Write a crisis action plan for an organization of your choice. IMPORTANT NOTE: It is HIGHLY recommended that you not wait until the last minute. This assignment is your opportunity to synthesize and integrate everything you have learned to date into a document that could save your organization from disaster at some unforeseen point in the future. Don’t take the opportunity lightly. The products of this exercise are currently in place, in use, in real-world organizations around the world.
If your chosen organization is hesitant about providing you the required access, an enclosed support letter is provided for your use.
To review where we have come so far: You have been introduced to the Strategic Foresight Initiative and concepts of future studies, which have given you tools to use in visualizing the future and forecasting the threats that your chosen organization may face. You have been introduced to the likely impacts of global warming, which for the rest of our lifetimes will likely be the elephant in the room with respect to the threats that we as individuals, workplaces, societies, and humankind will face. You have been introduced to crisis action planning, with a focus on the complexity of the challenges that need to be faced. Now it’s time to put it all together.
You have undoubtedly noted that everything you have been presented with to date is largely unstructured. Some of the authors you’ve read have asserted that the problem of crisis action planning is so complex that it can’t be completely forecast, modeled, or subjected to efforts to enclose it in a structure. On the one hand, that’s fine, because it gives a glimpse of the complexities that need to be dealt with. On the other hand, that’s not fine, because it leaves little to work with.
For that reason, the crisis action plan you submit will be written into the enclosed template. The purpose of the template is to provide organization to chaos, with the ultimate intent being to give the student and the student’s beneficiary organization something operational to work with.
Be aware of your audience. Your user will be someone who is not an academic that is interested in a theoretical discussion about planning. Your user will be someone who is perhaps in a panicky state of mind and is picking up your plan because they want to know what to do right now. Therefore, it wouldn’t be appropriate to include citations and references. Your user won’t have time to look them up.
The plan has appendices for contact information. Feel free to protect the privacy of your organizational staff by using fictitious names and phone numbers.
You may accomplish this plan in isolation, but in doing so, recognize the limitations in perspective you will bring to the table that some of the authors have talked about. Better is to accomplish the plan as a group project within your organization, with the group being as diverse as possible. As noted, don’t hesitate. Form your forecasting and planning team as quickly as possible and get them to brainstorming what needs to be thought of and what needs to be done. Be thorough. Be comprehensive. Make it a great crisis action plan.
And one additional note: This assignment produces more than its share of plagiarism reports, so be sure to consider the following: The purpose of the assignment is to demonstrate mastery of the concepts you learned in class. Therefore it is completely inappropriate to utilize any plans that already exist for your organization, even if you wrote that particular plan. This assignment requires application of a new skill set based on future studies, the forum threat assessment, recognition of potential ‘black swan’ events, etc. Nothing that you have currently on file takes these into consideration. Guaranteed. Be aware that Turnitin responds to the ‘paste’ command–SO DON’T PASTE ANYTHING INTO YOUR DOCUMENT! Fair warning.
Be sure to provide this and all papers in proper APA format. That being said, note that APA can be relaxed a bit for this assignment. If your plan would look better single-spaced, that would be fine. If bullet statements help accent important information, then use of them would be fine as well.
Save your paper as a Microsoft Word document entitled YourLastNameWk.docx” (i.e., SmithWk8.docx). Upload to the submission window and click the Submit button. This assignment, to be properly matured and developed, is required to be a minimum of 15 pages of content, to include graphics (page count does not count cover and reference pages).
Due Date
Aug 1, 2021 11:55 PM
Crisis Action Plan
for
[provide name of organization]
Activation
[Describe the conditions under which this plan would be activated and who would be responsible and have the authority for the activation]
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
a. Mission
b. Purpose
c. Applicability
d. Policy
e. Objectives
f. Assumptions
g. Organization
2. Critical Organizational Functions
a. Staff protection
b. Direct production and processes
c. Support – logistics and personnel
3. Threat Forecast
a. Natural and Man-made Disasters
b. Product and Process Disasters
c. Fictitious Disasters
4. Pre-crisis Mitigation Actions
a. Physical Facility Protection
b. Product and Process Protection
c. Personnel Protection
d. Reputation and Goodwill Protection
5. Planning Scenarios
a. Natural & Man-made Disasters
b. Product & Process Disasters
c. Fictitious Disasters
6. Teams & Authorities
a. Operations Team
b. Communications Team
c. Logistics Team
d. Information Technology Team
e. Administrative Team
7. Recovery and Restoration
a. Physical and facility restoration
b. Reputation and goodwill restoration
c. Emotional and psychological recovery
8. Appendices
a. Appendix A – Team Contact Information
b. Appendix B – Emergency Procedures
c. Appendix C – Team Assignments & Taskings
d. Appendix D – Plan Maintenance
e. Appendix E – Approvals
Introduction
[Give the mission of the organization; describe the purpose for the plan; explain under what circumstances it would be activated; explain how the plan will be used by the organization; depict the expected outcome of the plan activation; give the assumptions used in the development of the plan; and give an overview of the structure that will implement it.
NOTE: If the mission of your organization is emergency response, conducting your routine mission is not a crisis. A crisis is a situation in which you cannot conduct your routine mission. In other words, if the fire department responds to a fire, that may be a crisis to the customer, but not to the fire department. If the fire department hooks up their hose to a hydrant and nothing comes out, that’s a crisis to the fire department and is the type of crisis that a plan needs to be written for. Don’t write a plan for accomplishment of your routine mission.]
Critical Organizational Functions
[Give the critical processes and products that must be maintained when operating in crisis mode. Describe what would cause the organization to fail that must be avoided.]
Threat Forecast
(Give an overview of the likely and not-so-likely threats that the organization could face. Include those from natural disasters; man-made disasters; global warming; and any that were generated from the threat forecasting exercise in the forums. You MUST acknowledge and accommodate those threats identified by your instructor and classmates in the forums. Be VERY specific and detailed. ‘My organizations faces a myriad of threats’ is not a threat forecast.
NOTE: A fictitious disaster is defined as something that someone else did or something that did not happen at all that your organization is blamed for. Examples include false newspaper stories. Fictitious disasters are typically handled by the Public Relations function.
ALSO NOTE: Use of the word ‘Zombie’ in this exercise will cause your plan to be returned for resubmission.)
Pre-Crisis Mitigation Actions
(Based upon the threat forecast, describe how your organization will plan to mitigate threats so they will never evolve into crises. Write a mitigation action for each identified threat.)
Planning Scenarios
[Describe how the organization would respond to different scenarios: natural and man-made disasters not of its making; product and process disasters of its own making; scenarios in which blame is leveled on the organization for issues it had nothing to do with. Be specific to every identified threat.]
Teams and Authorities
[List the contingency teams that will organize to respond to the crisis and the authority it will operate under. Many organizations form special teams to deal with special situations. If your organization is small and uses its routine organization for threat response, that’s fine.]
Recovery and Restoration
(Describe how your organization will recover once the crisis has past. Give a recovery plan for each threat, plus talk about how the organization as a whole will recover.)
Appendices
Appendix A
[Give specific contact information of the individuals on your crisis action teams]
Appendix B
[Give detailed processes for implementing this plan – who, what, when, where, how]
Appendix C
[Give team taskings]
Appendix D
[Describe who and under what circumstances this plan will be maintained]
Appendix E
[Create an approval page for leadership to use in approving this plan]
