Crisis management questions.

80 crisis management questions from the bank, ready to practice out loud.

Learn the ideas first · free with an account

Root cause: five whys, fishbone & causal layers STAR and CARL: structuring your story Blameless postmortems & debriefs that change something Incident command: severity, roles & the first hour Signal vs noise: is this spike real?When the client is frightened or furious Crisis communications: what to say before you know anything

All 80 questions

Responding to critical supplier bankruptcyYour sole supplier of a critical component just declared bankruptcy. Walk me through your first 24 hours.Rapid triageSenior–leadership

Structuring product recall workstreamsWalk me through how you'd structure parallel workstreams during a product recall.Parallel investigationSenior–leadership

Communicating supply disruption to customersWalk me through how you'd communicate a major supply disruption to your top 10 customers.Customer and stakeholder communicationSenior–leadership

Activating an untested contingency planWalk me through how you'd activate a contingency plan that hasn't been tested in years.Contingency activationSenior–leadership

Structuring crisis after-action reviewWalk me through how you'd structure the after-action review for a major operational crisis.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Managing sudden 200% demand spikeWalk me through your response when demand suddenly spikes 200% and you can't ramp production.Rapid triageSenior–leadership

Quality issue investigationWalk me through how you'd structure investigation when a quality issue surfaces in field but lab tests are clean.Parallel investigationSenior–leadership

Communicating unexpected facility shutdownWalk me through how you'd write the executive-level communication when a major facility goes offline unexpectedly.Customer and stakeholder communicationSenior–leadership

Responding to flawed disaster-recovery planWalk me through how you'd respond when your primary disaster-recovery plan turns out to be flawed mid-crisis.Contingency activationSenior–leadership

Converting crisis lessonsWalk me through how you'd convert post-crisis lessons into permanent organizational change.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Responding to operational cyber incidentWalk me through how you'd respond to a cyber-incident that's affecting operations at one of your sites.Rapid triageSenior–leadership

Cross-department root causeWalk me through how you'd run a multi-team investigation when the root cause crosses departments.Parallel investigationSenior–leadership

Press call before factsWalk me through how you'd handle a press call asking about a developing incident before facts are confirmed.Customer and stakeholder communicationSenior–leadership

Choosing between flawed contingency pathsWalk me through how you'd choose between two contingency paths that both have major drawbacks.Contingency activationSenior–leadership

Running post-mortem focused on learningWalk me through how you'd handle a post-mortem where blame is being assigned more than learning is happening.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Equipment failure during operationsWalk me through your response when a key piece of safety equipment fails inspection during operations.Rapid triageSenior–leadership

Balancing investigation and mitigationWalk me through how you'd ensure investigation doesn't conflict with mitigation in a fast-moving incident.Parallel investigationSenior–leadership

Communicating with regulatorsWalk me through how you'd communicate with regulators during a developing safety event.Customer and stakeholder communicationSenior–leadership

Activating an untested backup supplierWalk me through how you'd handle activating a backup supplier you've never used at scale.Contingency activationSenior–leadership

Updating runbooks after crisisWalk me through what specific changes you'd make to runbooks after a crisis revealed gaps.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Labor action removing workforceWalk me through your response to a labor action that suddenly takes 30% of your workforce offline.Rapid triageSenior–leadership

Customer-reported safety defectWalk me through how you'd handle a customer-reported defect that potentially affects safety.Parallel investigationSenior–leadership

Employee communication during rumorsWalk me through how you'd communicate to employees during a crisis when rumors are spreading.Customer and stakeholder communicationSenior–leadership

Outage exceeding contingency planWalk me through how you'd handle an extended outage that's exceeded your contingency plan's planned duration.Contingency activationSenior–leadership

Testing post-crisis changesWalk me through how you'd test the changes you made post-crisis without waiting for another real one.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Competitor crisis as warningWalk me through your response when the crisis is happening to a competitor and might come to you next.Rapid triageSenior–leadership

Simultaneous crises with limited staffWalk me through how you'd handle two crises hitting at once with limited bench.Parallel investigationSenior–leadership

Board communication during unclear eventWalk me through how you'd communicate to the board during an unfolding event of unclear severity.Customer and stakeholder communicationSenior–leadership

Expensive contingency over budgetWalk me through how you'd handle a contingency that's working but more expensive than budgeted.Contingency activationSenior–leadership

