Stepping Into the Void: Taking a Chance on Crisis

About the Crisis Leadership Forum

To better understand the leadership dimensions of crisis situations, the Center for Creative Leadership convened a forum with formal and emergent leaders who played a role in Hurricane Katrina. We overlaid this conversation between crisis leaders with the perspectives of discussants with expertise in disaster, terrorism, public health, and leadership. This blog site is intended to continue this conversation.

To read the report on the Crisis Leadership Forum, please click here.

To read CCL's Leading Effectively newsletter on the Forum, please click here.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Taking a Chance on Crisis

In Progressive Leadership In Times of Crisis Robert J. Fazio and Jason M. Briggs find that many organizations choose to leave crisis preparedness to chance. The stats they cite are compelling:

- An organization will face a crisis every 4-5 yrs.
- A CEO can expect to manage at least one crisis in his/her tenure.
- 81% of CEOs say their companies are vulnerable to serious business disruption due to a crisis.
- Many firms have not fully tested their crisis management plans that do exist.

Why then are we not better prepared? Fazio and Briggs indicate a sense of delusion pervades: 97% of Fortune 500 CEOs are confident that they would perform well if a crisis occurred.