A coffee Q&A with Dr. Ian Mitroff: thinking systemically is the most critical skill in crisis planning
Resilience Unfiltered Coffee Chat Series
A few months ago, I chatted with Dr. Ian Mitroff about his vision for Proactive Crisis Management, which he defines as “thinking the unthinkable.” This time around, we talk about Systems Thinking as a core principle of preparedness in a complex, highly interconnected world. Credited as one of the founders of the modern discipline of Proactive Crisis Management, Dr. Mitroff has written 41 books, including my favourite – “Why some companies emerge stronger and better from a crisis: 7 essential lessons for surviving disaster.”
Natalia
Ian, thank you for so generously sharing your thoughts once again. In our earlier Q&A chat, we talked about Crisis Management as thinking the unthinkable. How did you get into this line of work?
Dr. Mitroff
You may recall the Johnson and Johnson crisis when, in 1982, seven people were poisoned by someone who tampered with Tylenol. The company quickly recalled all 31 million bottles of Tylenol from store shelves after it became apparent that a few of them in the Chicago area had been laced with deadly cyanide.
Today, this is a textbook example of successful Crisis Management. But back then, the field didn’t exist. And the idea flashed in my mind: oh my God, there’s a new discipline waiting to be created.
Given my interdisciplinary background, I was one of the early founders of Crisis Management (CM), establishing the first academic center in the world to study crises. It was the University of Southern California (USC) Center for Crisis Management. I ran the organization for 10 years, from 1982 to 1992.
Natalia
Why was it important to have an interdisciplinary background for this sort of work?
Dr. Mitroff
In a highly interconnected world, Thinking the Unthinkable requires the ability to see complex connections.
Crises don’t arise in a vacuum. Whatever form they take, they always call for Systems Thinking. Let me explain how we realized this at the USC Center for Crisis Management.
First, the initial money to support the Center came from the Business School at USC. Then, we got sponsoring organizations to join.
It was not easy. It took me a year to get our first corporate sponsor, Dow Chemical in Michigan.
Once we got one sponsor, it became easier to get others to sign on. At one point, we had 12 sponsors, and they would all get together at an annual meeting.
Thankfully, our sponsors provided us with the money to do our Crisis Management research. But even more importantly, they gave us access to their organizations. We could go in and interview them about their crisis preparedness. In fact, our sponsors were brutally honest about what they were doing and not doing, and what kinds of crises they felt they were most susceptible to.
As we engaged with these organizations, I began to assemble a list of the different types of crises. We then classified them in several families. For example, Technology-Related, Economic, Natural Hazards, Occupational Health, Criminal and Psychopathic Behaviour.
Of course, the initial list, however long and exhaustive, was not complete. As you can imagine, pandemics, the crises caused by social media, dis- and mis-information, or the threats posed by AI were not on that initial list. That’s because no catalog of crises is ever complete. It’s never static. We are talking about something that is dynamic, with the world manufacturing new crises every day.
When I created the USC Center for Crisis Management, we knew that Crisis Management should not be approached as just another academic subject. It’s something that is of vital importance to the world, our well-being and our safety. And it’s something that should be on the strategic agenda of every organization.
As we continued to study crises, we found that none of them ever happen by themselves. More often than not, one crisis sets off others. We are dealing with what I call a “wicked mess.” Every major crisis is a “wicked mess,” that is, a system of highly interactive problems. Today, the world is much more complex and messy than ever. The problem is that organizations are not organized for it. It’s also very different after the pandemic.
Natalia
What does this mean for Crisis Management?
Dr. Mitroff
In short, our organizations, in their current form, with their current approaches to leadership, board governance, and Risk and Crisis Management training, are not equipped for the world of wicked messes where there are multiple definitions of problems, including multiple formulations and multiple solutions. Part of what makes every problem wicked is that every problem has multiple meanings and definitions.
Most of us are educated on exercises. That means that, early on, we are exposed to well-defined, well-structured problems. Think math. Exercises, as opposed to problems, have one, and only one right answer. One single solution everyone is expected to get. They also have one and only one single formulation. X+6=11, find X is a simple example.
