High Performance Boards, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 12Crisis Management

8 July – Joanne Marker had recently received an email from a search firm asking if she would be interested in joining the board of RGen, a major infrastructure firm. One of the first questions she had asked the company’s chair, Mauro Wright, was what their crisis management plan was in the event that disaster struck. She clicked open Wright’s email:

Dear Joanne,

I know that your Virtuous experience may have been a traumatic one. Attached you will find our plan, should anything happen to me or to Roger (the CEO). I hope you will find this satisfactory.

The attachment was a rather generic crisis management plan.

Joanne frowned, remembering the morning of 12 April the previous year. She had awoken at her usual time of 5:00 am. While making coffee in her kitchen, she reviewed the Google alerts on her phone. As she scrolled through, one piece of news gave her pause: there had been a helicopter crash in Brazil. She knew that the Virtuous Ventures executive team had recently held a retreat following a major client meeting in Sao Paulo. With beads of sweat forming on her brow, Joanne opened the article. Her worst fear was realised: it was the Virtuous team on board the fateful helicopter. She phoned Adrian Holmes, the lead director. He agreed to call an extraordinary board meeting for the following morning.

Joanne knew that initial details of the accident might be sketchy and contradictory, and would likely take days to trickle in. But time was not on ...