Home / The Leadership Library / Crisis and Change
Crisis and Change
Leading through disruption. What holds when conditions break, how confidence is kept, and how organizations are steadied and remade.
Chapter contents
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Aftermath 5 entries The narrow window for institutional learning: the after-action review, accountability without scapegoating, and rebuilding trust.
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Decline and Turnaround 5 entries Recognising decline before the financial indicators, the turnaround sequence, cutting well, and closure as an act of stewardship.
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Leading Change 6 entries Sequencing, the early win and its trap, who must be persuaded first, and encoding a change so it does not revert.
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Preparation 5 entries Prepare roles and decision rights rather than scenarios. Continuity for small organizations, and running a tabletop that produces information rather than reassurance.
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Response 7 entries The first six hours, information discipline, disclosure timing, and sustaining judgment when the facts are still moving.
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Understanding Crisis 2 entries Crisis, emergency, and problem are different situations requiring different instruments. The taxonomy, the five types, and the slow crisis nobody declares.
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Why Change Fails 5 entries The month-four collapse, resistance as information, change fatigue, and the difference between announcing a change and making one.
Entries filed directly to this chapter
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01
The Part Everyone Skips
The window for institutional learning opens when the situation ends and closes within weeks. Almost every organization spends it recovering, and then relearns the same lesson at full price.
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02
When the Crisis Is a Person
An allegation against someone inside the organization is the hardest situation a leader faces, because two obligations that both feel absolute point in opposite directions.
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03
Deciding With the Facts Still Moving
Decide provisionally and say that it is provisional. The failure is not being wrong; it is presenting a decision made on incomplete information as though it were settled, and then defending it.
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04
Sustaining a Long Crisis
A response built for seventy-two hours will not hold for eleven weeks. The transition from surge to sustained operation has to be made deliberately, because nobody will call for it.
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05
Candour and Legal Exposure
The tension is real and the usual resolution is wrong in one direction. Counsel should shape what you say; letting counsel decide whether you say anything produces a different and larger injury.
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06
Delivering Bad News Early
The cost of disclosure is roughly fixed. The cost of delay compounds, and it compounds fastest in the part that has nothing to do with the original problem.
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07
Information Discipline
One source of truth, one channel, one voice. Without it an organization generates several versions of events, and the inconsistency becomes the story regardless of the underlying facts.
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08
The First Six Hours
Sequence rather than speed. The instinct to gather complete information before acting is usually the most expensive decision available, because several obligations are running on clocks you do not control.
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09
The Crisis Roles Card
One page, printed, filled in before it is needed. Names and numbers, decision rights, notification order, and the first hour — the four things that fail when nobody assigned them.
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10
The Tabletop Exercise
An exercise that everyone passes has told you nothing. The design question is what would have to happen for this to surface a real gap, and most tabletops are built to avoid exactly that.
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