No one likes to contemplate a crisis, but companies have been doing that more and more since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and corporate meltdowns like Enron. While the author agrees that operational plans are valuable for dealing with a crisis, he argues that it is even more important for organizations to develop a set of competencies, or IQs, that would make them stronger, calmer, and more flexible in the event of a disaster.
He describes seven IQs: emotional; creative; social and political; integrative; technical; aesthetic; and spiritual. The social and political IQ, for example, means understanding the many environmental factors outside your own business and industry and recognizing how these factors could potentially affect your organization. The integrative IQ means understanding how crises are experienced differently by different shareholders, and taking care now to close any gaps so that everyone could work better together should something go terribly wrong. The chapters do an excellent job of illuminating these topics one by one, and the book also briefly draws on examples of effective as well as inadequate crisis management in business and in society (social upheaval, natural disasters, and so on).
Author Ian I. Mitroff is a professor at the University of Southern California in both the Marshall School of Business and the Annenberg School for Communications.
Table of Contents:
- The Crisis Society: The Rise of the Abnormal
- Challenge 1—Right Heart (Emotional IQ): Deny Denial, Grieve Before a Crisis Occurs
- Challenge 2—Right Thinking (Creative IQ): Be a Responsible Troublemaker
- Challenge 3—Right Social and Political Skills (Social and Political IQ): Be Patiently Impatient
- Challenge 4—Right Integration (Integrative IQ): Embrace Fuzziness
- Challenge 5—Right Technical Skills (Technical IQ): Think Like a Sociopath, Act Like a Saint
- Challenge 6—Right Transfer (Aesthetic IQ): Down with the Old; Design and Implement New Organizations
- Challenge 7—Right Soul (Spiritual IQ): Spirituality is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage
- When a Whole Society is in Crisis, All of the Challenges Apply
- A Tale of Two Companies
Appendix A: Major Crises at a Glance
Appendix B: A Brief Primer on Crisis Management
Appendix C: A Theory of Complex Problem-Formation and Problem-Solving
Inquiry Systems