Is bird flu making a comeback?

Sometimes you need to be careful what you wish for. The Lizard’s alter ego Jim Preen wrote an article recently on what makes for a convincing scenario during a crisis simulation.

He had this to say:

So what is my favourite scenario? As with all things scenarios seem to be at the whim of fashion or at least what’s been in the news recently. How long before we start devising an exercise based on widespread rioting and looting?

Some years it’s terror attacks, then the smart money is on damage to data centres, but for me, I miss the ‘good old days’ of pandemic flu. That often seemed the perfect scenario because it was and is potentially catastrophic (how we love a good catastrophe!), could affect any organization, but also allowed for planning, being a rising tide event.

It involves human beings rather than technology, which can be a turn-off to those not technically minded and given the medical evidence also highly credible. No doubt it will stage a comeback in a year or two.

Well bird flu seems to be making a comeback rather sooner than expected. Time is currently running an article headlined:

It’s back: Bird flu returns and this time it’s mutated

During the last couple of flu seasons, we were all worried about H1N1, a new and virulent strain of influenza, but this winter we may have to contend with a much deadlier foe: H5N1 or bird flu. Some Asian countries are reporting this week the first cases of a mutant strain of the virus spreading in poultry.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported on Monday that the H5N1 virus has mutated, something that public health officials had feared would happen and that could possibly make the virus more dangerous to people.

In its original form, H5N1 primarily infects wild birds and poultry, including geese, chickens, ducks and turkeys, but only rarely jumps into people. Still, the fact that some people have become infected with H5N1 by eating improperly prepared and contaminated poultry — the virus has killed 331 people and infected 565 since it first appeared in 2003 — led experts to warn that it was only a matter of time before it altered into a form that made it easier to spread to humans.

Read more here

Who's Sari now?

More pictures from the Crisis Solutions Indian Adventure

























Do I eat it or smoke it?

Here's Crisis Solutions' CFO, Richard Whitby, on a recent business trip to India.
He is seen taking possession of the first of our new fleet of company cars.

Can you profile the perfect crisis manager?

What qualities are required in a disaster and is it possible to profile individuals who might be effective crisis managers? Jim Preen writes in Continuity Central.

The recent anniversary of 9/11 reminded us what good looked like in a crisis – it looked like New York City firefighters and of course Rudolf Giuliani, the mayor of New York in 2001.

Prior to the catastrophe Giuliani had been a divisive figure and by no means universally popular, but cometh the hour cometh the man. He seemed up to the job in both word and deed. When asked how many people he thought had died in the tragedy his immediate response was “more than any of us can bear.” Perfectly capturing the public mood at the time of overwhelming crisis.

So what qualities are required in a disaster and is it possible to profile individuals who might be effective crisis managers?

Read more

Perfect profile

The police use profiling to target potential criminal offenders.

The Lizard asks: Can you profile the perfect crisis manager?

There might be an article coming on…

A pilot’s guide to crisis management

Richard Whitby, CFO at Crisis Solutions, has a highly entertaining article in the new edition of Risk UK. Click here to see the article and the rest of the magazine.

Here’s a taste:

A pilot's guide to crisis management

“Final check, then apply full power,” says the instructor. I’m hunched over the controls of the Cessna light aircraft, my palms sweating and my head full of figures. The pilot of a 747 couldn’t be concentrating any harder.

Final Check means a quick glance over the myriad dials in front of me to ensure that ‘temperatures and pressures’ are normal. Then it’s the Big White Numbers check which means making sure the runway number given by air traffic control matches the huge numbers painted on the runway in front of me - thereby ensuring I’m on the correct runway and not about to meander in front of a 737 on its way to Majorca.

Flying is all about logical planning, together with the training and flexibility to deal with any eventuality, which strikes me as the same set of skills you need for crisis management.

Social media policy

A couple of posts back I highlighted an article about social media. I’ve had a couple of comments along the lines of: ‘Well that’s very interesting, but what are we meant to do about it?’

The answer is your company should have a social media policy – so as a public service and to get you started here’s a checklist to get you underway:

• Employee Facebook policy
• Employee personal blog policy
• Employee Twitter policy
• Employee Linkedin policy
• Corporate blogging policy and approval process
• Corporate blog commenting policy
• Corporate YouTube policy

Developing scenarios

Jim Preen provides some advice on how to set up convincing business continuity exercise scenarios.

Terror blasts, white powder attacks, pandemic flu, cyber crime, the list goes on. At the sharp end of business continuity it really is one damn thing after another.

We seem to spend our lives frightening the life out of crisis management teams by dreaming up the best possible scenarios to test their response and the company’s business continuity plan. So what makes for the top scenario - one that really tests the plan and the players?

Read the full story here.

The anatomy of a social media crisis

Good article by Erica Swallow at Mashable on the Altimeter report on soc media crises.
Definitely worth a look. Here's a taste.

Social media crises are on the rise, but 76% of those that occurred since 2001 could have been diminished or averted with the proper social media investments, according to a report by Altimeter Group released on Wednesday.

For the report, entitled “Social Business Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare Internally,” Altimeter Group analyzed 50 social media crises that have occurred since 2001 and found that those reaching mainstream media have risen steadily through the past decade, with just 1-2 incidents per year in the first five years and a total of 10 social media crises last year alone. The report also sheds light on exactly how social media crises arise and how companies can avoid them.

Click here to read more.