cle

About Charlotte Ley

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far Charlotte Ley has created 44 blog entries.

Risk vs. crisis communication

By |2021-08-02T07:20:15+02:00 2 August, 2021|Interest|

In the field of crisis management, there is some talk of risk communication and some of crisis communication. In some documents or reports, the terms are used as synonyms for each other or are not clearly differentiated. But is this actually the case? The extent to which the term risk communication needs to be distinguished from the term crisis communication depends on the model being considered. Depending on the model, a clear differentiation may not be possible, but it must be said in advance that risk communication and crisis communication are not the same thing, so using the terms as synonyms is not correct. First of all, it should be clarified what the respective terms are: Risk communication is understood as a general warning that the occurrence of an event is basically possible. Risk communication takes place regardless of the occasion and is intended to prepare people for [...]

Risk perception

By |2021-07-05T07:59:42+02:00 5 July, 2021|Interest|

Have you ever wondered why an event usually has to happen before action can be taken? Why it is only after an event that precautions are taken to ensure that the impact of such an event is not so far-reaching should it occur again? This question is addressed in this blog article. First and foremost, in order to address a risk, it must be known. In some companies, this is proactively investigated and risk analyses and business impact analyses are done. But why are some risks not taken seriously or addressed, even though they may be known? To begin, let's review how risk is defined in emergency and crisis management. A risk is the probability/frequency of occurrence of a certain event times its damage extent/potential. The various risks are classified in a risk matrix, which is used as an assessment template.   Fig. 1: Risks mapped in a [...]

Groupthink – when unanimity becomes a problem

By |2021-06-28T12:02:16+02:00 28 June, 2021|Interest|

If a group of people finds itself in an overwhelming situation, i.e. a situation where the challenge exceeds the available resources, the whole group may take refuge in a kind of cognitive emergency reaction. What a cognitive emergency reaction is, you can read in detail in the previous blog article Cognitive emergency response - the flight into familiar action - IUGITAS. However, here is a brief summary: a cognitive emergency response is a dysfunctional protective mechanism in which everything is done to maintain a sense of competence and self-worth. Often, inappropriately, the familiar and routinized behaviors are continued in order to maintain an apparent sense of competence to act as well as control. When we talk about groupthink, we are not talking about swarm intelligence, but rather about the exact opposite of it. Groupthink does not mean that intelligent decisions are made on the basis of team collaboration, [...]

Cognitive emergency response – the flight into familiar action

By |2021-06-21T09:10:13+02:00 21 June, 2021|Uncategorized|

The fact that humans are creatures of habit is nothing new. They are reluctant to change their familiar behavior patterns. It usually takes 21 days to learn a new habit, and two to three months for something to really become ingrained in the thought pattern. But what if we find ourselves in a situation where this time is not available and we have to act immediately? Is the human being able to adapt his behavior adequately to the situation and act outside his regular patterns? Unfortunately, the answer is often no. In a situation which is overwhelming, such as a time-critical situation for many people, people tend to fall back into familiar behavioral patterns and rely on familiar processes. This is because these very actions can be recalled quickly under time pressure and a sense of competence is created as the person feels confident in what they do [...]

mass panic vs. mass exodus

By |2021-06-14T07:44:11+02:00 14 June, 2021|Interest|

The Love Parade in Düsseldorf, tragedies in Mecca, 9/11 and, as the latest example, the Lag Baomer festival at Meron Mountain in Israel. The media quickly speak of a mass panic when many people come together, there are bottlenecks or obstacles and the need to regain freedom of breath and movement or people feel a strong fear and try to flee from a situation. All this is mostly in combination with injured or even dead people. In Meron, there was talk of mass panic quickly after the incident occurred. During the celebration at the sanctuary of Mount Meron, 45 people died and quite a few were injured. This is the largest civil disaster in the history of Israel. According to initial findings, the disaster was triggered by a situation on a sloping ramp where people started to fall. Due to the density, a kind of domino effect was [...]

A plea for exercise

By |2021-06-07T13:03:49+02:00 7 June, 2021|Uncategorized|

How an event that affects day-to-day business operations is handled has a significant impact on the extent of the damage. Therefore, not only should precautionary measures be implemented in the company in advance to keep the residual risk as low as possible, but reactive measures should also be planned. After all, there is no such thing as 100% safety and the residual risk will never be zero. In case of an event, there will be an impact on the company. However, the reactive side of emergency and crisis management should not only be available as a nice document for auditors, but should above all be handy and applicable. If the planned actions are not applicable, the impact of the event is reduced only imperceptibly or not at all. How handy the reactive side was actually planned cannot be checked only by a theoretical examination. It is also not [...]

The Ever Given – a symbol

By |2021-05-31T10:53:10+02:00 31 May, 2021|Uncategorized|

A symbol of how dependent companies are on their supply chains, of how emergency response has to rely on rudimentary technology, and ultimately of how the little person has to manage the big crisis. The latest example of how vulnerable supply chains are was provided by the Ever Given accident in the Suez Canal in late March 2021. A canal, nearly 200 kilometers long, 120 meters wide, shortens the distance between the North Atlantic and Asia by approximately 30%. Instead of taking about a week to circumnavigate Africa, a canal passage of 11 to 16 hours is all it takes for ships from all over the world. It's no wonder, then, that this route is highly frequented and that almost 10% of the world's trade passes through this bottleneck. A ship getting stuck there is nothing new - in the past 10 years, about 25 ships have been [...]

Go to Top