Crisis Management: The First 72 Hours.
Every company faces crises. Product failures. Security breaches. Key employee departures. Market disruptions. The difference between companies that survive and those that don't often comes down to how they perform in the first 72 hours.
Hour 0-8: Triage and Containment
The first priority is always containment. Stop the bleeding before you diagnose the disease.
For a security breach: Isolate affected systems. Preserve evidence. Engage incident response resources. Don't try to fix anything until you understand the scope.
For an operational crisis: Identify the immediate threat to customers and operations. Implement temporary measures to maintain service. Communicate clearly to affected parties.
The natural instinct is to understand everything before acting. Resist this. Containment first, root cause analysis second.
Contain first, analyze second
Hour 8-24: Assessment and Communication
Once the immediate threat is contained, you need two things: a clear picture of what happened, and a communication plan for every stakeholder.
Your assessment should answer: What happened? Who is affected? What's the potential impact? What are we doing about it? What do we not yet know?
Your communication should be honest about uncertainty. 'We don't yet know the full scope' is better than false confidence. Stakeholders can handle uncertainty; they can't handle being misled.
Honesty over confidence
Hour 24-72: Stabilization and Response
By hour 24, you should have a response plan with clear ownership, timelines, and milestones.
Assign a single incident commander with authority to make decisions without committee approval. Crisis response dies in consensus-seeking.
Establish a regular communication cadence—hourly for severe crises, daily for less acute situations. Silence breeds anxiety and speculation.
Document everything. You'll need this documentation for post-mortems, regulatory inquiries, and insurance claims.
The Post-Crisis Opportunity
How you handle a crisis often matters more than the crisis itself. Companies that respond transparently and effectively can emerge with stronger stakeholder relationships than they had before.
Schedule a post-mortem within two weeks of resolution. Focus on systemic issues, not individual blame. The goal is to prevent recurrence, not to punish.
Communicate what you learned and what you're changing. This demonstrates accountability and builds confidence in your organization's ability to improve.
Crisis = Character reveal
You can't prevent every crisis, but you can prepare for them. Build your crisis response capability before you need it—because when you need it, there won't be time to learn.