An interview with the Crisis Management Experts - Omix Limited

Crisis can strike any organisation at any time or any size, from major scientific laboratories to your local café, and we’ve had to deal with data-based crises for our clients in the past too. So how does one manage a crisis and reduce the chances of them occurring?

To find out more I asked a few questions to our Partners at Omix who are crisis management experts.

Hi Benita, Stefan, and Donald! Nice to see you guys again! 

1. Who are you, and what qualifies you to talk about crises?

From Left to Right: Benita Percival, PhD., Stefan Grujic, Donald Fraser, PhD.

The Omix Limited team were engaged during the COVID-19 pandemic to operationalise at pace multiple laboratories, assays and workflows. We brought about transformations and rescues to start-ups and established labs under extreme pressure. While one can never truly claim to have seen it all… we did see a great deal. We were unique in being both the domain experts that would conduct work on the ground, as well as engaging with higher management and external stakeholders.

From this intensive period, we managed several once-in-a-career crises, and distilled what feels like 30 years of experience into 3 years. Our lived experience is therefore what qualifies us to talk about crises: We know what worked, and what didn’t. There’s a lot that we wish we knew when we were thrown in at the deep end, and our learnings from this period place us in a great position to advise and support businesses going through acute challenges.

2. What would you say has been the toughest crisis you've had to manage and how did you deal with it?

Donald Fraser, PhD.

The toughest crisis that I had direct responsibility for recovering was a widespread PCR amplicon contamination event. While PCR laboratories always run the risk of amplicon contamination (this was ‘not my first rodeo’!), this occasion was unusual owing to its sheer scale and number of moving parts. By the time I was brought in, the lab was past being able to contain and recover the operation, and adding to the challenge were unavoidable construction and infrastructure maintenance activities.

After listening to the prevailing sentiments of the team that had organically formed to try and solve the crisis, with some thought I realised that:

a) discovering the ‘true’ source of the contamination would be near impossible (it was wide-spread, but at a low level meaning that efforts to hunt down the source meant we were chasing ghosts)

b) we needed a plan to systematically clean and re-commission the laboratory operation

c) to enact any systematic recommissioning plan we needed a ‘clean’ back-up system to establish a ‘baseline’

Events were out of control, with no clear structure for resolving the problems. It was clear that this was a chaotic crisis that required a full shut down, deep clean and restart, which was my advice to senior management. It was an expensive and time consuming exercise, so it was not a proposal made lightly. However, at that stage it was the only remaining sensible course of action. My team and I therefore delivered a systematic and simple plan that prioritised safety. Our objective was to restore confidence by following a heavily structured plan with clear decision points and acceptance criteria that were agreed upon by senior management.

Benita Percival, PhD.

I was exposed to so many crises throughout the pandemic, it has been genuinely difficult to narrow down the most significant. For me, having the overwhelming task of setting up a software support team I have already covered in a previous article, so I guess, the next piece which I found the most challenging was the “LIMS down” experiences. The Laboratory information management system (LIMS) is a database which is sat in a spider web of other software and systems. LIMS can be linked to APIs, monitoring software, managed file transfer systems, the cloud/on-premises servers, laboratory equipment, the list goes on!

For a laboratory that is fully digitised, the crisis of a “LIMS down” results in no patient results being released, and the potential deferment of treatment and/or surgery. After hearing that the laboratory had the impression of LIMS constantly being the problem, I realised that significant training was required. It was necessary to ensure that the LIMS administrators understood the IT architecture and for incidents to accurately reflect the issue. There is so much room for misunderstanding of terminology that an infrastructure glossary was essential for us to ensure clear communication between us as the customer, and the supplier.

3. Given your experience with these crises, how can Omix Limited provide effective crisis management?

Every business will need to deal with an unexpected high-risk event at some point in its lifetime. Whilst Omix Limited specialises in scientific operations, the crisis response principles that we’ve empirically gathered are generally applicable. Crises are events that are unexpected, for which there is no ‘playbook’. They may share some patterns with past events; they might threaten business continuity, company reputation or financial position; but each event is unique.