Those who lead our organizations and societies may yearn for the world of canned exercises. It’s human nature. Certainty makes us comfortable. The problem is, Crisis Management is the exact opposite of this. It thereby requires a different set of skills. Instead of thinking of a one right answer, we need to think about many different meanings of the issues at hand to arrive at solutions that are not simplistic.
In our previous chat, we talked about Risk Management. It’s taken off because decision-makers see it as a systematic way of identifying risks based on statistics. Formally, a risk is defined as the probability of an event times its consequences.
I have nothing against Risk Management. Its value is for those contexts where predictable threats can be identified based on quantifiable data.
But not everything can be quantified. And there’s no one to give us data from the future. Even AI can’t help. Its reach is also bound by the experience of the past, including the biases that come with it. That’s why, while there’s certainly a place for Risk Management, it can’t replace Crisis Management. These are very different things. In addition to Systems Thinking, Proactive Crisis Management – similar to strategic planning – requires human imagination. That’s something no machine can replace, no matter how “creative” it may become.
Specific, easily quantifiable risk data appeals to managers because it creates a sense of certainty and structure that puts them in a comfort zone – even when they don’t reflect what’s around the corner in the real world. Who wouldn’t like things to be orderly, after all. Managers operate in an organizational context where they need to think in terms of specific risks, plans and budget allocations. They are trained to perfect these skillsets and are rewarded for them. Their organizations, their bosses, their boards of directors do not necessarily ask them, “Go ahead and rock the boat” or “Think about messy problems and come back with worst-case scenarios.” That’s very uncomfortable, and that’s something organizations are not built to tackle. Top managers want to hear good news. Their teams know it. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news. The saying “kill the messenger” didn’t come out of nowhere.
But if no one is on guard to spot the signals of trouble and press the alarm, we’ll continue to be blind-sided by each and every new crisis, whether we’ve been through it before or not.
Think back about the COVID-19 pandemic again. How many organizations, how many governments can say they had the foresight to deal with this crisis as a mess? Unfortunately, if there’s any certainty in Crisis Management, it’s that the COVID-19 pandemic was not the first and will not be the last calamity to head our way.
However, there’s a strong pressure in organizations to simplify messy problems and avoid dealing with uncertainty, complexity and bad news.
Here’s another example that perhaps many Crisis Managers can relate to. As you know, cyber security is often labelled as an “IT issue.” But once it’s put in that box, leaders and Crisis Managers don’t necessarily look at all the factors that can lead to a breach or all the factors that may result from it – anything from psycho-criminal behaviour to a culture of suppressing open risk debate to potential lawsuits.
Wouldn’t it be great if we lived in a nice, neat, simple world where specific corporate functions could handle specific, clearly labelled problems. Unfortunately, I don't know of a single problem that doesn't cut across all of the functions of a company while also spilling over into its external environment.
You might be surprised, but it’s not any different in the academic world – despite our best efforts to study wicked messes. Engineering is put in one department across the campus from the humanities. Again, that’s not the way the world works. The renowned systems theorist Russ Ackoff said it best: “Nature is not organized in the same way universities are.”
Outside of the management consulting world, few disciplines focus on problem definition, and it’s not always part of leadership training or someone’s job on an organizational chart. For example, the very idea of having a Chief Officer for Wicked Messes would look absurd and certainly not sellable to executives or boards.
The bottom line is, Proactive, Systemic Crisis Management is an uphill battle for most organizations. In the meantime, the world keeps throwing bigger and bigger problems at them. Without systemic and systematic thinking, we are back to just coping as best we can. Often, we are not coping as best we need to. Think about the pandemic again. It’s simultaneously a mental health and economic crisis. It’s intertwined with homelessness, poverty, and the closing of schools. We could easily go on connecting more and more dots.
Natalia
If Proactive, Systemic Crisis Management is such an uphill battle, is it realistic to expect that organizations can ever excel in it?
