Building capabilities that count When it matters most

Good companies are constantly horizon-scanning to gain visibility and prepare effectively for future challenges.

At Berwicks, we help businesses to identify and tackle those challenges head-on. By spending time with our clients and applying a tailored approach to the analysis of existing skills and resources, we can deliver clear, informed recommendations on building capability.

Our audit methods are different because we do not use technical experts to challenge your processes. Instead we take an independent, objective view to challenge both your company and industry norms. We use common sense, years of experience and a questioning attitude to get to the heart of potential issues.

Our audits are customised to our clients’ requirements and include face-to-face meetings, workshops, desk research, observations, and risk assessment, as well as reviewing documentation, plans and processes. Our experienced teams are able to assess the finer points of compliance and regulation, providing recommendations tailored to each client’s organisation and industry. Our focus is on identifying gaps or weaknesses and drawing on real-world case studies to inform our findings. We also carry out follow-up audits to assess capabilities and processes as they bed in.

By tailoring our audits for each client, we deliver a clearer understanding of current capabilities, areas of risk, legal obligations and where improvements can be made. As the audit is so often part of a broader project, we work with other service areas to deliver improvements for the business as a whole. In every case, the output is a clear recommendation on how to achieve enhanced capability that will deliver increased certainty and confidence for the future.

Our crisis management specialists give organisations a state of readiness that enables them to be resilient in the face of extreme adversity.

It’s about more than just surviving. By mitigating damage and minimising disruption, our guidance can keep a business firmly on track to meet shareholder obligations and strategic objectives. If applied successfully, organisations can emerge even stronger than before the crisis struck.

We start with a comprehensive audit of current capability, giving the senior team a clear picture of the risks they face and an objective view on the current state of preparedness.

This enables us to identify the capabilities needed to cope in a crisis and to make recommendations on how to embed them in the organisation. Using base case scenarios, we develop a crisis management strategy that is simple, flexible and fits with the culture of the organisation, usually culminating in an initial draft or rework of a Crisis Management Plan

Our focus then shifts to implementation, collaborating with our clients to deliver the necessary training and leadership development, draft new subordinate plans and introduce new or evolved processes. Ongoing evaluation and reporting ensures that the strategy is in place and delivering results.

We give our clients the confidence that comes from knowing their teams are prepared for the most extreme circumstances. By embedding strategic plans at the highest level and cascading it down through the organisation, we ensure that the response to a crisis will go beyond the purely tactical and operational to enable the business to maintain its strategic focus. We also supplement our crisis management planning with crisis communications planning.

Clients have recognised that the work done on the development of crisis management capability also improves individual and collective performance in the organisation’s daily operations.

Our communications advice focuses on how to achieve a prompt, measured and strategic response in a crisis, aligned to and integrated with the crisis management strategy.

We equip our clients to decide on and then stick to an agreed communication strategy and retain control of the message, ensuring it reaches the right stakeholders, whether regulators, government bodies, police, employees, public or the media. With reputational damage limited in this way, the business is better placed to stay on track, deliver against its commercial objectives and even has an opportunity to build trust in the face of adversity.

Effective crisis communication is all about having the right teams and processes in place. So our initial work is focused on identifying and engaging with the key stakeholders within the business. Working side by side with our client’s communications team, we assess any legal obligations and influencers while also analysing the existing communications framework. This enables us to develop a clear understanding of how information currently flows out of the organisation and how this can be improved, with a particular focus on the communication team and strategy. These findings then shape our recommendations on developing both the organisational structure as well as its communications processes and plans.

The crisis communication plan is, ideally, delivered as a pivotal part of a wider crisis management planning brief.

We give our clients the confidence and reassurance that comes from knowing their teams are prepared for even the most extreme circumstances. By embedding a strategic plan at the highest level and cascading it down through the organisation, we ensure that the response to a crisis will go beyond the purely tactical and operational to enable the business to maintain its strategic focus.

We prepare businesses for those critical first moments when the unthinkable happens.

Sound emergency management is more than a regulatory imperative – it’s the responsible and smart way to do business. We work with progressive organisations that understand this dynamic, helping them to put plans in place that save lives, protect the environment and also safeguard performance and reputations. By both containing potential disasters and limiting damage, effective emergency management leads to less significant financial impact, swifter resumption of business practices and a more resilient organisation.

