Summer months bring specific risks to company stability. While offices empty and managers take vacations, crisis situations do not take a seasonal break. According to Meghan Tisinger, Director at the consulting firm Leidar, the weakest link for companies during this period is slow decision-making, which stems from the disruption of established command and control structures.
When Crisis Plans Collide with Vacation Reality
The main problem arises when pre-set crisis scenarios anticipate the full availability of key personnel. In summer, however, managers, lawyers, and operational leaders are often traveling, at conferences, or in areas without signal. Teams that typically cooperate in one space are suddenly scattered across time zones. This leads to dangerous delays, where decisions that normally take minutes can take hours.
Cyberattacks pose a particularly critical danger. Hackers intentionally exploit holiday periods and long weekends when companies operate in a limited mode. If an incident occurs, for example, on a Friday before a holiday and management is unavailable, information dissemination falters, and speculation on social media takes over.
“Customers don't expect a company to have all the answers immediately. But they do expect it to demonstrate awareness, responsiveness, and clear leadership,” Tisinger warns.
The Solution is Substitutability and Clear Competencies
Effective reputation protection, according to experts, does not lie in creating more extensive manuals, but in practical redundancy of decision-making powers. Companies should focus on the following points:
- Clearly define alternative representatives with the authority to approve expenses and communications.
- Prepare framework statements (holding statements) that can be used immediately upon detection of a problem.
- Conduct stress tests that simulate crisis situations with an incomplete team composition.
The key to successfully managing a summer crisis is agreement on reaction principles before any problem arises. If teams are clear on issues of transparency and accountability, they will not waste time discussing processes in critical moments and can fully concentrate on resolving the situation.