Dr. Mitroff
The answer it yes. If I didn’t believe in it, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation. All my work in Education, Systems Thinking, the Philosophy of Science and Psychoanalytic Thought came together in creating this incredible field we call Crisis Management. As I said earlier, it’s not just of theoretical significance. Crisis Management, with Systems Thinking at its core, is of extreme practical importance. And yes, organizations and societies can achieve outstanding results in Proactive Crisis Management if they put their mind to it.
I don’t want anyone to feel that there is no hope. We’ve seen new vaccines funded and created in record speed and new seismic-resilient cities built on the sites of terrible earthquakes. Organizations have come up with sophisticated cyber security protections, including multi-factor authentication and encryption defenses.
The particular philosophical school in which I grew up was pragmatism. Pragmatism is concerned primarily with how knowledge makes a difference in helping us better manage our world ethically and morally. Crisis Management requires the knowledge of – and basic training in – Systems Thinking. It’s not rocket science. Systems Thinking can be taught and learned by future managers in business schools, in corporate leadership development programs or in comprehensive crisis training modules.
One needs to think broadly and systemically about the worst that can happen to organizations by identifying worst-case scenarios. Leaders and crisis managers can familiarize themselves with these threats in interactive workshops led by an experienced facilitator. Thinking about worst-case scenarios does not mean catastrophizing. In fact, it can be routinized when everyone gets used to the experience of going through the exercise as a normal management activity.
A workshop designed to identify worst-case scenarios can include a section on psychological preparedness as a foundation for any crisis work. We need to have the right mindset not only to manage wicked messes themselves when they hit us, but also to think about them ahead of time as part of scenario planning.
Let me stress again that this is possible. As I said earlier, we’ve seen impressive pockets of progress, and there are some outstanding “how-to” case studies Crisis Managers can learn from.
However, overall, organizations and societies are not equipped to deal with wicked messes in a systematic, proactive fashion. This is as true now, in our troubled, crisis-ridden post-pandemic world, as it has been in the past.
Through the work of the USC Center for Crisis Management, we learned that very few people think systemically.
For example, one of our sponsors was an oil company. I asked them what they were doing about Product Tampering, which we viewed as one of the common types of crises. The answer was: “Oh, we don't have that. Nobody's going to tamper with our oil products.” I said, “Wait a second. You have convenience stores where you sell food products and pharmaceuticals. You sell candy and pain killers.” That’s where the proverbial light went on. “Yes,” they said, “We could have product tampering at our stations.” You and I spoke about this in our first Q&A conversation.
The lesson here is that, instead of excluding any of the key types of crises, you have to ask, “What is the form that this type of crisis can take in our context?” This way, you get your clients to think systemically, and Think the Unthinkable. That’s the heart of Crisis Management.
The question is, can the unthinkable be managed? You asked whether organizations can excel in Proactive Crisis Management. Once again, the answer is yes. Organizations can get much better at managing crises if, and only if – there is a comprehensive framework for Systemic Crisis Management.
Earlier, I mentioned a few success stories that give me hope. We have to keep building the library of these “how-to” case studies. They should be part of every crisis training program.
Unfortunately, we have a lot of examples that demonstrate the failure to practice systemic Crisis Management. Thus, epidemiologists have done simulations for pandemic for years. But these simulations were not systemic. For example, they didn’t consider how pandemics would give rise to fallacious arguments for not getting vaccinated.
Here's another example. Several big-name movie stars have appeared with Trump. Some of their fans have reacted by saying they will never watch the movies with these actors again. That’s a crisis that certainly affects major movie studios.
I want to emphasize this critical point again. Things are interconnected. That means that thinking systemically is the most critical skill in Crisis Planning.
Natalia
Can we talk more about the barriers to embedding Systems Thinking in organizations so we can strategize about the ways to overcome them?
Dr. Mitroff
We’ve looked into this at the USC Center for Crisis Management. I had graduate students go out and interview managers about what they were doing and not doing with regard to crises. Every one of the students came back with the same story. The managers they interviewed said they would have liked to prepare for crises, but their top management didn’t care.
What transpired from this research was a series of rationalizations that people in the companies used. We learned why the leaders who had built their companies did not see the need to prepare for crises.
One of the key postulates, if not key findings, of Freudian psychology is that individuals use defense mechanisms to shield themselves from painful events. Immediately, I saw a parallel in organizations. They use the same defense mechanisms. Let me briefly go through them.
