SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from 250,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our newsletter.
How prepared is your organization for a sudden crisis?
- Extremely: 10.01%
- Very: 27.81%
- Somewhat: 36.82%
- Not very: 17.56%
- Not at all: 7.80%
Crisis management identifies opportunities. It would have been interesting to take this poll a few months ago and see what the responses were. My guess is the “Extremely” and “Very” categories would have scored much higher. We tend to overestimate our capabilities and underestimate the impact of a crisis. The best thing you can do during a crisis, other than dealing with it, is identify where your organization is falling short and fill those gaps either during the crisis or after it passes. The weaknesses exposed in the midst of the chaos are ways you can harden your business and get it ready for the next inevitable, unforeseen challenge. Start gathering lessons learned as soon as the crisis hits and allocate resources immediately to fix those issues. You’ll be glad you did when the next crisis hits.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS. Before launching his own company, he worked at McKinsey & Co., Capital One and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He’s the author of three leadership books: “One Piece of Paper,” “Lead Inside the Box” and “The Elegant Pitch.”