Manatt government and regulatory partner Suzanne Folsom and managing director Robert Garretson coauthored the June 2020 cover story for Risk Management about the importance for organizations to conduct after-action evaluations, or “hot washes,” of their crisis response plans. In the article, they stress that a hot wash is only successful if all participants in these evaluations are able to contribute “without fear of critique or retaliation” from their organization or other evaluation participants. They also outline the steps that each organization should take as part of their evaluations, including:
- Conducting a baseline analysis where each evaluator answers a series of key questions before reviewing them as a group.
- Honestly assessing accountability for individual and group actions during the crisis in order to seek and identify solutions to any issues encountered during the event.
- Drive construction analysis that finds and examines specific opportunities to improve the overall performance of the crisis response plan.
- Making the final evaluation of the organization’s response plan actionable.
Read the article here.