What to do first...

I was recently asked "With all of the business concerns that come along with COVID-19, what are some strategies to help people in your area of expertise prioritize their time and resources?"

Since Pandemic Planning and Crisis Management are both relevant, my recommendation is to first evaluate your Business Continuity Plans from the POV of sitting in the middle of this ongoing event. What changes need to be made to your response to stay ahead of additional developments? Are you facing challenges in getting status updates from employees (Are they sick? Do they need help? Are they available to work?) and, if so, how can you best correct these issues without rewriting your entire Crisis Communications Plan in the middle of an event?

If you can quickly turn around critical improvements to your plans and communicate them to stakeholders, you've accomplished three things:

• Increased the effectiveness of your organization's Business Resiliency

• Removed one big item off your (probably overwhelming) to-do list

• Reduced your stress level

I would absolutely NOT try to rewrite plans right now. The situation is in flux and will continue to be for some time. Fix ONLY the key problems, and start a list of items to review when it's reasonable to do so. The particular challenge of a pandemic is that you have an ongoing and evolving event. That may seem self-evident, but often the focus is on solutions for an ongoing event (like alternate workspace for employees) with less emphasis on the evolving nature of pandemics and how that affects your primary business. The daily news provides ample evidence of this in our current global crisis.