.png)
.png)
You have seen it happen. A server hiccups, a vendor misses a shipment, or a laptop goes missing–p and suddenly the crisis team gets dragged into a “war room.” Everyone drops what they’re doing , jumps on a call, and fifteen minutes later, it’s clear it wasn’t necessary..
A few false alarms later, the damage starts to show. When a real crisis hits — the kind that actually threatens operations or reputation — the team is already tired, jaded, and slow to react..
Treating every bump in the road like a sinkhole wastes time, erodes trust, and dulls urgency. When the stakes are high, people have already stopped taking the alerts seriously.
Why the Line Between Incidents and Crises Gets Blurred
Part of the problem is that incidents and crises feel similar at the moment:
- Both are disruptive.
- Both create stress.
- Both demand quick decisions.
Without clear guidance, people default to the safest option – escalate.
After more than 25 years in the business continuity industry, our founder Michael Herrera has observed how teams get mobilized week after week for events that should have been handled by a service desk or a business unit manager.
It may seem safer to cry wolf than to risk being accused of negligence. But too many false positives create exhaustion instead of building resilience.
What Makes an Incident?
An incident is a disruption – it interrupts the normal rhythm of operations and needs a response, but it doesn’t threaten the organization’s long-term stability or reputation.
Think about a misplaced laptop. Annoying? Sure. Risky? Possibly, if it has sensitive data. But it is manageable under your existing processes. Same with a short outage in a single department, or a payroll glitch that can be fixed in a couple of hours. These are potholes, not sinkholes. They slow you down, but they do not swallow the road.
Incidents should be resolved by the managers who own those processes, using the playbooks and agreements already in place. Pulling in the crisis team for every small disruption is like calling the fire department every time someone burns toast.
What Makes a Crisis?
A crisis is different. It shakes the foundation: a major cyberattack, a hurricane, an active shooter. ‘Disruption’ doesn’t capture the severity of these events — they threaten the organization’s ability to operate, damage its reputation, and sometimes put lives at risk.
In these moments, you need more than a technical fix. You need strategic oversight, coordinated communication, and a team that can see across the organization. A crisis demands decisions that ripple outward to customers, regulators, employees, and the public. .
That is why the crisis team exists. Not to patch potholes, but to keep the company from plunging into a sinkhole.
The Matrix that Weeds Out False Alarms
The cleanest way to draw the line is with a severity matrix. Nothing fancy. Just a simple table that lays out the triggers:
- Is anyone’s safety at risk?
- How widespread is the impact: a team, one site, or the whole enterprise?
- What’s the potential for reputational damage or regulatory exposure?
With a matrix like this, you don’t have to rely on gut instinct or politics. Managers and executives are looking at the same criteria. They can decide together whether it is time to escalate or not.
It doesn’t need to be a complicated scoring system that no one remembers. Keep it straightforward, easy to read, and practical enough that people will actually use it in the middle of a stressful call.
If you’d like to hear Michael Herrera walk through this and other crisis management lessons in detail, you can watch the full Closing the Gaps: A Practical Guide to Crisis Management webinar recording.
How BCMMetrics Helps You Make The Call
Knowing the difference between an incident and a crisis is one thing. Acting on it in the heat of the moment is another. That’s where BCMMetrics comes in.
The BCMMetrics platform gives you a single place to capture events, document impact, and record the actions you take. With its incident management and action plan features, you can log what happened, assign owners, and track whether an event stays at the “incident” level or escalates into a crisis.
Instead of relying on memory or scattered notes, you get a clear record of why you mobilized — or didn’t.. That protects your team’s credibility, keeps executives in the loop, and gives you something solid to point to during audits. It also helps train new staff, because they can see how past events were classified and handled. See it in action in this virtual tour.
FAQ: Incident vs Crisis
Why can’t we just treat everything as a crisis to be safe?
Treating everything as a crisis backfires. Mobilizing the crisis team for every minor disruption burns people out and erodes credibility. When a true crisis hits, executives and staff are less responsive because they’ve been dragged into too many false alarms.
What’s the simplest way to tell the difference in real time?
The simplest way to tell the difference in real time is by using a severity matrix. Keep it short: three or four triggers around safety, operational impact, and reputational risk. If none of those thresholds are crossed, it’s an incident, not a crisis.
Who should decide if an event is an incident or a crisis?
Frontline managers should handle incidents under existing playbooks. The crisis team should only be activated when severity criteria are met. Documenting the decision process ensures everyone sees the same standard, not a gut call.
What happens if we misclassify something?
Misclassifying an event can either waste resources if you mobilize too soon or multiply damage if you mobilize too late.. The key is documenting why you chose one path or the other so you can learn from it. Tools like BCMMetrics help capture that reasoning and protect your team’s credibility.
Our executives view business continuity as added overhead. How does this distinction help?
This distinction helps executives by showing that business continuity is disciplined with their time and resources. It also produces metrics: how many times the crisis team was activated, for what severity level, and with what outcomes. That data helps justify the program and builds executive trust.
