4 minute read
What Separates the Best Crisis Teams from the Rest
AN EXCLUSIVE 4-PART SERIES
PART 1
The success criteria that distinguish high-performing crisis teams, distilled from hundreds of exercises over many years.
We’ve sat in the room, physically and virtually, for hundreds of crisis exercises across industries, geographies, and threat types. We’ve watched executive teams navigate ransomware attacks, supply chain failures, regulatory breaches, and reputational firestorms. After all that, the patterns are unmistakable. The difference between organisations that handle a crisis well and those that stumble is not luck, not sector, and not size. It comes down to twenty observable behaviours, grouped under four pillars.
These are not theoretical. They are drawn directly from what we observe when teams are under pressure: the things that go right, and the things that go wrong. Repeatedly, predictably, and avoidably. We publish them here because we believe every crisis team deserves to know the standard they should be measured against.
PILLAR 01: Operating Rhythm and Speed of Response
The first minutes and hours of a crisis are disproportionately important. Not because decisions made early are always final, but because the operating rhythm established at the outset sets the ceiling for everything that follows. Teams that start slow rarely catch up.
Crisis Team Assembled Swiftly
The CMT is fully activated using predefined contact lists and escalation paths within minutes of a trigger being identified. Multi-channel notification; calls, SMS, email, ensures rapid assembly regardless of time zone or availability.
Where teams trip up:
Over reliance on a single notification channel. Activation triggers or the decision-maker responsible for standing up the CMT are unclear or undocumented. Absence of key personnel combined with a lack of trained alternates delays or complicates assembly.
Structured Assessment, Then Action
The team follows a defined assessment process before acting: facts gathered, knowns confirmed, scenarios considered (most likely and worst case), impacts assessed, actions prioritised (now vs. later), and communications strategy agreed.
Where teams trip up
Reliance on personal experience rather than a structured framework. Severity criteria undefined or inconsistently applied. Worst-case scenario planning skipped or given insufficient attention during initial assessments.
Meeting Cadence Maintained, Outputs Documented
Short, focused meetings held at intervals matched to the speed of the crisis. All decisions, actions, and owners recorded and tracked. Meeting frequency adjusts as the situation evolves.
Where teams trip up
Meetings run too long without breaks for action completion, or are held at a cadence too slow for the early stages. Prescribed durations are too rigid or not enforced. Late arrivals or personnel leaving the room cause information loss.
Logging Maintained and Clock Watched
A crisis and incident log is maintained from the point of activation. All regulatory reporting obligations are met within required timeframes.
Where teams trip up
Status boards absent or not visible to all participants. Log templates inadequate, standard minutes templates rather than crisis-specific formats. Accountability for who maintains the log is unclear. Log-keeper and coordinator roles combined or under-resourced.
In the rest of this series, we unpack the remaining three pillars and the specific behaviours that separate teams who merely “get through it” from those who come out of a crisis with their reputation, stakeholders, and options intact. Continue reading for pillars 2–4 in the next part of this four-part series, and use them as a practical benchmark for how your organisation performs when it matters most.
If you want to know where your team really stands against these twenty behaviours, speak with the Battleground team about running a focussed crisis simulation or maturity review tailored to your threat profile and executive team. We’ll help you pressure-test your operating rhythm, expose the gaps before a real incident does, and build the muscle memory your leaders need for the worst day in the life of your organisation.
Read the series
Coming soon….
