From improvisation to resilience: why progress beats perfection in crisis readiness

‍Have you, by chance, watched the Hollywood comedy “Don’t look up,” with Leonardo DiCaprio? Here’s the gist of it. A comet is heading towards Earth. Caught completely off guard, the government is improvising a response. It’s a hilarious movie. What’s not so funny is how similar organizations may look in the real world when they start debating their moves only when a crisis is already on their doorstep.

‍Why this happens is perfectly understandable. Not enough time to deal with the hypothetical “what-ifs” when there are real fires to fight. Not enough money. Not enough people. The list goes on.

There’s an assumption here bred by perfectionism: one day there’ll be enough of (fill in the blanks). In reality, we’ll sooner be hit by a comet than have all we need to prepare for its assault.

‍That’s why perfection is the enemy of progress.

‍Crisis-resilient organizations flip the script to “enough to not improvise from scratch.” Having a plan that’s 80% there is better than having no plan. A two-hour tabletop in the books next week is better than a full-day crisis simulation pushed to next year because “we already have enough on our plate.”

It’s only human to crave certainty. In a perfect world, we’d have the kind of all-encompassing preparedness that leaves no room for ambiguity. Comet on a collision course with Earth? Go to page 24 – planetary defence protocol.

In the real world, we need enough preparedness to cope with the messiness of the unknown. No, we can’t control or eliminate it altogether. We CAN get a little – or even a lot – better at managing our response.

‍Welcome to baseline resilience – something rarely noticed when it’s there and painfully obvious when it’s not.

Sounds a little fuzzy? Try the questions below with your leadership team to pressure-test baseline resilience.

Are there champions to grease the wheels?

In many organizations, the default is to dive right into tactics: create checklists, update policies. This is necessary work, but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture: resilience is not a document. It’s a team ready to act rather than react. Resilience starts at the top. Senior champions show through words and actions that crisis readiness is a long-term commitment, not the flavour of the month. At its best, proactive crisis management is integrated with governance and strategic planning. Leaders empower the team to get in front of the next curveball and deal with uncertainty, not duck it.

Do you know how you will make decisions in a crisis?

Plans are excellent shortcuts to initial answers when there’s no time to look for them. But documents don’t make decisions. Humans do. When does an issue become a crisis? How do we deal with it when there’s no exact procedure in the plan? My late mentor Ian Mitroff called crises “wicked messes” – systems of interconnected, highly interactive problems that may have multiple meanings and no single solution. In other words, 2 + 2 is not always 4. That’s why procedures are only one part of the equation. In many complex crises, what to do – or what to say – is not a no-brainer. Far from it. When answers are not obvious, it’s shared decision principles that guide the team.

Are you thinking across scenarios?

Every organization has a unique risk profile. You can map it using sophisticated quantitative models, such as plotting potential crises along two axes – how likely they are to occur and how damaging they could be. Or, you can try something more intuitive. In training workshops, I divide participants into two groups. One brainstorms the crises most likely to hit their organization. The other – what could do the most damage. More often than not, the two flipcharts are surprisingly similar. They are a jumping-off point to prioritize risk scenarios that warrant detailed playbooks. Added bonus: thinking across scenarios helps spot vulnerabilities and find opportunities to prevent, detect or mitigate issues before they become crises.

Do you have a crisis plan?

Risk insights inform the crisis plan. It’s invaluable when the going gets tough. The plan should not be rigid. You don’t want the mentality of everyone looking for the right page instead of solving the right problem. Too much flexibility is also a flag. Going willy-nilly leaves teams without direction. A good crisis plan provides guidance that works in any type of crisis – roles, escalation, decision-making, communication. It also includes playbooks where you can get very specific. That’s where the team can find immediate actions to consider. Who needs to be notified, when, how and by whom. Sample internal and external communications. The first pass of the plan won’t be 100% right. Treat it as a living document, with a regular cadence of review, training and testing.

Are you ready to communicate in a crisis?

Helio Fred Garcia, author of “The Agony of Decision: Mental Readiness and Leadership in a Crisis,” suggests a brilliant question that shifts attention to how stakeholders experience a crisis: What would reasonable people appropriately expect a responsible organization to do in this situation? That lens isn’t intuitive for leaders used to speaking when they have hard facts. Establishing the scale, impact and root causes of a crisis can take days, weeks or even months. But stakeholders want answers now. The organization should have the tools to facilitate – not obstruct – the flow of information. Often, this boils down to acknowledging what you know, explaining what you are doing and showing empathy – even when you don’t have all the answers.

