Hi! managers: Be prepared instead of being caught unawares

When I arrived in Indonesia, it coincided with the US entering Afghanistan directly after 9/11. 

It was a tense time for a prominent US company to be in Indonesia at that time. Many security plans were discussed, even a possible evacuation of all staff and that needed detailed planning and preparation.

Subsequently we also dealt with active NGOs coming in to the office threatening to protest against us in matters related to anti-piracy issues, several moderate earthquakes, severe floods in Jakarta and the terrible attack in Bali.

In Bali, I was about 500 metres from the bombs when they exploded. After an extremely awful night and still in shock, when I finally got back in the hotel I knew I had to clear my mind as I knew our US security team would be on the phone before long to check the situation and the implication for our staff.

I also knew I would need to keep a clear head to send a message to all our staff to very calmly reassure everyone, give facts, and also provide clear instructions of what we should all be doing next, despite still being shocked.

It was clear to us we needed to be a lot more organised locally. If we needed to eva-cuate quickly, we needed the full details and passport details, of all staff and their direct dependants. We needed to define a meeting point and two back-up locations in different areas. We needed a call tree where one call at the top would flow through no more than 5 steps to alert everyone in the company. We needed to do a thorough security check of

our office (typically a very embarrassing exercise first time) and we needed a senior team, headed by the leader, that could talk quickly in crisis and make decisions even with the leader missing. We needed to evaluate plans for our critical infrastructure under various scenarios. And we needed to test and improve all of these routinely.

Timely, balanced, non-sensational, fact-based, reassuring communication with relevant decisions is critical. And it has to come direct from the top.  There is nothing more reassuring than hearing direct from the boss in such times. Gaps, even in time, in communication will be replaced by speculation by the staff. Big gap, big speculation.

When I left Indonesia to come to Thailand I was grateful the situation would become less intense.

Well that was at the peak of the Sars crisis.  A tsunami, bird flu, a coup and the recent political troubles, then I managed to get caught up in the shooting on Vibhavadi Road, later; it is definitely a timely reminder of the need to brush off that crisis management plan and revisit it with a serious and fresh mind. Perhaps instead of "It won't happen to us", we should think "what next?"

Andrew McBean is senior vice president of DTAC. Follow his article every third Monday of the month