Crisis Management
Why Crisis Management Matters
Crises are, by their nature, unpredictable. They arrive without notice, unfold quickly, test leadership and often place intense pressure on communication, decision making and coordination. The consequences can be significant:
- harm to people or service users
- interruption to essential operations
- reputational damage
- financial loss
- contractual or regulatory breaches
A wellestablished crisis management capability reduces uncertainty and enables better decisions. It helps organisations act with clarity rather than panic, communicate truthfully and consistently, and move from reaction to stabilisation more quickly.
Modern crisis expectations also continue to rise. Customers expect transparency, regulators expect diligence, and stakeholders expect a steady, coherent response. Effective Crisis Management supports all of these.
Cambridge Risk Solutions’ Approach
We help organisations build supportive, structured and confidencebuilding crisis management arrangements, grounded in ISO 22361 principles and years of practical consultancy experience.
Clear, proportionate frameworks
We design crisis management structures that are easy to understand and simple to activate. We avoid unnecessary complexity and ensure plans support your organisation’s size, culture and operational realities.
Human centred design
Crisis Management is about people making decisions under pressure. Our materials are written in plain, accessible language that helps teams think clearly in difficult situations.
Built on Trust
We create environments where teams can learn, ask questions and build confidence without feeling exposed. Crises require trust — in the process, in the team and in the decisions being made. Our role is to help build all three.
Real world grounding
Our approach reflects the pressures organisations face during crises: incomplete information, time pressure, emotional strain, competing priorities and heightened public expectations.
Our work is grounded in ISO 22361, the international guidance standard for crisis management, and informed by years of practical exercise design and delivery across sectors. We have designed exercises that have drawn specific praise from external auditors — and more importantly, that have left teams feeling genuinely more confident rather than just having ticked a box.
Key Components of Crisis Management
1. Clear definitions, thresholds and activation
We help organisations establish a shared understanding of what constitutes a crisis, how incidents escalate and when the crisis team should be activated. This prevents hesitation and ensures a consistent, confident response.
2. Roles, responsibilities and structure
A well functioning crisis team requires clarity. We help define:
- Crisis Manager / Strategic Lead
- Deputy or Support Leads
- Communications Lead
- Business Continuity / Operational Lead
- HR and Welfare Lead
- Specialist advisors (IT, legal, safeguarding etc.)
- Log Keeping
This structure ensures decisions are made, actions delegated and communication remains coordinated.
3. Practical, usable crisis plans
We develop crisis management plans that provide:
- simple activation guidance
- early actions and stabilisation steps
- clear communication routes
- stakeholder considerations
- decision making support tools
- log keeping guidance
- welfare and support considerations
- links to business continuity and recovery arrangements
Plans are written so teams can use them under pressure, not search for information they cannot find.
4. Staff welfare and decision support
Crises are stressful. We support organisations in building welfare considerations into plans, helping leaders recognise stress indicators and designing structures that provide psychological safety.
5. Communication and stakeholder management
Communication can make or break a crisis response. We help organisations develop:
- clear internal communication processes
- external communication strategies
- media response considerations
- stakeholder mapping
- holding statements
- approval routes
Messaging should be calm, truthful and coordinated.
6. Escalation and linkage with Business Continuity
Crisis Management and Business Continuity are often confused. We help clarify how these disciplines interact:
- Business Continuity manages operational disruption.
- Crisis Management provides strategic leadership during highpressure events.
Both are essential, but they serve different purposes. We help align the two so they work together seamlessly.
7. Logging, documenting and learning
Accurate logs support decisions during and after a crisis. We help teams adopt calm, structured log keeping practices, ensuring key information is captured without overburdening the team.
8. Debriefing and continuous improvement
After a crisis or exercise, learning is critical. We support structured debriefs that focus on:
- what worked well
- what could be improved
- any capability gaps
- practical improvements
Learning is supportive, not critical — and it builds long-term capability.
Training, Exercising and Capability Building
1. Team training
Covering:
- crisis roles and responsibilities
- decision making under pressure
- communication principles
- situational awareness
- leadership behaviours
Training is interactive, practical and tailored.
2. Desktop exercises
Scenario based sessions that help teams explore their roles, decision paths and the interaction between crisis response, continuity, IT, communications and leadership.
3. Command and simulation exercises
For organisations wanting deeper testing, we design more challenging simulations aligned with ISO 22361 principles. These exercises test:
- teamwork
- decision making
- communication flow
- organisational resilience under pressure
4. Leadership and executive briefings
We support senior leaders in understanding their role, ensuring they feel confident and prepared.
Our exercises are always supportive. They are about capability development — not catching people out.
Long-Term Crisis Capability
Crisis Management is not a onetime project. We help organisations embed and maintain capability through:
- periodic reviews of crisis plans
- updates based on organisational change
- refresher training
- scheduled exercises
- lessons learned cycles
- alignment with other resilience disciplines
The aim is a steady, sustainable level of preparedness that grows with the organisation.
Why Organisations Choose Cambridge Risk Solutions
Crisis management clients often come to us after an experience that revealed a gap — an incident that was harder to manage than it should have been, an exercise that exposed uncertainty about roles, or a leadership team that recognised they were not as prepared as they thought. Others come through referral, having heard that our exercises are realistic without being punishing and our advice is straight without being alarming.
We have designed and facilitated exercises for organisations ranging from housing associations to national infrastructure providers, from NHS suppliers to automotive testing facilities. The scenarios differ; the underlying discipline is the same — build clarity, build confidence, and make sure the team that has to respond feels ready rather than anxious.
Every piece of work is delivered by an experienced practitioner who understands both the theory and the reality of crisis response. We do not subcontract. We work with organisations over the long term, which means we understand the context, the culture, and the people — and that understanding shows in the quality of the work.ganisations respond more confidently, learn more effectively and recover more smoothly.
See It In Practice
Crisis management exercises are only as good as the scenarios behind them. Read how we developed a full-day command-post exercise for an NHS Mental Health Trust— with escalating injects across multiple teams that tested every part of the crisis response framework, or take a look at how we approach table-top exercises with clients in a wide range of sectors.