Are you learning from mistakes?

In a world of extreme uncertainty, we rarely have perfect information. Resilience is about how quickly we learn rather than how soon we get all the answers. Don’t waste your crises. A candid debrief turns experience into preparedness. Learn from other organizations, too. Looking beyond your own sector broadens the field of vision. What happened and why? What could have prevented the crisis or reduced its impact? Success stories and cautionary tales are the backbone of learning. Some cases, such as Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol recall and Maple Leaf Foods’ response to the listeriosis outbreak, are well documented. In others, we may never know what unfolded behind closed doors. That’s okay. Digging into the unknowns is part and parcel of learning.

Is everyone rowing in the same direction?

Crisis management is a team sport. Remember Bruce Tuckman’s stages of forming, storming, norming and performing? In crisis training, I like to show an image of rowers moving in sync. That’s the very picture of resilience – a team performing at its best. But how do we get there when it’s not business as usual? Crises don’t happen every day. That means teams working on them have few opportunities to form, storm and norm. Yet we somehow expect them to perform under pressure. That’s why you need to create conditions for the crisis team to come together and row in sync. Quarterly meetings, regular risk check-ins, collaboration on plan updates and, of course, training and simulations build familiarity, shared mental circuits and trust.

Are you exercising your crisis muscles?

“When you are drowning is not the best time to learn how to swim,” said my colleague Dianne Chase at a recent IABC World Conference. There’s no substitute for experience. Crisis simulations are the next best thing. They come in many forms. Full-scale simulations. Lighter tabletops. Technical or executive exercises. Off-site role-play. Media training with crisis scenarios. Even a basic two-hour workshop quickly exposes gaps and builds the cross-functional trust and muscle memory teams need to move quickly under pressure. You can’t prepare for everything – like a comet hitting Earth. But you can exercise across different families of crises. Risk insights shape the scenarios teams practise, and what you learn through training feeds back into your plans.

Are you playing devil’s advocate?

No one wants to be the bearer of bad news. It’s awkward. It could be career-limiting. Unfortunately, teams internalize a “kill the messenger” culture quickly. They learn to speak up when they have good news or hard facts. But if no one in the room is willing to ask uncomfortable “what if?” questions, we set ourselves up for predictable surprises. Issues become bigger when we don’t nip them in the bud. Crisis-resilient organizations know that. They cultivate psychological safety. Leaders encourage teams to think systematically about the unthinkable and unspeakable. Safety issues. Anything that could go off the rails. Leaders need to create safe channels for frontline employees to surface risks executives can’t see. Encourage that feedback. Reward people for raising red flags.

Are you acting on early warning signals?

As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If we miss warning signs or fail to act on them, issues fester until they become crises. You can’t know the unknowable. But you can build systems that help you learn and act fast. Is someone watching for warning signals? Do these signals reach the right decision-makers? Does the organization act on them? Lindy Elkins-Tanton, leader of NASA’s Psyche mission, describes her team’s motto this way: “The best news is bad news brought early enough to fix it.” Early warning signals give us options – to prevent, mitigate or prepare. Bad news that stays below the radar takes those options away. Instead of acting, we react.

You might be wondering where to start.

There’s no need to boil the ocean.

Get the team together. Ask what types of crises are top of mind – and whether you have the tools to deal with them.

Dust off the old plan. Run a tabletop exercise. Go back and update the plan.

Commission a crisis readiness assessment. Do a risk audit.

Start somewhere. Anywhere. Just start.

There isn’t one straight path to resilience. Most organizations are flying the plane while building it (and building the runway, as one client added).

The strongest crisis management programs thrive on continuous learning and steady progress – not perfection.

Do look up.

And if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s a fun Friday night watch. I won’t spoil the ending. Let’s just say waiting for perfect answers doesn’t work out all that well.

If some of these questions hit close to home, this is the work we do at NBAU – from crisis readiness assessments and planning to training and scenario exercises. If you’d like to compare notes on where your organization stands or where to start, reach out (nsmalyuk@nbau.ca). I’m always happy to have a conversation.