Crisis Staff in Mid-Sized Companies: The Right Tool in the Wrong Place
Classic crisis staff structures were developed for organizations that work with crisis staff procedures continuously. Mid-sized companies do not. A model that functions in large corporations can produce more chaos in a mid-sized firm than the crisis itself.
The Starting Question
A crisis staff is a mature instrument for reducing complexity under pressure. The core idea is old and proven: relieve decision-makers of analysis and coordination so they can focus on what matters.
For state organizations and large corporations with permanent security departments, this is appropriate. For mid-sized companies, it usually is not.
Why Crisis Staff Structures Presuppose What Mid-Sized Companies Rarely Have
Crisis staff work is a mode of thinking. It is not acquired in a weekend course. It develops through repetition, through practice, through institutional formation.
Armed forces, large public agencies, corporations with specialized security departments: they maintain personnel who know this mode and use it regularly. That justifies the structure.
Mid-sized companies typically lack this personnel. Since the Bundeswehr was drastically reduced after the Cold War, fewer and fewer people in mid-sized leadership teams have crisis staff experience from an earlier career.
The Typical Pattern and Why It Fails
When mid-sized companies decide to plan a crisis staff, they tend to declare the entire leadership team the crisis staff. Everyone should be included.
That sounds inclusive. It is dangerous.
One of the central features of crisis staff work is the deliberate elimination of everything not necessary to resolve the crisis. That requires temporarily breaking up power structures. A department head sitting in the crisis staff thinks first about their department, their people, their career.
The micropolitical dynamics of normal operations transfer directly into the crisis. That worsens what staff work is supposed to improve.
What Actually Fits
Mid-sized companies need complexity reduction under pressure. That is not in question. The question is which instrument serves that goal.
Agile management approaches, change management logic, problem-driven decision structures: these concepts are more familiar to mid-sized leadership teams than FwDV 100 or HDv 100/100. They can be adapted and deployed without presupposing an institutional apparatus that mid-sized companies simply do not have.
A model that attaches itself from the outside as a kind of exoskeleton, rather than restructuring internally, can be more effective in a crisis than a staff structure that was built but never genuinely exercised.
The Core Question
Rethinking crisis management for mid-sized companies does not mean abandoning proven principles. It means being honest about what can be assumed and what cannot.
A crisis staff without crisis staff mentality is the right tool in the wrong place.
Quotable
“Crisis staff work is a mode of thinking. It is not acquired in a weekend course.”
“The micropolitical dynamics of normal operations transfer directly into the crisis when the leadership team is declared the crisis staff.”
“A crisis staff without the corresponding institutional formation is like an edelweiss transplanted onto a North Sea dike: misplaced.”
→ How Rico Kerstan develops crisis structures: Services → P-DRIVEN as an alternative model: Approach