Controlling Chaos: The Mind And Art Of The Crisis Strategist

Your SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat assessment) or PESTEL (Political, Economic, Socio-culture, Technological, Environmental, and Legal assessment) will not save you. Unconditioned, your OODA (Observe–Orient–Decide–Act model) can’t help much. Whether in mathematics or in life, it is often easier to work backwards when you know the answer. Unfortunately in life, the wisdom of hindsight usually comes too late.

How you are forewarned and forearmed, and how you navigate and maneuver within the critical moments and conditions of peril is the crucible in survivability or even thrivability within the crisis.

Crisis management cannot be an afterthought or an illusory confidence ad hoc. It is not merely a procedure to be stated. Crisis management is a methodological refinement towards operational readiness for operational robustness and organizational resilience in unforeseeable circumstances.

The cue that people in the organization perceive and accept that crisis can only be a managed ad hoc, is already the hint of the trouble. It is all in the mentality, culture, and cultivation. It is both character and operation in each and every individual that make the difference between organizational existence or extinction.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
— Helen Keller, June 27, 1880…