Case Highlights
International Consumer Brand
Problem
A key international brand with a global presence wished to test its crisis management process and procedures, and to ascertain in particular, whether relevant staff understood and were able to appropriately to implement the company policies on:
- Crisis handling, including communications/media handling;
- Command and control structure;
- Inter-departmental co-ordination & communication;
- Customer handling & interface
Solution
Based on the client’s existing paper based crisis exercise, we re-created the exercise using multimedia feeds (video, social media, news coverage, documentary and audio) and conducted a one day session with Solve:Immersive.
Results
The participants found that Solve:Immersive delivered a more dynamic and realistic scenario (as opposed to the linear approach of paper based exercises). The exercise also helped participants to appreciate and address wider issues: reputation, legal, decision making and recording decisions.
London-based Investment Bank
Problem
The bank uncovered a possible data security breach, following a software upgrade implemented by IT contractors two days previously. The Head of Risk learnt that subsequent vulnerabilities allowed a hacker to gain access to encrypted data. The unusual behavior detected by monitoring systems raised questions as to why it took two days to detect.
Solution
An anonymized debriefing was devised and facilitated through Solve:Immersive (in a combination of individual discipline and multi-disciplinary sessions), resulting in the identification of shortcomings and underlying reasons.
Results
Crisis response plan revised and changes made to ensure distinct strategic and operational responses. In addition, communication policy flaws (too much internal briefing, no ‘need to know’ approach) were corrected.
Major Financial Services Brand
Problem
The brand suffered a major cyber incident, with global consequences for the financial services
brand involved. A corporate disaster had been narrowly avoided as crisis management leadership was lost in action and lost sight of strategic imperatives.
Solution
Within a one day series of sessions, Solve: Immersive was used to debrief the critical incident in
order to examine shortcomings and enable staff to arrive at solutions.
Results
Crisis response amended significantly, ‘need to know’ introduced, changes made to ensure national and regional expertise properly deployed and targeted training needs identified. Most importantly, a fit-for-purpose command structure (role, not rank, based) introduced, along with a
resilient and approachable method for recording decisions and rationale.
International Law Firm
Problem
The firm wanted to engage with General Counsel from existing and potential corporate clients in respect of foreign bribery (UK Bribery Act & US FCPA), corporate governance, whistleblower handling (duty of care issues etc.) internal investigations, self-reporting to regulatory authorities, Jurisdictional risks and reputational issues.
Solution
Amicus devised and facilitated a critical incident immersive exercise for a group of sixteen General Counsel. Participants were split into small crisis management teams and, over the course of three hours, each member was required to act as sole decision-maker at key stages of the exercise (taking advice from the rest of the team).
Results
By the end of the session, participants had identified additional needs and services required. Those included substantive advice upon internal investigations processes, guidance on the parameters of LPP, and effective procedures to address vulnerabilities in crisis management response.
International Consumer Brand
Problem
The US State Dept. identified that Intelligence services, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors of the Maghreb and Sahel regions were in need of greater counter-terrorism co-ordination and an enhancement of their capabilities (including human rights compliance) when seeking to turn intelligence into evidence and when running intelligence-led operations. Further, a need existed to create concentrated centers of excellence in order to handle serious or complex cases and to help propagate best practices within each of the jurisdictions of the regions.
Solution
Solve:Immersive designed and developed a five day course including both front-end loaded and interspersed knowledge-giving sessions. The sessions required participants to have conduct of a case from initial intelligence evaluation, through intelligence development, to investigation and prosecution. Participants were assigned to small, multi-disciplinary teams, and were each required, to make a number of operational decisions at key stages. Each decision was required to be recorded, with reasoning articulated, and was subject to debrief, scrutiny and challenge. Solve:Immersive was used during the exercise to obtain frank insight into the challenges that participants face in counter-terrorism/serious crime investigations and to help arrive at workable contextually appropriate solutions to existing difficulties.
Results
Participants reported that the exercise gave them an opportunity, in many cases for the first time, to understand the inter-relationship between intelligence and evidence-gathering and the need to have investigative and prosecutorial strategies that are both adaptable and subject to ongoing review. Subsequent feedback from the national authorities confirmed that most of the key best practices to which the participants were exposed are now being put into practice within specialist units/directorates. As the exercise progressed, it was noted that more detailed and defensible rationalization was underpinning the decisions being made.