Tag: crisis response

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:

  1. Management ignores problematic issues in their formative stages before actual crises begin happening.
  2. 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.
  3. 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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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?
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.

What is the best response to a crisis? While you may require some time to understand what is going on you can immediately implement a strategic five-step first response. I referred to this as The Golden Hour Strategy because the intention is to launch all five steps within the first 60-120 minutes of the crisis incident, whatever the crisis happens to be.

The Steps

  1. 1. Stop the production of victims. Continuous victim production is what drives the media coverage, the public interest, the emotionalization, the commentary and criticism from 1000 different sources focused on reputation destruction.
  2. Manage the victim dimension. This is what leaders and senior managers should be doing rather than hanging around and second-guessing the command center.
  3. Communicate directly and frequently with employees, stakeholders, victims, survivors, and those directly affected. Calm and settle people down.
  4. Notify those indirectly affected, those who have a problem now because you have a problem; regulators, licensing authorities, neighbors, partners, collaborators, key stakeholders, those who need to know and who should hear from you very promptly.
  5. Manage the self-appointed and the self-anointed; the news media and the new media, those who opt in on their own, the critics, the bellyachers, the backbench bickerers, the bloviators. This is the strategy management needs to help all responders focus on what matters most and first. Far too many response plans have only legacy media public relations driven tactics. Crisis response is a management responsibility driven by a simple, sensible, constructive, positive, and clearly achievable strategy. The strategy needs to be productive, capable of being managed and led successfully by leaders and managers.

The Golden Hour Metaphor

The first hour or two of crisis situations I often refer to as the Golden Hour (or hours). The phrase comes from military medicine at the close of World War II, and during the Korean conflict. Military medical studies of combat deaths by the Army Medical Corp indicated that the single most prevalent cause of death for wounded soldiers was blood loss–the failure to get these individuals into serious life-saving medical treatment quickly after being wounded. They were bleeding to death in the Jeeps, trucks, and other vehicles driving them to the hospitals located in rear areas of the battlefield.


The helicopter, which was brought into wider military use following World War II, was the perfect vehicle to get wounded soldiers quickly off the battlefield. But one more critical component was needed. Surgical facilities had to be as close as possible to the battle lines to further reduce the risks and damage associated with transporting the wounded to urgent care.

The U.S. Army Medical Corp came up with the mobile hospital concept, the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH, portable fully equipped surgical suites staffed by some of the brightest surgeons in medicine, just like the television show. These mobile facilities were located on the battle line and moved with the progress of the battle.

Here’s the point, 96% of wounded soldiers who arrived alive at a MASH left the MASH alive.

To me, this is the perfect metaphor to address what management must be ready to accomplish in those first 60 to 120 dangerous and chaotic minutes of a crisis.

Some scenarios may require helicopters, but they are very complicated to use. Learn special safety requirements needed to use helicopters in appropriate emergency responses.

During the First 120 Minutes – Activate Your Crisis Response Checklist

  1. Stop the production of victims.
  2. Tend to the victim’s needs.
  3. Communicate frequently internally.
  4. Alert those outside your organization who are directly affected.
  5. Call your insurance company.
  6. Have an experienced crisis communication consultant nearby or on board.
  7. Hire an attorney competent to the situation.
  8. Call your Mom, do what she says, and things will get better by tomorrow afternoon.
  9. Deal with new media, old media, critics, bloviators, bellyachers, backbench complainers, and survivors.