Recovering team moraleWalk me through how you'd recover team morale after a particularly grueling crisis response.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Data breach response prioritiesWalk me through how you'd prioritize actions in the first 30 minutes after discovering a data breach affecting customer information.Rapid triageEntry–mid

Wrong product shipped to customersWalk me through how you'd handle discovering a shipping error that sent 500 units of Product A to customers who ordered Product B.Rapid triageEntry–mid

Customer injury investigationWalk me through how you'd organize information-gathering when a customer reports an injury potentially linked to your product.Parallel investigationEntry–mid

Batch quality investigationWalk me through how you'd coordinate with QA, production, and logistics teams to investigate a batch of products with inconsistent performance.Parallel investigationEntry–mid

Explaining order delay to customerWalk me through how you'd draft a customer email explaining a two-week delay in their order due to an equipment malfunction.Customer and stakeholder communicationEntry–mid

Talking points for upset clientWalk me through how you'd prepare talking points for your manager to use in a call with an upset client about a missed deadline.Customer and stakeholder communicationEntry–mid

Hourly updates during warehouse fireWalk me through how you'd update internal teams hourly during an ongoing warehouse fire that's disrupting fulfillment.Customer and stakeholder communicationEntry–mid

Switching payment processorsWalk me through how you'd execute switching to a backup payment processor after your primary system goes down during business hours.Contingency activationEntry–mid

Manual workarounds for system crashWalk me through how you'd implement manual workarounds when your inventory management system crashes during peak season.Contingency activationEntry–mid

Documenting crisis lessons learnedWalk me through how you'd document what went wrong during a crisis while it's still fresh in everyone's memory.Post Crisis learningEntry–mid

Evaluating crisis response effectivenessWalk me through how you'd identify which parts of your response worked well and which didn't after resolving a customer service overload crisis.Post Crisis learningEntry–mid

Gathering frontline feedback after crisesWalk me through how you'd gather feedback from frontline staff who handled a crisis to improve future response procedures.Post Crisis learningEntry–mid

Triaging a customer-reported data breachWalk me through how you'd triage when a major data breach is reported by a customer before your security team detected it.Rapid triageSenior–leadership

Unannounced regulatory inspectionWalk me through your first hour when a regulatory inspector arrives unannounced and immediately cites three serious violations.Rapid triageMid–leadership

Defect trending on socialWalk me through how you'd structure communication when a product defect is trending on social media but engineering hasn't confirmed the issue yet.Customer and stakeholder communicationMid–leadership

Contamination event responseWalk me through how you'd run parallel workstreams when a contamination event requires both customer notification and production shutdown.Parallel investigationSenior–leadership

Critical system fails, owner unavailableWalk me through your response when a key executive is suddenly unavailable and they were the only person who understood a critical legacy system now failing.Rapid triageMid–senior

Activating distributed crisis teamWalk me through how you'd activate a geographically distributed crisis team across six time zones within two hours.Contingency activationSenior–leadership

Investigating complaints with normal metricsWalk me through how you'd structure the investigation when customer complaints spike but internal metrics show no anomalies.Parallel investigationMid–senior

Board update without root causeWalk me through how you'd communicate to the board when a crisis is unfolding and you don't yet have root cause or timeline to resolution.Customer and stakeholder communicationSenior–leadership

Distribution center disasterWalk me through your first 90 minutes when a natural disaster hits your largest distribution center during peak season.Rapid triageMid–leadership

Converting failed launch into improvementsWalk me through how you'd convert findings from a failed product launch into systemic process improvements across three business units.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Cloud provider outage, no ETAWalk me through how you'd triage when your cloud infrastructure provider reports an outage affecting customer-facing services with no ETA.Rapid triageMid–leadership

Competitor solves your technical problemWalk me through how you'd structure a tiger team when a competitor announces they've solved the technical problem your team has struggled with for months.Parallel investigationMid–senior

Whistleblower allegation surfaces internallyWalk me through your approach when a whistleblower allegation surfaces internally and you need to investigate while maintaining confidentiality.Parallel investigationSenior–leadership

Correcting wrong root-cause communicationWalk me through how you'd update customers when your initial root-cause analysis turns out to be wrong and the issue is more serious than first communicated.Customer and stakeholder communicationMid–leadership

