Managing The Unthinkable

Crises are no strangers on campuses—whether the deaths of students, severe weather events, athletic wrongdoing, crime, or student or employee malfeasance. How leaders respond can save lives, strengthen the institution, and comfort the community—or compromise reputations and result in scandal.Risk management and readiness are not often at the top of the list of what presidents and their boards must do, but in a time of ongoing change, instantaneous communication, and media scrutiny, they risk their jobs and their institutional reputation if they do not heed the messages conveyed in this book. Gretchen Bataille and Diana Cordova, with extensive and varied experiences that include a university presidency, directing senior leadership programs, and counseling presidents and senior administrators faced with critical campus events – together with 22 presidents, seasoned leaders in higher education, and media experts – provide forthright, firsthand advice on preparing for and managing a crisis, as well on handling the emotional, and often long-term, toll that can result from dramatic events on campus. Through the examples of those who have successfully managed crises, this book provides expert insights and guidance on preparedness, assigning roles and responsibilities, and planning for contingencies ahead of time so that, in the moment, when there is pressure for immediate response that will be scrutinized by the media, by the public, and by the local constituencies, leaders can act with confidence.The contributors emphasize the crucial importance of ethical behavior, the need for clear protocols for how all employees should handle problematic issues, and the need for mechanisms that allow employees and students to report problems without fear of retribution. Creating an atmosphere of transparency, accountability, and ethical behavior isn’t something a leader does when a scandal strikes to protect a reputation; it’s what leaders must do to reinforce their good name every day.For senior leaders and board members not in the throes of managing a crisis, this book outlines what needs to be done to be prepared and offers extensive resources for further reading.

The only book you will ever need to manage your organization effectively in challenging times. It is fast-paced, practical and cutting edge guide that equips managers, figuratively speaking, with tools to manage their most important resources in a results-oriented manner in times when there are macro and micro challenges facing almost every North American organization. This book helps you hold your constituents accountable for organizational results in an effective manner. It gives you effective methods of motivating each constituent on an individual level no matter how large the number of your direct reports is. It equips you with an almost scientific method of evaluating which risks to take a t what time and how to make those tough decisions. This book provides you a guide to setting organizational goals effectively and provides you a guide to achieving them that balances your short term triumphs with long term success. Finally this book provides you a guide to initiate, implement and perpetuate organizational change in a rapid-fire manner that is designed for the busy manager who is on the go and has no time for long winded dated ideas that lost their relevance with the end of the previous decade.

Discover how human beings react to danger–and what makes the difference between life and death Today, nine out of ten Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow, some of us will have to make split-second choices to save ourselves and our families. How will we react? What will it feel like? Will we be heroes or victims? In her quest to answer these questions, award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley traces human responses to some of recent history’s epic disasters, from the explosion of the Mont Blanc munitions ship in 1917–one of the biggest explosions before the invention of the atomic bomb–to the journeys of the 15,000 people who found their way out of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. To understand the science behind the stories, Ripley turns to leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists, and other disaster experts. She even has her own brain examined by military researchers and experiences, through realistic simulations, what it might be like to survive a plane crash into the ocean or to escape a raging fire. Ripley comes back with precious wisdom about the surprising humanity of crowds, the elegance of the brain’s fear circuits, and the stunning inadequacy of many of our evolutionary responses. Most unexpectedly, she discovers the brain’s ability to do much, much better–with just a little help.

The text presents a systematic, behavioral model that underlies crisis management, showing which personality functions are required for managing and preparing for major crises. The book discusses the extreme importance of Emotional IQ in handling, responding, and preparing for any crisis. Crisis Leadership presents the findings from new national surveys and new concrete, easy-to-understand models for implementing programs of proactive leadership. The combination of models-including a comprehensive look at what happens before, during, and after a crisis-creates a truly integrated and systematic approach.

Thinking The Unthinkable is an investigation into why leaders have appeared more unable or unwilling than ever to anticipate the biggest issues of our time. In an era of 'wicked problems', why are current leadership behaviours and culture apparently not fit for purpose? What are the causes of so many failures in policy and strategic forecasting?

The only book you will ever need to manage your organization effectively in challenging times. It is fast-paced, practical and cutting edge guide that equips managers, figuratively speaking, with tools to manage their most important resources in a results-oriented manner in times when there are macro and micro challenges facing almost every North American organization. This book helps you hold your constituents accountable for organizational results in an effective manner. It gives you effective methods of motivating each constituent on an individual level no matter how large the number of your direct reports is. It equips you with an almost scientific method of evaluating which risks to take a t what time and how to make those tough decisions. This book provides you a guide to setting organizational goals effectively and provides you a guide to achieving them that balances your short term triumphs with long term success. Finally this book provides you a guide to initiate, implement and perpetuate organizational change in a rapid-fire manner that is designed for the busy manager who is on the go and has no time for long winded dated ideas that lost their relevance with the end of the previous decade.

Every decision that is made by managers and policy-makers in a public sector organization requires an evaluation and a judgement of the risks involved. This vital requirement has been recognised in the growth of risk management. However, risks can never be fully prevented, which means that public managers also have to be crisis managers. Today’s crises develop in unseen ways; they escalate rapidly and transform through the interdependencies of modern society, and their frequency is growing: the global financial crisis, the European volcanic ash cloud, the Japanese tsunami and subsequent Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, the Christchurch earthquake and the Queensland floods. All highlight the extreme challenges that public sector organizations across the world have had to face in recent years. Risk and Crisis Management in the Public Sector Second Edition responds to these challenges by presenting the only guide for public managers and public management students which combines lessons about risk and crisis management together in a single, accessible text. It equips readers and public managers with the knowledge and skills to understand key issues and debates, as well as the capacity to treat risks and better prepare for, respond to and recover from crisis episodes. This exciting new edition enhances the original text with contemporary cases and a greater focus on the international, trans-boundary and multi-agency dimensions of risk and crisis management. These enhancements reflect the fact that today’s public manager must increasingly operate within a global and interdependent governance context.