Scenario planning can strengthen or doom crisis management
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The unfortunate death of Anna Sebastian has spotlighted the toxic work cultures prevalent in organizations. This incident also exposed another weakness in many organizations: ill preparedness to manage a crisis.
Crises are bound to arise in any organization. But how prepared are they to deal with those crises? The biggest hurdle in crisis management is that humans have an inherent bias that predisposes us to be overconfident of our future. The human brain is very poor in predicting future risks, more so if these have a low probability of occurrence.
Matthew Broderick was the head of America’s Homeland Security Operations Center, which serves as the eyes and ears of the US government in a crisis. Several hours before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Broderick was receiving much data about what was happening on the ground, including 17 reports of major flooding and levee breaches. But he ignored these inputs and went home for the night assuming that nothing worse would happen to the city.
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