Manage the Corona Impact

Setting up a Crisis Governance

How to set up a governance to manage challenging times

Clear and decisive governance is an essential success factor during turbulent times. It helps to set direction and enables quick and transparent decisions. Furthermore, it provides orientation and structure in the short-term, as well as a means for coordinating strategic measures required to reset the course after the crisis.

Essential levers – Actions to be taken by business leaders

In the short run, business leaders need to ensure the ability to act. This includes:

Setting up a cross-functional crisis response task force
Speeding up decision-making processes
Modeling crisis impact scenarios
Monitoring crucial performance indicators
Quickly establishing adequate communication channels

In the mid-term, focus needs to shift towards stabilization and the time after the crisis. This includes:

Planning, prioritizing, and structuring improvement programs
Identifying quick win improvements
Orchestrating improvement measures for all corporate functions
Continuing to model future scenarios
Updating steering principles

Success factors for resetting the course

When implementing new governance principles, business leaders need to act fast and keep the following success factors in mind:

Employ a top-down approach for topics that need to be centrally coordinated
Nominate cross-functional representatives for crisis response and program management
Empower managers to make quick and bold decisions during implementation
Bundle all improvement and transformation measures across functions
Communicate (new) steering and decision principles openly