Anne van Loon

I love to be in the kitchen and I always try different recipes. For every dish that I make, I cook with a basic recipe, because if the foundation of the dish is right, you can permit to experiment with ingredients. Everything I put in the dish, will have effect on the eventual taste. One ingredient might create more balance, while the other ingredient might create a taste explosion. I see a similarity with crisis management. The basic recipe stands for good preparation: having plans, experience with crisistools and trained crisisteam members. The ingredients stand for all the events happening during a crisis, that cause the taste of the dish to change every time something happens. Good preparation causes more organisational resilience and vigor, so that you will be stronger at the helm and are able to better brace any impact. After cooking, we evaluate the dish; did it taste good with ingredient x, or should I add some more of ingredient y next time? Evaluation stimulates the learning ability of an organisation and gives great insights into improvement areas for the next crisis.

I believe in engaging everyone’s individual strenghts during a crisis, to create a strong crisisorganisation together. The power of together is what I believe in. Connecting people and training them in working together during a crisis is what creates human resilience and a powerful team. It is important to know what everyone will bring and to trust that together you will get through this crisis and are able to build on eachother and trust eachother.

The interesting thing about our current, digital society is that cyber incidents raise more questions about cyber crisis managment. Cyber incidents are happening daily and organisations can no longer turn a blind eye. The consequences of cyber incidents are less palpable and hence this type of crisis demands a different form of crisis management. This is a form that I want to explore further, considering my background in cybersecurity, to help organisations with cyber crisis managment.