Sarah Kovoor-Misra - Crisis Management: Resilience and Change

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Organizations today are faced with evolving and diverse forms of crises that can quickly escalate because of advancements in technology, the global economy, and the reach of the global and social media. With an alert on their phones, stakeholders in various countries around the world can be notified of an organizations crisis. Also, attacks from individuals in another country can bring an organizations operations to a standstill or attract negative publicity. The 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 that were executed by individuals who had links to al-Qaeda, and the cyberattacks that were alleged to be from North Korea on Sony Pictures in 2014 illustrate how our global interconnectedness is not only an opportunity, but also a threat.

To effectively cope with these threats, organizational leaders need to increase the complexity and sophistication of their crisis management capabilities. Unfortunately, many leaders today underestimate the complexity of organizational crises and tend to be shortsighted and focused on more immediate issues. As a result, when faced with a crisis and thrust on a global stage with the whole world watching to see how they respond, these leaders find themselves defensive, reactive, and unable to perform in the heat of a crisis. An organizational crisis is a test of the capacity and character of an organization and its leaders. The economic, reputational, and social costs for organizations are high if they fail the test, and the consequences for those affected by the crisis can be catastrophic.

I wrote this book to suggest a transformative rather than a defensive, reactive approach to crisis management to better address the complexity of todays organizational crises. A transformative approach harnesses the capacity of individuals and groups to be resilient and catalysts for positive change when faced with adversity. This approach promotes agility in response and behaviors characterized by excellence, innovativeness, and integrity that are important for the quick containment of the crisis and recovery and growth postcrisis. This approach emphasizes that transformative capacities need to be built into the organizational system before a crisis. Just as athletes build their capabilities to be able to perform optimally under pressure before a competition, leaders need to build their own and their organizations capabilities for optimal performance before a crisis. This book describes the nature of these capabilities, such as having leaders and other key individuals with cognitive, emotional, ethical, cultural, political, and social intelligence who can competently contain a crisis; an organizational identity, culture, and character that can serve as a resource for these individuals; positive stakeholder relationships that can enable resiliency during threats; and an adaptable infrastructure, such as crisis plans and teams that foster agility, excellence, and an ethical response during a crisis. In addition, this book enables readers to understand how they can effectively contain a crisis, if one were to occur, and recover and grow from these experiences.