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#EMReadingList The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership under Pressure (2005) by Arjen Boin, Paul 't Hart, Eric Stern & Bengt Sundelius. I'll share items for those interested in emergency / disaster management as I go #EMGTwitter
1/2 "In times of crisis, citizens look at their leaders" (1). The authors look at five critical tasks for leaders in these situations: sense making, decision making, meaning making, terminating, and learning.
2/2 Or put another way: "We expect these policy makers to avert the threat or at least minimize the damage of the crisis at hand. They should lead us out of the crisis; they must explain what went wrong & convince us that it will not happen again" (1). That's no small feat.
Interesting section on stress & performance (p 28-30) incl that under heavy stress ppl "fall back on and rigidly cling to old and deeply rooted behavioural patterns (often forgetting more recent one)" or are "more likely to rely on stereotypes." Bottom line we are not at our best
Re: sense-making in a crisis - "One of the most frequently used short cuts is the reliance on historical analogies to make sense of the challenges posed by a contemporary crisis"(32). Problem being that no two crises are the same & past experience may not cover current realities.
On sense-making in resilient orgs: they "have routines for using provisional info to create a provisional situational assessment & remember that it is just that: provisional. They resist tendencies to adopt & cling to an interpretation based on limited info & hasty analysis"(37).
Cont'd "Resilient organizations have created a culture of awareness: all employees consider safety the overriding concern in everything they do. They expect crises to happen" (37). Reminds me of another book on the To Read shelf, Close Calls by Carl Macrae https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230220843
Decision-making pitfall: new groups, where members are unfamiliar with one another & their roles, are vulnerable to "the kind collective ignorance, illusory unanimity, self-censorship, and other propensities for ill-considered decision-making commonly associated w groupthink"(47)
For good decision-making "The best-known procedure is called multiple advocacy"(50), i.e. relevant stakeholders/experts share info & debate before taking decisions. Adhering to such a time-intensive process in a crisis is difficult. What are ways we can better incorporate this?
Meaning making starts with trust: "If leaders want to shape public & political meanings attached to crises, they must be seen as credible, trustworthy sources of information. When leaders are trusted, their actions & words are more easily perceived as sincere, competent" (78).
Words matter: incident, accident, tragedy, disaster, crisis. "Labels such as these invoke 'archetypical narratives' that shape people's expectations about what is to follow, who is in charge, who are the heroes, and who are the villains of the story" (83).
On "terminating" a crisis: "The key challenge is to recognize when the breakdown of symbolic order has been restored" (97). Sounds simple but is more complicated in practice. Nice discussion here on the interplay between operational and political aspects of crisis termination.
On accountability: "Gov'ts are assumed to be well prepared for critical contingencies & to take effective measures that protect the public, limit harm & compensate damages. Any behavior that deviates from this generalized expectation is treated with suspicion & indignation"(101).
On learning from crisis: "In order to learn, gov'ts need to have not only some institutional capacity for lesson-drawing but also a (sustained) motivation to use this capacity and work with its products (117)." IMO the real challenge is that last part: sustaining momentum
It's common sense but bears repeating: "necessary political support and scarce resources to adopt and implement crisis-induced lessons are more likely when the initiative to make changes follows quickly on the heels of the crisis" (121). How many of us will be ready post-COVID?
