For more than 40 years I have been teaching and pleading about ways to handle crises effectively. Given that the number of crises has remained the same during that time frame, I’m going to take a different approach.
But first, let me share my philosophy about crisis management and mismanagement.
How Problems Become Crises
Almost all crises begin as smaller, manageable organizational or leadership problems. Problems migrate into crises for three crucial reasons:
- Management ignores problematic issues in their formative stages before actual crises begin happening.
- All crises create victims, and they are intentionally ignored, and often defensively attacked. It is a behavior that is learned both in management school and as a practice by upper-level managers and leaders. I refer to this often as “cohort domination.” It’s like calling your cohort member or mom before you call the fire department.
- Knowing intuitively what the correct steps are likely to be, but refusing to go in that direction, because it’s irritating, it’s an admission of failure, or you want to try something different just for the hell of it. That’s called, “Risk addiction.”
The Seven Intentional Bungles
- Offensive Defensiveness: It feels good to stick it to the media, it’s okay to look like a perpetrator, and smart people will admire this approach. Even though there will be criticism, I’ll take that risk. The risk is taken because the odds are only 50/50 that the situation will even be seen as a crisis.
- Stalling: Look, doing nothing is equal in potential outcomes to doing something. Even though there will be difficulty in explaining why it took so long to talk, to explain, to respond, to care for victims, you’re tired of having people you don’t know (particularly the media) fail to commiserate with your problems about which they know absolutely nothing.
- Denial, Denial, Denial: Taking action is too often a demonstration of weakness and lack of confidence. You can’t let a bunch of questionable victims, people you don’t believe, and money grabbers dictate your response activities and those of your organization.
- Ignore the Complainers: Reporters and activists are bellyachers and make things up. People fail to take into consideration all the things we contribute to the economy–jobs and opportunity. The victims just want money and attention, which they haven’t earned and do not deserve. We are real Victims, too. Why don’t the media and our critics see that?
- Testosterosis: “My attorney is right to suggest that we need to punch back rather than cop out.” Refusing to give in to specious demands, especially to people who simply have uninformed views, is a legitimate management response. Landing the first punch will keep them off-balance and make them go away faster.
- Being Decisively Indecisive: If we appear to take responsibility, bad things are going to happen to us. We will look like weaklings to our industry, colleagues, and cohort. We don’t want to be the one to set a precedent that burdens the industry or triggers copycat behaviors.
- Empty Empathy: There are worse perpetrators. The real culprits must be defined as people who can and should take the blame for what’s happening. It can’t be us. No one is going to be allowed to stick this on me, or on my company. Who is looking for them?
There are many more eligible bungles; but do even one or two of these listed above, and your crisis status will only accelerate and become more complex.
©2026, James E. Lukaszewski. Contact the copyright holder at jel@e911.com for information and reproduction permissions. Editing or excerpting is forbidden.
