There is, of course, no silver bullet that can solve every crisis, but experts contend that small businesses with a plan for dealing with the myriad of potential calamities that could impact their operation are much more likely to survive.

"Crisis management is having strategies and plans in position if a crisis occurs," said Roger Bierman, a franchise relations manager for Fiducial for Alaska, the Northwest, North Central and Northeastern regions. "You must also teach your employees and your main managers how to react in these situations. You have meetings to prepare for these types of things. Preparation is very important. You prepare for those things that you know happen."

Back when he owned a Texaco service station in the Chicago suburbs, Bierman made sure his employees were ready if a crisis arose.

Late one winter's evening a customer was gassing up then pulled his vehicle away with the nozzle still attached to the gasoline dispenser, which then broke away from its base, causing a geyser of gas to shoot up about 15 to 20 feet high. The dispenser was supposed to shut off by itself if it became dislodged, but the automatic switch did not work. Bierman was still at the station plowing snow off the lot when the accident happened. He rushed to the shut-off valve in the station building. Fortunately, no one was injured and there was no major damage.

Biernan had made sure other employees could diffuse this emergency if they had to.

"Everybody knew where the switch was," he said.

Most small business owners, however, aren't ready when a crisis strikes.

"I don't think people educate their staff well enough," he said. "Crises are always a part of life. They are going to be as big as you make it to be."

Preventing chronic problems

Crises are often traumatic events with effects that last long after the disaster has passed.

Dr. Mark Lerner, president of the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress in Commack, N.Y., the largest multidisciplinary network of professionals that work with trauma survivors, observed that a business that doesn't have any employee assistance programs for helping them deal with a crisis "will find themselves having to think on their feet at the time of the crisis; but their ability to think is compromised by the event themselves."

Lerner maintains that small businesses should have crisis management teams in position who are the go-to people sought out when they are in trouble.

"Train them and empower them to respond," he said. "I'm a big believer in training members of the organization. When you call in outside experts with name tags it takes away more control from the business."

Not every crisis victim needs to be seen by a psychologist, said Lerner, who insists that the best help is rendered by those who want to help and are good listeners. While he noted that so much is done to confront the physical and safety needs of people who have been through a crisis, it's important to address their emotional suffering as well.

"By reaching people early following a traumatic event, we can potentially prevent the acute difficulties of today from becoming the chronic problems of tomorrow," he said.

Planning often comes too late

James Lukaszewski, chairman of The Lukaszewski Group in White Plains, N.Y., is among the best known crisis consultants in America. He said that many Fortune 500 companies do not have a crisis management plan -- so how can smaller companies be expected to have them?

"If the big guys wing it, the little guys do too," said Lukaszewski. "In a business as small as 100 employees, who's got time for this?"

Companies are usually prepared for everyday contingencies, such as employee conditions for wage and labor compliance or certain industry precautions (for instance, if they handle hazardous materials). But he said it's the non-operational problems caused by those outside the company like vendors, allies and neighbors that often contribute to a crisis.

For most organizations, Lukaszewski defines a crisis as a barrage of urgent, unexpected, unpleasant events that allows no time to think, organize or plan appropriate actions. Most organizations begin to plan for crisis only after one occurs.

"This is a mistake," he said. "What sets a crisis apart from other bad days in business is the certainty of victims. That means people, animals or living systems such as a watershed. Mess up one of these and you have a crisis."

When responding to a crisis, the first step is to stop the production of victims to prevent further damage. Once the fire has been put out, it's time to deal with the victims and talk with employees. 

Lukaszewski believes the goal of a crisis management plan should be containment and positive counteraction. His five critical steps involve structuring a plan and developing a schematic that "visualizes" how the plan works. Rehearsals or simulations should be held as close to full-scale as possible and contingencies established to include "what ifs."

"This is foreign territory for most business owners and brings a high level of emotion," he said. "Most people in business are trained not to be emotional so it feels very uncomfortable to them. It goes against everything that they've learned."

Help is a phone call away

In today's ever-increasing reliance on information technology to help businesses do their job more effectively, crises occur even to the best prepared companies. More and more, small businesses use computers, and their clients send information electronically.

Information Systems Manager Isabelle Osinski keeps a close eye on Fiducial's computer network and has plans to deal with crises should they occur.

"We have a good maintenance plan on all our sensitive servers with Hewlett-Packard and Dell," said Osinski. "If something breaks we call them and they send a technician on site with a replacement part within four hours."

Fiducial has an administrator on call 24/7 in case something happens at its Technical and Administrative Support Center (TASC) in Columbia, M.D., and someone is on site within 30 minutes. In the advent of a power disruption, Osinski indicated that they have universal power supplies for all its servers to deliver power in an emergency. For serious outages, they bring in a generator as needed.

With redundancy in its systems, this gives Fiducial time to solve most problems.

"We have good backup procedures, including off-site data storage, that would allow us to rebuild our servers anywhere in less then two days in case the data center is destroyed," Osinski added.

STEPHEN PAREZO is the Media Manager for Fiducial.