In crisis, information is sometimes overwhelming. Reports, opinions, updates and rumours arrive faster than anyone can process them, and everything seems to matter equally. Sometimes it is the opposite. Information is painfully scarce. The team has to navigate with a handful of facts, a few signals, and a great deal of unknown. Both situations demand…
Crisis, at its core, is defined by two forces: uncertainty and time pressure. You do not know enough, and you do not have the luxury of waiting until you do. The decisions, the tensions, the errors that follow all flow from that fundamental condition. What interests me here is what happens to our thinking when…
ISO 22361, the international standard for crisis management published in 2022, makes something clear from the outset: in crisis, there is often no ideal solution. Decision-makers sometimes have to choose the least detrimental option. Every choice can come with a penalty of some kind. That acknowledgement, honest and understated, runs through the entire standard. It…
Many organisations describe themselves as operating in volatile, uncertain environments. They accept that risk is part of the work. They speak of resilience, adaptability and initiative. And in many ways, this is true: they do operate in conditions that others would refuse, and they do it with commitment. But when an incident actually happens, something…
Watching a geopolitical situation unfold in real time invites a particular kind of humility, less because of the events themselves than because of the gap between what was visible and what was seen. Between what the signals were pointing to and what was concluded from them. The word that deserves pausing on is surprise. The…
Crisis management is sometimes approached like a toolbox. You open it, pick the principle that seems relevant, apply it, and move on. Need-to-know for information control. Isolation for focus. A decision framework when choices must be made. Each principle treated as a standalone instrument, selected and deployed as needed. It is a natural way to…