. . . all kinds of crises.
More and more people find themselves in situations that get labelled “crisis.” But very few of us will have to engage in the messy stuff of crisis leadership. In fact, most of us end up on the sidelines, sometimes trying to make sense of the situation and other times taking sides. If not overtly, then covertly.
Of course, newsmakers and entertainers would have us believe that we are almost always in crisis, a perspective that’s more wrong than right. But crisis language keeps surfacing regularly, even though it’s unnecessary and unrealistic. My basic attitude over the years is to begin with the obvious fact that we live in a 24-hour world, not a 12-hour world. By that I suggest that since the at the 1980s, digital innovation intends to keep the eyes and ears of John Q Public on news and entertainment. So, conflicts and crises are the best process for doing that. In my mind that understanding eliminates a lot of the interactions that are called “crisis.”
Given this inevitable contemporary reality, I want to suggest five general principles* that can help those who mostly remain onlookers how to think about these “crises,” maintain your cool, assess briefly the noise about what’s going on, and sometimes take advantage of the “the crisis.”
First, there will always be another crisis.
Another way to punctuate this is to say “cool it.” Recognize that if things are quiet, somebody or some organization has got to create a crisis to validate their existence or distract a major segment of the relevant population. Business—product, entertainment or even technology businesses--prefers children. They’re much more malleable. And so, over the long term many leaders try to keep their people in the dark, making them children. Thankfully, that’s changed in many organizations. But the process has been taken over by politicians. So, a lot of crises are manufactured for just the purpose of distraction and managing control.
FYI: Crisis creation is Trump’s work model.
A caveat: Leveraging the humanities
If you have an extensive background in the humanities, along with business and digital background, you’re liable to have a better understanding of crisis. You’ll be able to get the subtexts and politics, the inherent values, solution contexts and consequences. Significantly, you’ll be able to create and analyze the relevant solution arguments. But if your college background is limited to just business and technology, the limitations for understanding crises will surface in bias, emotions and conflict. Sometimes you’ll be aware of your limitations, and other times not.
So, the key will be for you to identify the specialists in the crises. There’s no such thing as an expert capable of managing any crisis. Instead, they may surface in law, human resources, strategy, medicine, or even a consulting firm. Furthermore, accessing the right specialist can take a lot of expertise—along with a bit of patience and critical thinking. Merely because a person is writing about a crisis in major news organization does not mean they have a good handle on the issue, or even understand the crisis.
But recognize that in this world there will always be another crisis.
Second, you can rarely predict a crisis.
The very unpredictability of an event is the first element of a crisis. When you pair unpredictability with significant impact, you get a crisis. If you’ve been watching the development of AI, you may remember that at first AI was thought to be digital evolution. Then when the size and the function of AI became clearer, it became a crisis. We’re at the stage right now where all kinds of people are attempting to draw conclusions about an uncertain and unpredictable digital ability, creating AI crises for business, government and even the Ukraine.
Most organizations have some recurring crises and so they’ve usually developed a strong understanding of what might be considered the narrative arc of the crisis. For example, when a serious breakdown in an auto assembly line takes place, the firm leadership is ready with an understanding of what will happen during the breakdown, where to intervene, how to intervene and even the typical time necessary to have the process up and running again.
Breakdowns also occur regularly in teamwork. Because I have an extensive background in team development I know where the breakdowns typically occur and how they can become a crisis, the usual causes, how to intervene with each cause, the problems that are typically caused by the intervention, the potential areas of intervention difficulty and how to assess the intervention. But unless there is trained expertise available, such a breakdown could become a major crisis. Better companies take the necessary steps to be prepared with knowledgeable repair processes for recurring breakdowns and crises so that they can avoid or manage them. Where they lack a repair process, a breakdown can become a crisis with a great deal of unpredictability.
Third, not all emergencies are crises—and not all crises are emergencies.
Distinguishing between an emergency and a crisis can be difficult. Yale’s David Post draws some helpful conclusions.
He suggests that an emergency is a “serious, unexpected and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.” As examples he suggests a “death on campus, a natural disaster or an active shooter.” Emergencies usually require quick action.
Crises differ in their length. They tend to be periods of “instability or uncertainty—often sparked by an unexpected or unusual event—that carries the potential for a range of undesirable outcomes.”
The vast majority of emergencies will not result in a crisis. Take the latest emergency surrounding the US funding bill. Though touted as a crisis, history revealed from the get-go that it would probably never become a crisis, even though many journalists were already telling us it was a crisis. The Speaker of the House was too intimidated to fail, so he risked his role by inviting the necessary Democrats to support the Republicans available for his bill. A historical response for passing federal funding.
Fourth, aim to minimize self-inflicted or personal wounds.
In other words, take your time to draw a conclusion about an issue, making certain not to overreact. If there’s a possibility you might be involved in an unexpected crisis, figure out who the primary stakeholders will be before you make a decision or a move.
Maintain flexibility in your thinking and in potential actions. Overcontrolling your thinking—e.g. dichotomous black/white—is rarely of help. Breakdowns and crises are rarely single-issue events.
Fifth, search for career opportunities created by a crisis.
Crises sometimes destroy careers while creating unique opportunities for career astute employees. So always analyze breakdowns, emergencies and crises through the career perspective.
I actually built my business on the digital crisis of the late 1980s. I left a faculty position for a business career at the behest of three major executives in three different firms. None of them was a digital person. Though two of the firms had internal webs, the world wide web was still a year away from fruition. They originally thought I might do speaker consulting or team building consulting. I realized early on that those were highly competitive careers and fairly limiting. Nearly three years into my fledgling consultancy, the world wide web opened up and organizations were searching everywhere for educated managers who were nowhere to be found. The Chief Information Officer at Pillsbury had gotten my name from the firm’s HR person. He related his difficulty and desperate need for IT managers, a common business crisis with most major organizations. I had the background to figure out how to develop managerial talent, but no background in information technology, other than computer literacy. (I happened to own one of the earliest desktops—an IBM—with which I had just finished my PhD dissertation at the University of Minnesota.) The CIO indicated that it would be easy to resolve my IT ignorance with a three-day session on IT strategy, led by some of the top IT people from the University. With my extensive humanities background in critical thinking, it was duck soup. Not at all the difficulty faced by the huge majority without a humanities background and critical thinking skills.
I went very quickly from educating three new managers to six, then twelve, and then to numerous major international corporations. Since the humanities provide extensive analytical skills, I quickly put together developmental programs that provided all the necessary managerial competencies. Significantly, as the CIO commented after a few years, I had done a lot more than assist in the development of mangers: I had actually created the language for managerial development.
It's fair to say that I was the classic “accidental entrepreneur.” So, I had little to no competition over the 22 years of my consultancy, and had to do little marketing. All the while, I was basking in a highly lucrative profession with a great deal of delight and fun.
In sum, don’t get all hot and bothered by a crisis. Do your homework with the above tools. And, if you find a new opportunity as a result of a major crisis, look seriously at the option.
*David Post, Guide to Crisis Leadership, Chronicle of Higher Education, 3/29/2024, p.44ff.
The first four rubrics are those of David Post. The fifth (“search for career opportunities”) is mine.
--Dan Erwin, PhD, April 15, 2024.