Crisis resilience: coping with wicked messes in uncertain times
Written by Natalia Smalyuk and first published on April 2, 2024 in the Catalyst
Ahead of her upcoming session at IABC World Conference 2024 on 25 June, Natalia Smalyuk offers strategies for enhancing crisis management preparedness and fostering a proactive mindset in uncertain times. Read more in this World Conference session preview and register to attend World Conference 2024 today.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” —Victor Frankl, Psychiatrist
Communicators often enter crisis management mode when they get a media request and need to write a statement. When it’s improvised outside a consistent decision framework, that’s a signal of a preparedness gap.
The last few years have seen extraordinary disaster cascades, from a global pandemic to regional wars to extreme weather events. Dr. Ian Mitroff, author of “Why Some Companies Emerge Stronger and Better From a Crisis,” calls them wicked messes. In other words, systems of highly interactive problems where the right solutions may seem obvious in hindsight but, in real time, organizations struggle to cope.
When no one knows what’s around the corner, it’s easy to question the value of crisis plans. Will the plan truly guide you through future unknown scenarios on what to do and say? This doubt arises when decision-makers have a narrow understanding of crisis resilience, mistaking it for over-codified, rigid checklists and ultimately creating an illusion of control on paper. The learning from this decade of crises is that preparedness is not a document. It’s the capacity to take positive action when facing complex challenges, with mental, strategic and tactical dimensions.
Resilience starts with understanding the biochemistry of crises. Often perceived as existential threats, they trigger physiological reactions surprisingly consistent over millions of years of human evolution. The amygdala, part of the primitive brain that handles emotions like fear and aggression, is on standby to fight or flee. In a crisis, a neurotransmitter called cortisol may shut down the prefrontal cortex that controls strategic thinking.
While knee-jerk reactions may have improved the odds of surviving a tiger attack, they are the opposite of an effective response to most modern crises, such as a cyberattack. These are complex events that often linger for a while, with unclear causes and solutions outside the control of a single organization or individual. The very notion of survival has changed. Most threats today, such as the loss of trust in a mishandled cyber breach, are psychological rather than physical. If an instinctive crisis reaction jumps in the driver’s seat, it narrows the focus to self-protecting against the immediate threat. In an organizational context, this looks like tunnel vision.
Processing the crisis with the cerebral cortex means choosing the response that best serves the goals of the organization and its stakeholders. That’s the strategic dimension of crisis management — seeing the big picture and taking the good road. Leaders take in multiple inputs at the same time, seeing the trees (the threat immediately in front of them) and the forest (long-term implications for various stakeholders). At a neurological level, recalling the organization’s core principles and ethical standards in a crisis helps bypass the amygdala and engage deliberate decision-making.
The tactical dimension of resilience flows from the strategic big picture. All inputs processed — including possible causes and effects, knowns and unknowns, controllables and uncontrollables, immediate and long-term impacts — are turned into a plan. Breaking down a wicked mess into its components makes it more manageable. Identifying worst-case scenarios helps weed out irrational fears and enhance the sense of control.
John F. Kennedy said, “When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters — one represents danger and the other represents opportunity.” The opportunity lies in pivoting from the crisis wiring to what Jim Taylor, author of “How to Survive and Thrive When Bad Things Happen,” calls an opportunity mindset. It unlocks a virtuous cycle of acting, as opposed to reacting, through a continuum of before, during and after stages of crisis management.
Resilience is like oxygen. It’s the opposite of choking under pressure, a physiological state familiar to many executives. When muscles in the respiratory system contract, there’s literally not enough oxygen. Metaphorically speaking, that oxygen is the vitality needed to tap into positive emotions and respond with an optimistic glass is half full lens.
What can we learn from this crisis? How can we grow from it? These questions help solve problems creatively and unpack new possibilities. The value communicators bring to the table is championing a focus on stakeholders. Helio Fred Garcia, author of “The Agony of Decision: Mental Readiness and Leadership in a Crisis,” suggests a question that makes this focus laser-sharp: “What would reasonable people appropriately expect a responsible organization to do in this situation?”
It’s too late to start thinking about the response when a TV van parks in front of the office. Ad hoc crisis management doesn’t work. At the end of the day, resilience is about setting the conditions to think ahead, see complex dependencies and take positive action when coping with wicked messes in an uncertain world.