Your Crisis Plan Won't Save You. Your Judgement Will.

Montieth Illingworth

Much is made of the importance of proper planning to anticipate and manage a crisis. Crisis planning is essential, as long as it is coupled with a clear-eyed view of what, in the real world, implementing it will be like. No one truly knows how effective a plan will be until a crisis is confronted.

But there is another preparatory step that may be even more important — one that is certainly harder to plan for and to execute. That dynamic has more to do with determining success in managing a crisis than almost anything else, and it is essential if you’re going to learn from the experience.

What matters most is understanding how decisions will be made once the crisis is underway.

The Uncertainty Principle

Planning assumes order. Decision-making unfolds in uncertainty.

At the heart of crisis decision-making is evaluating not only what is known, but what is not known. Decisions made solely on the former often go awry. And yet, leaders naturally ask: what alternative do they have? They can only decide based on the facts they have in hand, not the ones they do not.

That is sensible—but not a fully realistic view of how crises develop.

The more important discipline is identifying what must still be learned before final decisions are made. Considering what is unknown, and what may later emerge, is often more consequential than acting quickly on partial certainty.

This is where crisis management becomes something of a Rubik’s Cube.

Imagine discovering evidence of fraud or corruption by a senior executive. There may be documentation of what was said and done and even a corroborating party, such as a whistleblower. Some of the “known unknowns” are straightforward: Who else may have been involved? Who may have witnessed it? Who was harmed by it?

But beyond those known unknowns lie the “unknown unknowns,” beginning with motivation. Why would someone commit such an act knowing the potential consequences?

Understanding Motives

That question may never be fully answered. But it matters because an understanding of possible motives is often the only way to assess the true scope of the problem and its reputational fallout for the organization.

You cannot climb inside someone’s head to reconstruct their moral calculus. But their actions say a great deal about the conditions that made those actions possible. Very often, misconduct exploits gaps in how organizations make decisions and, more importantly, how they maintain guardrails to prevent damaging ones.

What role did this individual have in the decision-making process? Who else was involved? Where did oversight fail? These questions are not about broadening blame. They are about revealing fault lines in institutional processes and in behaviors that may have existed just below the surface.

Take the example of someone who witnessed the act of corruption and may have even been implicitly involved. The knowledge of the act alone should have triggered a reporting obligation, but no report was made. As a company, getting to the bottom of that, instead of covering it up, would be key.

Sound Judgment’s Central Role

This is where sound judgement is exemplified as a pillar of crisis management. Is there a pattern of other people having reported these things, which were then ignored by management? Was a report made in the past punished more than it was acknowledged and supported? How such information, as damaging as it can be to numerous people regardless of whether they’re involved or not in the conduct, “flows” within an organization, and must be uncovered as part of an assessment. It is no surprise that most corruption in an organization goes unreported for months, even years.

Those insights shape how thoroughly the problem is understood—and how convincingly it is addressed. No crisis plan can anticipate and mitigate for this. Judgement at the top level is what will make all the difference in how effectively the crisis is managed and risk mitigated.

Every crisis also says something broader about the organization itself. When a crisis occurs, leadership faces a defining moment, both externally and internally. Internally, employees become newly sensitized to what the organization really is. They want to know whether leadership will manage the situation properly, whether accountability will be taken, and whether changes will be made so the crisis is not repeated.

For example, this is particularly crucial in the event of questionable conduct by a CEO which then results in termination. But it’s not only important in just those situations. Crisis management procedures and processes concerning a CEO’s conduct are typically ready to go, especially at the Board level. It’s everywhere else deeper in the organization that often goes unnoticed.

Finding a Needle in a Haystack

Take a case of employee indictments at a city agency for taking millions of dollars in bribes for awarding no-bid contracts to vendors. Almost 70 employees were convicted. The agency itself has over 10,000 employees. Finding corruption in an organization that large was more challenging than uncovering the proverbial needle in a haystack. But it was found and the outcome presumably resulted in a greater level of alertness to this form of corruption. Exercising judgement and coupling it with action comes with varying levels of difficulty across the organization.

Externally, stakeholders judge whether the organization grasps the full picture or is responding narrowly to protect itself. How leaders interpret the crisis and the actions they take become enduring impressions of the organization’s character.

Of course, not every problem revealed by a crisis can be fixed immediately. There must be priorities. Crisis management is inherently multi-layered. First, the immediate problem must be controlled and stabilized. Then the broader nature of what occurred must be understood and addressed in a prioritized way—what must be fixed now and what must change over time.

Many crises ultimately become culture-defining moments. They create opportunities for transformation where and when it is needed.

Being Brutally Honest

If there is one cultural shift organizations should strive for when dealing with a crisis, it is brutal self-honesty.

Every organization experiences a form of cultural drift. The principles and practices that once made it successful gradually erode. Shortcuts become normalized. Guardrails weaken. Decision-making becomes less transparent.

A crisis exposes this drift.

Leaders who are willing to confront uncomfortable truths about incentives, structures and behavior are far more likely to restore credibility than those who rely solely on messaging strategies or containment tactics.

Crisis planning prepares organizations for scenarios. Decision-making prepares them for reality. And the difference between the two often determines whether a crisis becomes a difficult episode—or a defining failure.

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Montieth Illingworth is CEO and global managing partner at Montieth & Company.