“Black swan” events* are assumed to be rare. Yet several have occurred over the past 20 years, including the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the 2008–2009 recession, and the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
The challenge these crises create for leaders of every type of organization—business, nonprofit, and government—is usually immense and almost always unprecedented. They require rapid, thoughtful, and decisive responses.
This book is a playbook designed to help leaders understand crises and navigate them successfully. It presents and analyzes specific examples of organizations that have experienced different crises, including American Express, Chrysler, Disney, Kodak, International Harvester/Navistar, Osborne Computer, Sears, UAL, and Westfield. Some cases illustrate successful crisis management; others show failure. Although every crisis is unique, our research indicates that crises also share important characteristics. By analyzing these cases, the authors identify key lessons, common principles, and practical tools for leading and managing successfully through crisis.
As the book explains, every crisis requires a different leadership playbook—or set of initiatives. Those initiatives, in turn, require the right tools. The Crisis Leadership Playbook includes tools for:
- identifying an organization’s vulnerability to crisis
- crisis planning
- identifying and effectively managing the aspects of organizational culture that may strengthen or hinder the organization’s ability to respond to a crisis
The book aims to provide the perspective, insights, lessons, and tools leaders need to create their own playbook for navigating crises and positioning their organizations for Sustainable Success®.
The book is available in English in print and as an e-book: https://vandeplaspublishing.com/collections/just-published/products/the-crisis-leadership-playbook?variant=31621467340873
About the authors:
Eric Flamholtz, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. He leads educational programs for companies and universities around the world and coaches the senior management teams of numerous organizations. He is President of Management Systems, which he founded in 1978 and for which Ninety Nine is the exclusive partner in Bulgaria. His long-term empirical research focuses on the determinants of organizational success and failure, and he has developed validated, proven tools that support business performance. The companies he has worked with to build Sustainably Successful Organizations® include Starbucks, Kusto Group in Singapore, Techcombank in Vietnam, and many others.
Yvonne Randle, PhD in Finance, is Executive Vice President and co-owner of Management Systems. She has extensive experience helping leaders of businesses and nonprofit organizations—including Granite Construction, GOJO Industries, and Head Start agencies in the United States—build Sustainably Successful Organizations®. Her expertise includes strategic planning, corporate culture management, leadership development, organizational-structure design, and performance-management systems. She also teaches in a range of Executive Education programs at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.
* A black swan is an unforeseen and highly unpredictable event.
