Crisis Management: How to Lead During a Crisis

Crisis Management: How to Lead During a Crisis

Jennifer discussed the importance of crisis management when leading a project, team or organization. She highlighted the types of crises that are common and how sound crisis management can help. She recalled working with a team member who needed a transplant, another who had a close personal relative injured in a car accident, and a renegade contractor who made changes to the production site but was on vacation during the implementation phase. She also recalled one instance in which the market was doing poorly, which resulted in costs going up for the work and impacting human resources. Finally, she recalled a project that came in hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and impacted hundreds of people.

Jennifer recalled working on a project where the company merged with another company that had a different corporate culture. This created a great deal of stress on the CEO, which was not good for the project. To use crisis management to keep progressing, stay on schedule, be productive, stop the bleeding and keep your team focused, it is important to plan, identify risks, create a resource backup plan, evaluate risk, create a change control board, know your team and who to go to for creative, numerical, structural or people problems, and be able to spot a crisis before it impacts the project. It is also important to have a business continuity plan to keep your business or project running in the event of a disaster. The most important details in this text are that a leader is judged by how they lead during a crisis.

This includes two types of crisis: team members who are up for a kidney donorship, and a renegade contractor who was making changes to the production site that overwrote the production and caused the system to be down for three days. These crises are common and can be difficult to lead when things are going well. We had to make changes and work together as a team to plan for how to keep things going due to the market changes and new technology. This resulted in the project being $500 million over budget and impacting 200 and 300 people.