Crisis Management vs. Project Management Part 2

PM best practices demand that any projects should have well defined mission and objectives. In fact during project initiation stage the main task is to clarify and lay out clearly what the project wants to achieve in the end. For companies in the commercial sector, the objectives are usually tied to financial performance, customer satisfaction or company reputation. An example is a bank revamping its customer service center to improve customer experience, which in turn leads to higher customer satisfaction and hopefully more business. So revamping customer service center is a well-defined objective, and the mission is better customer satisfaction.

For public or non-profit organizations, a project’s mission is usually related to some social needs. For example a social enterprise organization in Hong Kong launches a project to help under-privileged youth establish their business that is self-sustainable. This is the project’s mission. The objective of the project may be to launch a barber shop or a car maintenance service. Regardless of what it is, it has to be defined clearly in the beginning.

To handle a crisis, however, the key objectives may not be always well defined, though its mission is clear. Take the recent H1N1 pandemic as an example. The mission is quite simple – To minimize its impact to public health. The objectives and their implied course of action may change from time to time. In Hong Kong, for instance, the original objective was to prevent H1N1 from coming into the city. With this objective came those high-handed strategies like locking up a hotel for 7 days, or mandatory isolation for patients who were tested positive for the flu. Later when signs showed that the flu was spreading domestically, the objective shifted to ensuring sufficient clinical facilities for treating patients, and preventing massive outbreak among the most vulnerable groups such as young students. This demonstrates the elusive nature of a crisis. A crisis is simply too complicated for any crisis team to define clear objectives in the very beginning.

The next major differences between managing a project and a crisis is the tradeoffs among key constraints, namely, scope, schedule, cost, risk, resources and quality. For projects, best practices dictate that a balance should be achieved among them. It may depend on project stakeholders but few would tell a project manager “you have to meet the original schedule at all cost.” Some projects may favour on-time delivery, some on the exact features and functions to be delivered, and some on controlling cost budget. But the job of a project manager is really to balance these constraints so that the objectives of the project can be met, to the satisfaction of customers and stakeholders.

On the other hand, the key mission of tackling a crisis has to be accomplished regardless of costs or resources involved. Think about how the Obama government dealt with the bank crisis last year, the Hong Kong government currently handles H1N1, you begin the understand what we mean here. A crisis simply has to be resolved within a particular time frame, usually at the expenses of cost, resources and risk.

To be continued...

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