We start by assessing the threats a client faces and looking at their current response in the forms of emergency plans, equipment, team structures and communication. This in-depth audit is often an organisation-wide exercise that involves staff at all levels gaining a clear understanding of the existing freedoms and constraints. Out of this process come recommendations on how to develop emergency capabilities, from reviewing team structures and writing new plans through to delivering training that gives leaders greater resilience at a strategic, operational and tactical level.

Ultimately, we want to ensure that our clients are left with improved leadership, an appreciation of the need for good situational awareness, enhanced communication, smart decision-making capabilities, and organisational alignment that enables a fast, effective response to life- or business-critical incidents.

Our clients benefit from the reassurance and confidence that comes from knowing they have meticulously examined their exposure to risk and acted to reduce that exposure wherever possible.

They also know that, should disaster strike, they have robust plans and expertly trained people in place to respond effectively. This level of preparation not only helps to save lives and the environment, it also bolsters their reputation with regulators, shareholders, staff and the public at large.

We inspire great leadership by applying deep experience and emotional intelligence.

We recognise that successful leadership is grounded in the twin capabilities of developing a clear strategy and effectively implementing it. Combining cross-industry experience, our hard-won empathy with the leadership environment and our trademark personal approach, we work with leaders to strengthen those core capabilities. Through coaching (and cajoling) we help them to align their organisation behind their strategy and build a more resilient, productive and efficient business. The result is transformative – in terms of morale, culture, operations and bottom line.

From the start we work collaboratively with the leadership team to gain a comprehensive understanding of the threats and opportunities they face while also challenging assumptions and entrenched thinking.

Highly pragmatic and practical, we resist working from a template, instead tailoring our approach to fit with each client’s specific needs and wants. This ensures a fresh perspective every time and is underpinned by our wealth of industry experience and background in advising businesses operating in complex, high-risk environments. It’s a combination that equips us to bring razor-sharp clarity to the process of creating a clear direction for the business and a strategy for growth.

We then ensure that the strategy is communicated effectively. Our approach stands out because we work with every level of an organisation to make sure those who are executing the strategy are both inspired and empowered. We move between working on individual capability through coaching and collective, organisational capability through process development and training.

By using quantitative metrics through 360 degree reporting and other tools we are able to measure success which hitherto would have been purely qualitative. We can do this either in-house or with our partner organisations, dependent on scale and the client’s wishes.

We continue to work with our clients to advise on how the process should evolve and adapt to changing circumstances.

Our clients benefit from a broadening of their senior team’s capability – clarity, communication, decision-making and team leadership are all strengthened. The effects are felt at every level of the organisation, leading to a more productive, motivated workforce able to deliver on the leadership’s new strategy. The business is transformed from the top down and, ultimately, far better placed to thrive.

We help large, complex organisations revolutionise the way they think and perform.

Our clients look to our experienced team for guidance on how to get the best out of their organisation, by improving and maximising efficiencies and effectiveness. Often working with highly-complex cross-border and cross-sector businesses, we have the specialist insight to help them re-think the way they do business and add value that is significant, tangible and sustainable.

We typically start with an independent review of the business to identify the greatest challenges and opportunities for change. This includes assessing the existing crisis and risk management capability to gain insights into how an organisation is led, makes decisions and responds to emerging threats.

This all happens alongside sessions with the senior management team to explore their understanding of the vision and corporate strategy. With a clear idea of the business’s current position and ambitions for the future, we focus on the strategic, operational and tactical options to meet its objectives.

Our recommendations will cover issues such as how to cut costs, manage risk and improve productivity, and touch on everything from structures and cross-organisation integration through to talent development, procurement and an optimised crisis management and emergency response.

Once our recommendations have been agreed, we move to an implementation phase that is characterised by close cooperation and accountability across all business units and levels of the organisation.

This spirit of collaboration is vital in introducing new ways of working and transforming the underlying culture and values. Ultimately, we need to change both the processes and the mind-set of the organisation in order to deliver real and lasting improvement.

The results for our clients are truly transformational. Our recommendations are practical and their impact is quickly felt, but they are also designed to offer significant and enduring performance benefits. By revolutionising the effectiveness of a business at a fundamental level, we are able to unburden senior management from non-profit- making distractions. Confident in the knowledge that they have the right structures, people and processes in place, leaders can focus on fulfilling their organisations’ ambitions and making their strategy happen.

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