The Binomial Bookstore

CRISIS LEADERSHIP:
PLANNING FOR THE UNTHINKABLE
by Ian I. Mitroff

“IT SHOULDN'T TAKE A CRISIS TO CREATE A LEADER.

“From product defects to environmental disasters-almost every day a new corporate crisis
hits the headlines. In the majority of cases the results arc disastrous: costly and
time-consuming efforts to establish a positive public image can be wiped out in seconds.
The inadequate, and often damaging, response of American business to such adversity
proves that we don't need better crisis management - we need crisis leadership.

“Ian Mitroff offers a new proactive approach that focuses on doing everything humanly
possible to prevent crises before they happen, rather then merely putting the best possible
spin on the aftermath. In easy-to-read, accessible language, Mitroff presents the critical, key
lessons that will help managers lead the organization through a major crisis.”

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HIGHLIGHTS

- Focuses on the multitude of factors and forces that you need to consider to
implement
effective, proactive leadership.
- Shows how various corporate functions-such as legal, security, manu. facturing,
finance,
and public affairs-work together to respond to crises and minimize their occurrence and
impact on the organization.
- Offers a truly integrated and systematic approach based on a combination of
models,
including a comprehensive look at what happens before, during, and after a crisis.
- Discusses the extreme importance of Emotional IQ in handling of, respond. ing to,
and
preparing for any crisis.
- Reports on the latest findings from new national surveys.

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EXCERPT FROM THE PREFACE

“THIS BOOK HAS THREE MAJOR OBJECTIVES:
1. To explain what effective Crisis Leadership is;
2. To explain why effective Crisis Leadership requires organizations that are
effective, and
vice versa; and,
3. To present a compact and integrated model of human behavior that applies
equally to
individuals and to organizations.

“Today's organizations are the result of a distinct and specific set of historical forces. These
forces have combined to produce organizations that are highly fragmented. This
fragmentation affects every aspect of their operations.

“Despite the fact that we live in a world where increasingly everything interacts with
everything else, we persist in designing and managing organizations as if they were
machines. Even worse, we are managing extremely complex and highly interactive systems
as if they were simple machines.

“Machines have the quintessential property that they can be broken apart into independent
components. For instance, when corporate functions such as Legal, Public Affairs, Finance,
Marketing, and Production are put into self-standing departments with little or no substantial
contact between them, then we are acting as if organizations are machines. We also do this
when different products and geographical regions are put into different operating divisions
and units. The result is that most organizations still are run as if they were nothing more than
independent, self-standing silos, i.e., machines. This is the case despite the fact that years
of
research have demonstrated unequivocally the superiority of alternate ways of designing and
managing organizations.

“All of this flies sharply in the face of globalization. Traditional geographic time zones and
political boundaries are irrelevant. To take but one example, information flows freely across
countries and organizational units according to its own “logic” and pace. For another,
whether they start in a particular region of the globe, or with a particular product or brand, all
crises quickly become global. That is, they quickly escalate to affect the home organization
and major brands.

“On every front of our existence, we have produced a world that is a complex, interconnected,
and interdependent system. There are no aspects of our lives that are not firmly planted in
the Systems Age.

“One cannot emphasize too strongly that the fundamental problem is that we are trying to
manage the problems of the Systems Age with a Machine Age mentality. As Albert Einstein
observed over fifty years ago, the same mentality that is responsible for creating our initial
problems in the first place cannot be used to solve them in the second place. I would go even
further: the same mentality that created our problems cannot be used to formulate, or state,
them correctly, let alone solve them.

“In large measure, our problem is caused also by the fact that our educational system is as
fragmented as the organizations we have constructed. In fact, the organizations directly
reflect what we teach and how we teach it. For instance, despite the fact that the technical
and the human aspects of all problems are completely intertwined, we act as if they are
independent can be contained and managed in separate departments or disciplines.
Indeed, we persist in teaching scientific, technical, and human subjects in altogether
separate university departments. In this sense, our educational system is a significant part of
the problem we face. It is certainly not the solution.

