organization are not clearly defined.
The remaining building blocks have been sequenced based on our proprietary experience.
We have observed over 150 crisis organizations, which has allowed us to identify effective practices. While multiple approaches may achieve the same outcome, we have incorporated the best practices into this model.
To ensure the model's practical applicability, we have limited its scope to crisis management. Crisis communication and business continuity have been excluded from the current scope.
This model is not immutable. Nor is its purpose to render any other model obsolete. It represents our best effort to establish a standard that every crisis professional can utilize as a guideline to elevate their crisis organization to the next level.
The MCV can be regarded as a roadmap outlining logical steps for progression. Initially, you ascertain which components you have already effectively implemented. This defines your current standing. Subsequently, you determine your desired level of ambition. What position do you aspire to achieve? You can then systematically implement the subsequent steps within the model.
In a subsequent article, we will elaborate on how to apply the model in practice.
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