We're Really Good at Crisis Management — Are We?
Organizations systematically overestimate their crisis management capability. The problem is not arrogance — it is the absence of reference points. Those who do not know what good crisis management looks like cannot assess how good their own is.
The Core Problem
Crisis management is a field where many people quickly form strong opinions. Leaders and organizations regularly describe their own crisis management capability as good or very good.
The problem is not that these self-assessments are consciously wrong. The problem is that there is no reference point.
Few organizations test their crisis management regularly with recognizable rigor. Few have experts who developed expertise through training and repeated practice — rather than through being present at the right or wrong moment. With regards to David Dunning and Justin Kruger.
The Real Question
Surviving a crisis is a performance. Or it is luck. With a discrete scale in between.
This question has driven me for more than ten years. Initially, I focused primarily on how crisis management is organized — structures, roles, responsibilities. A relevant aspect, but only one. Like Plato’s cave allegory, I mistook the shadows for the world.
The harder question is: how do you recognize whether a crisis response was performance or luck?
A First Attempt at Measurement
In an exercise, I began testing this. Not with elaborate evaluation systems, but with paper lists and the counting of coded events and outcomes.
The result was concrete: using percentage values, I could show the client that their team had been chasing the situation rather than staying ahead of it. We measured something that had previously been nearly impossible to measure — in a realistic scenario. Two percentages. Nothing more, nothing less.
What Follows
The instrument is currently of limited use for evaluating real crises but could be applied there with manageable effort — provided documentation exists.
If a reliable data foundation were ever built, it would actually be possible to compare whether an organization performed well or simply felt like it did.
That is the difference that matters.
Quotable
“Surviving a crisis is a performance. Or it is luck.”
“Few organizations have a reference point for good crisis management. Without a reference point, self-assessment is structurally unreliable.”
“We measured something that had previously been nearly impossible to measure. Two percentages — nothing more, nothing less.”
→ Crisis exercises as diagnostic instruments: Services → P-DRIVEN: First experimental evidence: Insights