Polish authorities recover quickly from disaster to reaffirm control
The Polish administration has to be admired for getting its crisis management plan into action quickly following the tragic crash of the aeroplane carrying that country’s top political, civil and military leaders.
It has reaffirmed steady hands remain on the tiller of State.
The Acting President has appointed acting heads of institutions such as the National Bank, Chief of Security, and the heads of the air force, navy and land forces.
It has moved to counter the ‘conspiracy theorists’ who are seeking to find the hand of Russian involvement in the tragedy by talking up the “emotional breakthrough” created by the “two nations grieving together”.
And today it announced it was bringing forward the planned Presidential elections.
News that Poland is to ‘review’ travel rules for senior officials is again a move by the administration to show it has matters ‘in hand’.
However, for those of us who spend our lives in issues management planning the real question is: Why were so many travelling on the same aircraft in the first place?
It is fundamental of disaster prevention to require people important to a country’s political and economic stability to be split into separate groups when travelling to the same event.
What possessed Polish decision makers to ignore such a common sense requirement?
Most large corporations have rules about senior executives travelling separately, and Coca-Cola has made the issue part of their corporate folk lore (you’ve heard the story, only a few executives know the secret formulae, and they are never allowed to travel on the same plane together).
Human nature being what it is, there is often little enthusiasm for disaster planning. It often gets bumped to the back of the queue time after time while more pressing issues are dealt with.
Perhaps the Polish tragedy will be a timely reminder to those in decision making roles that they need to ensure their disaster planning is on a firm footing.
Tags: Coca Cola, Crisis communication, crisis management, Disaster, Elections, issues management, Plane crash, Poland, Polish President, Russia