3 minute read
As we head into the 2026 summer, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, both in Australia and around the world, remind us that effective crisis management is more critical than ever. From the devastating floods in Queensland and New South Wales in early 2025 to the record-breaking heatwaves across Europe and wildfires in Canada, organisations must be prepared to respond swiftly and strategically. There are four fundamental elements we work on with all our clients to establish simple and effective crisis management arrangements.
Notification, Escalation and Activation
Whether it’s top down or bottom up, escalate or cascade your incident warnings and notifications through your normal management lines of communication. Your incident and crisis management arrangements should integrate with and enhance your business as usual processes. In activation, who decides if it’s a crisis? Anchor your decision making to your business’s risk framework to avoid subjectivity or varying risk appetites. For example, embed impact descriptions for your highest risk categories, such as severe or extreme, into your activation process:
Safety Impacts, Fatality or severe and irreversible disability
Reputational Impacts, Severe and prolonged adverse national media coverage
When assessing the potential impacts of an emergency, such as a bushfire, flood, or cyberattack, against these criteria, you can make an objective decision and activate your crisis team when it’s truly needed.
Leadership and Decision Making
Conventional wisdom suggests that any member of the executive team could undertake the crisis manager role, and rotating through this role can be valuable. However, it’s also important to pick the right person for the job. For instance, if your network goes down due to a catastrophic asset failure, your Network Operations Executive is likely the best fit. The CEO’s role is separate and distinct from the crisis manager. While the crisis manager coordinates the response, the CEO focuses on broader impacts, people, reputation, financials, and stakeholder communication.
Organisations that work closely with emergency services or government may use formal incident management structures like the Australasian Integrated Incident Management System, AIIMS. For most businesses, leveraging existing structures and business-as-usual processes is the most practical approach. Good management makes for good crisis management, simple, efficient structures and processes are key.
Incident Management, Maintaining a Strategic Focus
At the operational level, incident management focuses on functional disciplines like operations, planning, and logistics. In crisis management, we help clients manage impacts and consequences at the strategic level using our “PRISE” model, which considers:
People
Reputation
IT and Infrastructure
Sites
Externals
This approach ensures crisis management teams remain strategic while enabling leaders to manage operational objectives. When activating your crisis team, PRISE can be applied to existing structures, ensuring an efficient span of control and avoiding unnecessary complexity.
Briefing and Operational Tempo
Traditional crisis exercises often bring teams together in a boardroom, but with remote work now common, hybrid exercises better reflect how organisations operate today. After notification, escalation, and activation, a simple briefing structure is essential. Start with:
What do we know, The facts
What are the known and anticipated impacts, PRISE
What do we need to do, Key decisions, actions, and responsibilities
What are our key messages and who do we need to talk to
Once the briefing begins, avoid getting stuck in analysis paralysis. Leaders need clear guidance and direction. Break and share decisions, then execute actions before reconvening.
Keep It Simple!
The most important thing to remember is to keep your crisis management plan simple. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, so avoid overcomplicating things. We work with clients on the “PoaP” methodology, a Plan on a Page. If the four key elements, notification, leadership, incident management, and briefing & tempo, don’t all fit onto one page, you’re doing it wrong.
With extreme weather events like the 2025 Queensland floods, the 2024 European heatwaves, and the 2025 Canadian wildfires, the need for agile, simple, and effective crisis management has never been clearer. If you’d like to learn more or discuss how Battleground can help you streamline your crisis management plans, reach out for a tailored consultation.
