Once a crisis is over and your self storage business is back up and running smoothly, take a deep breath. Take another. Then start a crisis post-mortem with your team and stipulate that the analysis is non-confrontational and non-accusatory.
Ask yourselves the tough questions:
- “What worked?”
- “What didn’t work?”
- “Why did it work or not work?”
- “What could have improved our planning?”
- “What processes need to be changed or enhanced?”
- “What changes do we need to make to be prepared better next time?”
- “Is there hardware, equipment, or software that we need to acquire and implement to be prepared better?”
The goal of this analysis is to learn from the crisis and evolve your business and processes so next time you and your team are better equipped to respond to a situation.
Take the learnings from your analysis and update the business crisis plan and processes. Share the updated document with your staff as soon as it is ready. Review the plan once a year with all employees. Add a review of the crisis management plan to the onboarding process for all new employees.
“Boy Scout Motto: BE PREPARED”
Boy Scouts of America
The bottom line is a crisis will happen to your self-storage business. Our challenge as self storage professionals is to be prepared ahead of time with plans and procedures, review them with our team members, and implement preventative measures to mitigate as much as possible when a crisis happens.