“Walk into almost any organization today. If it even has a Crisis Management, not to mention
a Crisis Leadership, function or program, then more likely than not it will be highly
fragmented. The responsibilities for Crisis Management will be split among myriad
corporate functions such as Legal, Security, Manufacturing, Finance, and Public Affairs. The
fragmented nature of Crisis Management directly reflects how we have designed
organizations.

“For years, I have taught courses in individual and organizational behavior. I have also taught
courses in Crisis Management and critical thinking. No matter what the particular course,
however, I have attempted to integrate the concepts that are used in each of them.

“Far too many courses in individual and organizational behavior are taught as if the various
topics are independent of one another. As a result, very few texts provide a framework that
shows how, where, and why all of the topics fit together as an whole. This lack of integration
prevents students from forming an integrative “roadmap” of the material. The result is that
students are unable to see how the various topics relate to one another. This also means that
they are unable to use them in an integrated and coherent manner.

“This book exists to correct these and other defects. It can be used in a variety of ways. First
of all, it can be read as a self-standing textbook on Crisis Leadership. It can also be used as
a supplementary text in courses on Organizational Behavior and Crisis Communications. It
can also be used in executive programs on Crisis Leadership and General Management. It
can also be used in a wide variety of courses at both the undergraduate and the graduate
levels in psychology, sociology, and philosophy.

“Since I have not presupposed that the reader is familiar with complex organizations or
crises, I have written the book for a wide audience. In this way, the book can be read by the
general public, certainly by those who are interested in why crises hap pen. Since crises
affect everyone, all of us need to understand why they occur and what can be done to lessen
their occurrence and impact.

“Most of all, I have written this book to give readers a comprehensive framework so that they
can understand the multitude of factors and forces that need to be considered in framing an
effective program of Crisis Leadership.

“Because it is so important, I want to emphasize that the primary purpose of this book is to
give the reader a broad overview of Crisis Leadership so that he or she can understand the
general nature of Crisis Leadership. For this reason, it deliberately avoids discussing many
important topics in detail.

“This book focuses on a broad overview because it is precisely the Big Picture that is
missing in nearly all of the current books on Crisis Management. Most books zero in on
detailed topics such as Business Recovery, i.e., how to get a business back on its feet after
a crisis. While such books certainly cover the details, they fail to show how the various
"parts" fit together into a more “coherent whole.”

“In addition, many important topics such as Stakeholder Analysis have been treated in a
cursory manner in this book. This is certainly not because the topic is unimportant. Indeed, it
is vitally important. Rather, I have treated the topic exten sively in previous books. The reader
is referred to these with regard to the details of Stakeholder Analysis. The purpose of this
book is to show where Stakeholder Analysis fits into the general framework of Crisis
Leadership.

“In sum, this book is more about the general philosophy of Crisis Leadership than it is about
the technical details. Unless the philosophy is understood first, the details will make little
sense.”

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction-People, Technologies, and Crisis.
2. The Failure of Conventional Thinking.
3. The Failure of Conventional Organizations.
4. The Failure of Conventional Responses.
5. The Rise of Abnormal Accidents: A Brief History of Crises.
6. The Different Languages of Managers and Executives: The Personalities of
Individuals.
7. The Personalities of Organizations.
8. Crisis Leadership and the Myers-Briggs.
9. The Role of Conflict in Crisis Leadership.
10. An Expanded View of Signal Detection.
11. Thinking the Absurd.
12. The Vital Importance of Spirituality in Crisis Leadership.
Index.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“DR. IAN I. MITROFF is currently the Harold Quinton Distinguished Professor of Business
Policy at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. He is also the
Director of the USC Center for Strategic Public Relations and a Professor of Journalism in
the Annenberg School of Communications at USC. Dr. Mitroff founded Comprehensive
Crisis Management, Inc., which has consulted some of the nation’s leading companies on a
broad array of crises. He has also published over three hundred articles and more than
twenty-three books.”
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2003, 144 pages. Order #DR708
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Crisis Management, Crisis Communication

Rothstein Associates Inc.