When horseburgers hit the headlines: Lessons in crisis management for suppliers

By Dominic Cockram

Last week it was discovered that several ‘beef’ products on sale in UK supermarkets contained horse and pig DNA. The story immediately hit the headlines with #horseburger trending on social media within hours as outrage at retailers and terrible puns abounded in equal measure. A recall on the affected products was immediately issued, but the response thereafter has seemed rather like a game of pass the blame.

What can manufacturers and suppliers learn from the #horseburger fallout?

1.     The big brands don’t have your back: Reputation and consumer confidence is the cornerstone of big name brands, and they will have no qualms about turning against suppliers to protect their name. Tesco was proactive

Crisis Lesson #1 – Enabling Strategic Thinking

By Dominic Cockram

Over the years, Steelhenge has witnessed board-level crisis responses from a large number of organisations in greatly varying sectors and geographic locations. There are certain key issues which come up again and again, and we hope to give an insight into some of these over the coming weeks.

The first key area that top-level teams consistently struggle to manage is the strategic element of a crisis response.  The temptation is to dive into the detail, get operational and derive comfort from dealing in the familiar.  There will be ‘fires at your feet’ and they will need fighting, but it is the executive team’s role to watch the horizon; the ‘gold’ team should be looking ahead whilst those around them plan (‘silver’) and deliver (‘bronze’) on their decisions and direction.

This is where conceptual thinking models work well; simple approaches designed to capture the core elements of strategic thinking with which a gold-level crisis team should be engaging.  Few senior executives know their organisation’s crisis plans well, and many have never even read them. The one tool they need is a very simple, well-structured key activity process to keep them on track.

A good set of crisis procedures is a great start – it provides those critical checklists needed to help staff working under immense pressure. These help focus discussions, give guidance and a sense of structure and provide familiarity in a situation when so much is often unknown.