3 Ways to Future-Proof Your Organization in a Crisis

Nonprofits, associations, and companies across the world have settled into a new normal stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. But the lessons learned are also preparing organizations to mitigate risk, find opportunities, and build for the future in ways that will make them rock solid when the next crisis — albeit on a hopefully smaller scale — occurs.

Here are three ways public and government affairs teams can future-proof against the rapidly changing and difficult public policy landscape. 

Bring Your Team Online

To future-proof your organization for the inevitable “worst-case scenario,” you need to create an online workspace and repository for your team to access in the absence of a traditional office setting.

Take and share meeting notes after you meet with stakeholders and document decisions and processes in a central place to give everyone on your team visibility. By documenting all aspects of your work and assigning responsibility and goals in one online place, you’ll be able to create a culture of seamless collaboration and transparency around your successes and failures. 

It’s important to get into the habit of placing relevant files, news articles, and links all in a single shared place your team can access from anywhere. Doing this will drive alignment and also help you capture valuable work products that may otherwise get lost in someone’s inbox or be left to hoping people follow best practices. 

Many technology platforms allow you to keep your notes, actions, and team discussions all in one place. However, for government and public affairs professionals who also need to keep track of new legislations and regulations developing across the country and world, it’s critical to streamline those systems of record in order to manage it all. This is especially true during a crisis when information changes so rapidly.

Create a Recovery Plan with Stakeholder Management

Creating a recovery plan for your government relations or public affairs team to map out the necessary stakeholders and processes you need to activate in a crisis will mean you’re ahead of the curve.

Creating a stakeholder management strategy will allow your team to hit the ground running when a crisis emerges, and swiftly connect with lawmakers, business leaders, and grassroots networks.

Your team will be able to identify, engage with, and align key stakeholders around emerging public policy issues while keeping your organization at the forefront.

Identify New Risks at Every Level

Your team should take the lead in tracking and monitoring the next wave of legislative and regulatory risks for your organization so that when the worst-case scenario occurs, you’ll have a domestic and global outlook prepared and be aware of the immense changes that could come.

Begin setting alerts to follow all levels of government for the changes that are going on across your industry, and look at these changes through this pandemic or another worst-case scenario that takes into consideration the factors that could shift your business overnight.

With COVID-19, we’ve seen that the worst can happen and your business can change completely. The teams that prioritize focusing on external risks to their business by monitoring and tracking legislative and regulatory activity on a domestic and global scale will be able to mitigate risk and find new opportunities.

Although preparing for the worst may not equate to immediate revenue generation, it will undoubtedly make it easier to manage inevitable obstacles. Getting out in front of issues will allow organizations to withstand the turbulence that results from times of uncertainty, and by future-proofing your organization, your team can have the best resource to plan effectively for the near term and beyond.

Stay Ahead of the Curve and Manage Risk with FiscalNote

As we navigate an influx of regulations and legislation, political divisions, and a slew of emerging local or global crises, tech innovation is more important than ever to manage your public affairs strategy. FiscalNote allows government relations, corporate and external affairs, grassroots, and legal teams to stay ahead of the issues affecting their industry and be prepared when a crisis hits.

In this age of uncertainty and constant change, the ability to manage your issues, streamline collaboration, report effectively to your team and executives, and communicate to the public around policy issues is more critical than ever. FiscalNote’s tools allow you to manage issues, stakeholders, and teams in one place, driving more effective cross-departmental collaboration, coordination, and communications.