The first defense mechanism is denial. The thinking goes like this: “We don't have any crises. Therefore, we don't need to do Crisis Management.”
Here in the U.S., we’ve seen plenty of denials at work during the COVID-19 pandemic. In my last book, I talk about all the fallacious arguments people have given for not getting vaccinated for COVID.
The second mechanism is grandiosity. We're so big and powerful that there’s nothing bad that can happen to us which we can’t recover from. We saw this mechanism when massive financial institutions went down during the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Third is compartmentalization. It’s the assumption that a crisis won't affect the whole of the organization. Only a part of it will be impacted. For example, organizations could be thinking that a cyber security crisis would primarily affect their IT function rather than everyone involved.
Then, there’s projection. Those who resort to this defense mechanism believe that a crisis will happen to someone else or somebody else is responsible for it. For example, it could be a vendor who supplied an unsafe product or a regulator who hasn’t addressed a gap in the system.
Finally, there’s intellectualization. It’s the thinking that excellent companies don't have crises. Therefore, crisis management is a waste of time, money and resources.
What we found is that companies that used fewer defense mechanisms were far more profitable because they headed off the crises before they happened. I call them proactive organizations. In contrast, reactive organizations use defense mechanisms a lot more.
It takes a lot of strength of will, character and mental toughness to face the worst. Very few people want or are mentally prepared to do that.
Natalia
If an organization is proactive, does it mean that it’s Thinking the Unthinkable consistently?
Dr. Mitroff
Yes, consistency over time is key. One of my best graduate students did research on this. Prior to 9/11, we sent out a survey to the Fortune 1000 companies asking about their preparations for a wide range of crises. We found that planning for terrorism was virtually nonexistent.
Immediately after 9/11, we sent out the same survey. Now, preparation for terrorism rose to the top of the list.
Two years later, we sent out the same survey again. Sure enough, preparation for terrorism went back down to where it had been before 9/11. Preparedness for terrorism was short-lived.
I wish we could repeat that survey in 2024 asking organizations about their preparation for pandemics.
We can see the same inconsistency with Johnson & Johnson. They acted responsibly with the tainted Tylenol poisonings. A couple of years later, it came to light that people who had taken Tylenol together with red wine developed liver cancer. The company didn’t behave as responsibly this time around.
I conducted interviews with the team at Johnson & Johnson shortly after they had experienced the second Tylenol crisis. One of them was very open. He said, “Yeah, we did okay the first time, but we didn't do okay the second time.” The fact that you've done well once doesn’t mean that you will do well again – unless the organization is committed to a Proactive, Systemic Crisis Management mindset focusing on what it needs to do before, during and after crises.
You have to be a learning organization to do it consistently. Training is key.
Also, Crisis Management can’t be practiced independently of the culture of an organization, its strategic vision and what it really values. It's always systemic. It’s never about one single thing. That’s why leaders and crisis managers should have basic training in Systems Thinking.
Natalia
It’s been a long chat – and a lot of coffee😊 – but I feel we’ve just scratched the surface. There’s a lot to understand about how organizations can open up to Systemic Crisis Management, and how they can embed it in their operations and their cultures so it’s practiced consistently over time and across scenarios. A lot to talk about, and I’ll look forward to our next chat!
Natalia Smalyuk is an award-winning advisor and trainer specializing in strategic communication, crisis resilience and stakeholder engagement. She leads NBAU, a Women Business Enterprise (WBE) certified communication consultancy. What is NBAU? Not Business as Usual. Why NBAU? Because there’s no such thing as business as usual for leaders who think ahead and see a landscape of opportunity — and risk — across the unchartered global space. NBAU supports organizations in building resilience before, during and after adverse events with a unique crisis planning and training model that broadens the understanding of crises and enables positive action in an uncertain world.
Earlier chats in the Resilience Unfiltered Series:
A coffee Q&A with Helio Fred Garcia: the agony of decisions and the power of patterns in a crisis
A coffee Q&A with Christal Austin: climate emergency & disaster preparedness