Managing Crises Before They Happen: What Every Executive Needs to Know About Crisis Management

Rating:
Summary: Long on Promise
Review: Another good volume in the never-ending monday morning quarterback look at other companies' crises. This book, however, does not deliver on its promise of helping business manangers anticipate or prevent crisis...there are only a few hundred words of abstract advice on this topic. Most of the book is a rehash of publicly-known crises that the author then explains to us after the fact. There is little information to help managers actually find internal or external trouble spots and respond preemptively, other than vignettes about actions a company might have done differently...the old monday morning crisis prevention.

Rating:
Summary: Nice, but very academic
Review: Managing Crises has helpful checklists of things to consider and the author's Rules for dealing with crises but it is short on convincing analysis. For example, one Rule is that all crises "send out a repeated trail of early warning signals." This is probably true in many, if not most cases, but the author fails to provide a convincing analysis that it is true for all or almost all cases. The Tylenol crisis is the books primary example, but the book fails to analyze what the early warning signals were for the Tylenol crises that the manufacturer failed to detect and act on. The book is higher on salesmanship (promoting the author's business?) than on substance.

Rating:
Summary: Managing Crises: Short on Substance
Review: Managing Crises has helpful checklists of things to consider and the author's Rules for dealing with crises but it is short on convincing analysis. For example, one Rule is that all crises "send out a repeated trail of early warning signals." This is probably true in many, if not most cases, but the author fails to provide a convincing analysis that it is true for all or almost all cases. The Tylenol crisis is the books primary example, but the book fails to analyze what the early warning signals were for the Tylenol crises that the manufacturer failed to detect and act on. The book is higher on salesmanship (promoting the author's business?) than on substance.

Rating:
Summary: Anticipate, Prepare, and Respond
Review: Mitroff (with Anagnos) explains "what every executive and manager needs to know about crisis management." He correctly asserts that crises occur because "a significant amount of the overall system fails. Thus, CM is inherently the process of seeing and dealing with larger, whole systems." Moreover, "The basic or most central problem is that [because it goes sharply against the grain of of current management thought and practice] it requires cultural acceptance, and unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases, major cultural transformation." The material is organized as follows:

Chapter One: Why Crises Are an Inevitable and Permanent Feature of Modern Societies

Chapter Two: The Failure of Success: The Tylenol Poisonings, Crisis Management's "Ancient History"

Chapter Three: A Best Practice Model: A General Framework for Crisis Management

Chapter Four: Should We Tell the Truth? The Varieties of Truth and Telling the Truth

Chapter Five: Assuming Responsibility: Victim or Villain?

Chapter Six: Detecting Weak Signals: Making Sure That You Are the First to Get the Worst News!

Chapter Seven: Thinking Far Outside of the Boxes

Chapter Eight: Treating the Big Picture

Chapter Nine: Crisis Management 2002: The Challenges Ahead

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu asserts that every battle is won or lost before it is fought. Hence the great importance Mitroff assigns to anticipation and preparation. I think his book would have even greater value if read in combination with Peter Schwartz's The Art of the Long View. Given the importance of this subject to any organization (regardless of its size or nature), I also recommend Steven Fink's Crisis Management.

When concluding his book, Mitroff offers these suggestions: "Start by designing and implementing signal detection [ie early warning] mechanisms throughout your organization. Start by amplifying the signals that already exist in your organization of impending crises. In many cases, the databases that indicate signals of impending crises may already exist, but they need to be reconceptualized to show their relationship to CM." Sound advice. But ultimately, even the most comprehensive and sophisticated CM system cannot predict or suggest, much less prevent, every crisis. Once a crisis occurs, one of the most important questions Mitroff answers is "Now what?" That answer alone is well-worth the cost of this important book.


Rating:
Summary: Nice, but very academic
Review: This book is well concieved, but obviously written by someone who has an academic background. The author cites lots of facts and examples, but never really takes the "how to" steps I'd expect from someone who has actually done what he's writing about.

I'd recommend Blindsided by Bruce Blythe instead. It has a tilt to the human side of crises, but is very well done and includes many practical tips. I've actually lost consulting engagements because his book gave too many trade secrets away!