In his article “Five Lessons From the BP Oil Spill” Andrew Winston shares 5 things all business leaders should take into account when they meet a crisis. 

The article is focused on how BP is handling the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.   Obviously, since we are almost 2 months into the spill with no promise of it ending soon, the article is very critical of BP.  And it should be critical of BP – both the company’s reputation and the Gulf Coast are being destroyed.

One of the most important lessons Winston presents is to prepare for the worst.  Every company will run into a crisis at some point of their operations.  Winston tells businesses that “Preparing for a world were things only go right is extremely dangerous.”  There is usually no telling when, or what the event will be, but businesses need to be prepared.  In BP’s case, they need technologies to avoid spills, contain them, and clean them up.

We suggest brainstorming the worst possible thing that can happen to your business, and then thinking about how you would fix it.  This can be anything from an incorrectly manufactured product being shipped out to customers.  The crisis could be losing all of your company’s data when a hard drive or server crashes and you forgot to back it up.  Or it could be something like the Tylenol poisoning case in the 1980s – a situation where consumers could have potentially died from using the product.

How will you communicate with your customers and employees?  How would you get your business back on track?

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