We are on hand to provide:

• Development and documentation of disaster recovery plans;

• Crisis management workshops and tabletop exercises as part of your company’s disaster recovery planning;

• Strategic risk analysis to help your company prepare for and prevent predictable events;

• Direct assistance during an acute crisis as part of a rescue team.

4. In the heat of the moment as the crisis is unfolding: what are the most important things to think about?

Safety first: Is there a threat to life or health?! Is it an emergency?! Don’t try and manage something that is outside of your capabilities, or outside of your seniority level. Know your limits, and ask for help before you reach them.

Is it a crisis?: If you can contain the problem without a risk of making it worse – then do so. It will be much easier to deal with and can prevent a problem from snowballing into a disaster.

Communication management: Everybody knows what they should do on hearing a fire alarm. You should establish chains of communication to ensure that those who need to know about events are promptly alerted and given accurate and up-to-date information. You will also need a plan to engage with internal and external stakeholders in order to control the narrative.

Professionalism: Everyone will be looking to the leadership team to show leadership. So, show it. Be present on-site. Restore confidence. Demonstrate that you are taking it seriously. Strong leadership doesn’t necessarily mean making big speeches, it means taking sensible decisions, challenging ideas when they don’t feel right and keeping appropriate people informed where possible.

The Team: Be ready to pull together a mixed multi-level team from across the business. The team is temporary, with a flat structure and a single decision maker who takes overall responsibility and listens to all points of view.

Keep calm and manage your own expectations: The early stages of a crisis are always chaotic and feel out of control. A crisis is going to be a messy affair by definition. Your response will not be perfect: Each time you come across a crisis, you’ll be problem solving on the fly. Some decisions will give a good outcome, some will give a bad outcome. Just make sure that your decision is a sensible one, based on proven facts, and not blind assumptions. If all you have is assumptions – take a step back from decision making and gather the data you need to make a decision. Use rationality: don’t just divine answers and a plan based on a hunch, particularly if you don’t have the domain specific knowledge required. Can your decision be well justified if you are asked to explain yourself a year from now? If you’re not forced to problem solve in real time, or if you’re not under immense pressure – then it’s not a crisis.

5. Finally, how can you use data/management processes to prevent a problem becoming a full-blown crisis? What are your general tips to help a business become more resilient to future crises?

From a data perspective, monitoring a business’s key performance indicators through management information and business intelligence dashboards can give an early alert to problems. Early alerts can help you contain an event. However, understanding the business logic well enough to create a sensible monitoring system is a sophisticated challenge. While most businesses generate a lot of data, knowing what is useful and indicative of a problem requires hypothesising and critical thought.

A team’s resilience for crises is often borne out of experience, but most businesses would not seek to invoke crises for the sake of building a resilient team. However, there are strategies that can be implemented:

• Tabletop exercises – a scenario-based thought exercise to expose a group of people to an unfamiliar situation safely.

• Simulations – the next level up from Tabletop exercises. These require significant planning, are very resource intensive, and aim to provide realistic practice.

• Back-up systems – maintenance of a back-up system can help to ensure business continuity. However, they can be expensive to maintain and are only useful if not subject to the same risks as the main system.

• Recruit a diversity of talent – complex problems require a range of viewpoints, from which a solution must be distilled. Make sure that you don’t end up in an echo chamber.

• Consultancy – get advice from an expert.

To Conclude:

I think that’s all my questions for now, thank you for sharing your experiences, insights and your advice for crisis management – we’ll definitely take your advice on-board! If you found this interview interesting and want to know about crisis management contact us or Omix Limited for more.

If you have any questions or wish to discuss this topic in more detail, then you are more than welcome to contact me with any of the following contact details at the end of this article.