Crisis management is said to be the procedure in which an organization takes on the different events or situations that may threaten or harm the stakeholders, the general public and/or the company itself. Before you can make the crisis management plan, there is a need to first define the threats or crises that might affect your business. In order for you to identify them, there are three things that you have to look for. These are the events that threaten the success of the business, the element of surprise and short time that is needed to make the right decisions. According to experts though, there is a fourth element required to determine whether a certain event is a crisis and that is the need for change. In this case, if that particular situation does not call for change, it can be considered as just a failure or an incident and not a crisis.

Another thing that you have to know before you make the crisis management plan is the very little contrast between risk and crisis management. For many years, there have been comparisons between the two even including debates about risk management vs. crisis management. The main dissimilarity between them is that risk management involves the assessment of potential threats and searching for methodologies that will help the business in avoiding the threats. Crisis management on the other hand deals with threats themselves after they have broken out of company control.

The crisis management plan is created in order for the supervisors or the business owners to obtain guidelines for any crisis situation. Thus, it should be an effective document, which includes the fact that it should be continually updated since the industry, the company and the world changes rapidly. Crisis management planning is and will always be a part of the overall protection and emergency awareness and strategic planning process of the business. To get started, five Ps and one E should be remembered: predict, position, prevent, plan, persevere and evaluate.

The first step is to always identify the issues but this does not mean that once you have detected the concerns, you will stop there. This is an ongoing process which includes creating a list of every imaginable company issue starting with the things that will most likely happen. Then you will need to categorize and prioritize the items on the list. You can assign a crisis team that will help you in completing the task. The next step is for policy preparation which involves the policy statements with general principles such as honest, direct and timely responses, ethical standards integration and considering media when implementing the business practices in dealing with emergencies.

The crisis management plan is not complete without the specific responses toward the threats. When drafting them, consider the scope of the crisis, the established unified response and the knowledge of the staff members. The crisis management planning process should be clear, concise, simple and consistent so that the crisis management plan can help in identifying the things that happened, why they occurred and what the company should do to ensure it will never take place again.

We were frustrated, my colleagues and I, as we wrestled with a new business idea. We thought it was a great idea but we couldn’t effectively describe, in business communication terms, what it would mean to users.

And, out of our discussions came the idea of writing a case study. If you’re not familiar with them, case studies are a staple of business communication. More specifically, they’re histories of specific business initiatives.

They’re like articles, but they put the reader into the shoes of a person making a difficult decision. Other professions also use case studies; you’ve probably heard of medical case studies, for example. Medical students get a set of facts about a patient, and perhaps some background or context, and then must diagnose the patient’s condition or disease.

Business case studies have proven popular at some university business schools (popular with the profs, at least). In some senses, the case study is the next best thing to being involved in a real case. And, an effective business communication tool, as I’ll explain here.

So, why would this be of interest to you? Well, if you have to persuade others to adopt your point of view, or buy your products, or vote for you, then you might find a case study useful.

In fact, you may be doing something like that already. Whenever you tell a story that’s designed to make a certain business communication point, you’re using a form of case study.

During my brief foray into life insurance sales, for example, I learned that emotion sells policies, and not logic. That’s why people in the business have a raft of stories about people who did or did not have protection when they died.

The point being made is that you should life insurance, and that you should have the right kind and the right amount. Now, if you sold life insurance, you would quickly find that no one listens when you explain the logic, but they will listen — and act — if you have your case studies (your anecdotes).

So, having gone through all that, is a case study just a fancy name for an anecdote or story? Yes, to a certain extent it is any tale used in business communication.

But, when you think of a case study, think of it as a more elaborate and more logically constructed story. Typically, a case study describes an organization or manager facing a choice or dilemma of some kind, and the reader gets a number of facts about the options. After that, you, the reader, are challenged to make the decision. Some real-life case studies include a follow-up report, so readers know which real-life decision was made, and how it worked out.

Getting back to the business idea with which we started, my colleagues and I did not proceed, and the case study exposition became a moot point. But, had we gone ahead, the case study likely would have been the cornerstone of our business communication efforts.

Finally, if you’d like to read some case studies, simply go to your favorite search engine and type in this phrase (with or without the quotation marks): “case study examples” or “case studies” .

In summary, case studies are a special type of business communication; they help us understand real-life decisions, and are a useful resource for persuasion and education. Add one or more to your business communication toolbox.