Patience of a Saint

Crisis management demands the skills of a doctor with an assuring bedside manner. First you must immobilize the client -- their instincts are wrong and created the situation you were hired to fix. Any further reactions will only exacerbate the damage. They know they are in deep over their heads, so their wants must be stopped and substituted by wise counsel that will instead choose to do what is known to work.

There is almost nothing new in the world. We have hundreds of examples for almost every situation, if not millions, so outcomes can be easily matched with approaches, allowing desired situations to be studied and replicated. Few have the discipline or attention spans to do this, often giving up quickly or happily failing after a token effort, creating a large market for "experts" who are basically just normal people able to think and assess before acting, and have accumulated experience by retaining awareness while taking action.

The situation was bleak and everything that could have been done wrong had. There was not much to salvage and the approach was so botched that counseling was needed in preparation for future incidents, ambitiously attempting a mild intervention to provoke psychological realignment with reality.

In a private workshop, I used my most careful academic tone, enumerating the mistakes, explaining the context and conditions of each error, describing simple approaches to attain positive outcomes and how to utilize organization and strategy for success. Navigating out of a crisis is expensive, laborious, and grinding, like salvaging a boat that has run aground and capsized. Leadership and awareness are rare, but it is so much easier when someone in charge can foresee a bad situation developing and steer away from impending disaster.

Who could care much about doing anything right when blame and wild unfalsifiable theories suffice as excuses? "I'm not interested in next time -- I'm trying to solve the present crisis!" he screamed at me, the man's spirit exhausted, beaten, and distracted.

And he was right to focus on something, except the present crisis had become a dead horse from lack of concern for details. Even if this crisis could be saved and set right, the failure of general situational awareness made certain the next one just a matter of time.