Raw material shortage, backup suppliersWalk me through how you'd activate backup suppliers when your forecasting model failed to predict a raw material shortage now affecting production.Contingency activationMid–senior

Post-mortem across multiple functionsWalk me through how you'd design the post-mortem process when the crisis involved failures across engineering, operations, and customer support.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Safety incident triggers nationwide scrutinyWalk me through your first three hours when a safety incident at one site triggers regulatory scrutiny of all your facilities nationwide.Rapid triageSenior–leadership

Communication systems completely downWalk me through how you'd respond when your crisis communication plan assumes email and phone, but both systems are down.Contingency activationMid–senior

Merger integration crisis, split impactWalk me through how you'd structure stakeholder updates when a merger integration crisis affects customers from both legacy companies differently.Customer and stakeholder communicationSenior–leadership

Production yield drops 40% unexpectedlyWalk me through how you'd investigate when production yield suddenly drops 40% and the change log shows no recent modifications.Parallel investigationMid–senior

Building muscle memory from near-missWalk me through how you'd embed crisis-response muscle memory into the organization after a near-miss event that didn't escalate to full crisis.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Key customer threatens to leaveWalk me through your approach when a key customer threatens to leave during an ongoing service disruption and demands immediate executive attention.Customer and stakeholder communicationMid–leadership

Crisis leader caused the problemWalk me through how you'd activate your incident command structure when the designated crisis leader is the person whose decision caused the problem.Contingency activationSenior–leadership

API change breaks customersWalk me through how you'd triage when an API change breaks integrations for 30% of customers but rolling back would break the other 70%.Rapid triageMid–senior

Risk identified but never escalatedWalk me through how you'd run a lessons-learned session when the crisis revealed that three different teams had identified the risk but none escalated it.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Temperature excursion in biologic shipmentA temperature logger shows a refrigerated biologic shipment spent about six hours above its labeled storage range in transit. Walk me through your first moves before deciding whether the product is still usable.Rapid triageMid–senior

Particulate contamination in distributed lotA hospital pharmacy reports visible particulate in vials from a lot you released three weeks ago. Walk me through your first 24 hours deciding whether this becomes a recall.Rapid triageSenior–leadership

Single-source supplier plant fireYour single-source API supplier reports a plant fire that halts shipments for an unknown period. Walk me through how you'd activate a supply-continuity response.Contingency activationSenior–leadership

Sequencing market action communicationsYou've decided a market action on a distributed lot is likely. Walk me through how you'd sequence communication to regulators, distributors, and patients.Customer and stakeholder communicationSenior–leadership

Data-integrity breach reviewAfter a confirmed data-integrity breach in a QC lab, walk me through how you'd run the review so the fix is systemic and not just the analyst who got caught.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Responding to breaking news allegationA reporter emails at 2pm: they're running a story at 5pm alleging your company knowingly shipped a defective product, and they want comment. Walk me through your first sixty minutes.Rapid triageSenior–leadership

Announcing layoffs with leak riskYour company is announcing layoffs of 15% of staff tomorrow. Walk me through how you'd sequence the communication across employees, media, investors, and customers — and what you'd do if it leaks tonight.Customer and stakeholder communicationSenior–leadership

Workplace fatality crisis communicationsA worker has died in an accident at one of your company's facilities this morning. Walk me through activating your crisis communications plan, including the dark site and your social media posture.Contingency activationMid–senior

CEO inflammatory post going viralIt's 11pm and your CEO has personally posted something inflammatory that's going viral. The board chair is texting you. Walk me through your next two hours.Rapid triageSenior–leadership

Data breach with conflicting pressuresYour company has discovered a data breach. Legal wants silence, regulators have notification deadlines, and a journalist is already asking questions. Walk me through how you'd structure the workstreams.Parallel investigationSenior–leadership

False product claim spreading onlineA false claim about your product is spreading in an online community — it hasn't hit mainstream press yet. Walk me through how you'd decide whether to respond publicly, and what you'd do either way.Customer and stakeholder communicationMid–senior

Communications after-action reviewThe crisis is over and coverage has died down. Walk me through how you'd run the communications after-action review and what you'd measure beyond coverage volume.Post Crisis learningSenior–leadership

Overnight mention spike triageYou're the first comms person online at 7am and the monitoring dashboard shows negative mentions of your company spiked overnight. Walk me through what you'd check and when you'd wake someone up.Rapid triageEntry–mid