How not to deal with crises

How not to deal with crises

Rodney Coates

 

                The Public Institutions across the State are dealing with various sets of crises.  These crises - stemming from the housing meltdown, national and global recession, and the dismal State budget shortfall – will require a tremendously adroit, creative, and mature response.  There are multiple strategies for dealing with crises.  One may choose to gather data, discern the nature of the crises, and explore how others have or are dealing with the crisis.  Others may choose to think outside the box, investigate new avenues, and chart alternative courses.  Regardless of which approach is ultimately decided, clearly choices must be made and change must be accomplished.  Failure to decide or the failure to identify effective change strategies increases the likelihood that the entity, institution, or organization will not survive the crisis.  Unfortunately, dysfunctional systems are more likely to direct their energies into debilitating cycles of self-destruction, time consuming grandiose and often deceptive practices of casting blame, guilt or assuming victim status.  Obviously, in times of crises these may give the illusion of engagement but in reality they are merely very creative ways of avoiding making difficult choices.  Needless to say, creative procrastination is not an effective strategy for dealing with crises.

 

                Unfortunately, some rather than investing in change choose to invest in what might be called creative procrastination.  In non-crisis situations creative procrastination, while not entirely harmless, may be categorized as a sort of benign neglect.  In crises, such neglect is anything but benign.  In fact, one of the key responses of dysfunctional systems is non-responsive malaise, nihilism, and avoidance.  Thus incapacitated, members of dysfunctional systems may choose to attack or blame its leaders, external actors, or other scapegoats rather than assume responsibility.  In most extreme situations, civil war may break out as the organization splinters into opposing camps of those claiming to be victims while blaming others as guilty.  The interesting thing is that a tremendous amount of energy, time, and other scarce institutional resources may be spent in these activities.  But in the end, the real source of the crises goes misidentified, under-specified, and consequently ignored.  In the end, while there has been much talk there has been even less action.  While there has been many to blame there has been few who have taken responsibility.  And while there has been a tremendous amount of discussion there have been no effective plans devised to effectively deal with the crisis.

 

Creative procrastination appears to be the choice of some who either did not get the memo or who refuse to understand the reality of the crises.  The very nature of true crises is that they tend to be both cyclical and necessary.  The cyclical nature of crises has to do with what might be called the environmental constraints in which institutions function.  Such environmental constraints make reference to the external factors to include economic, political, cultural and social realities in which institutions operate.  These environmental constraints, consistent with unique historical contexts, periodically require institutional responses and/or changes.  Put simply, as the economic, political, cultural, and social realities change the relationships between and within institutions must also change.  For example: economic crises, demographic and political changes tend to be more cyclic in nature.  Cyclic changes may be more appropriately planned for and therefore allow for more deliberate responses by institutions.  Alternatively, changes that are more frequent or nuanced will require more rapid or more creative responses from institutions. Such changes as that associated with new technological realities (innovations), economic conditions (new markets or increased competition), political outcomes (newly elected majorities), and social transformations (demographic –aging of the populace) –would individually or collectively require more nuanced and creative institutional responses and/or changes.  Regardless of external constraints, crisis demands change. Failure to change means that you have effectively chosen to fail.  In the end, creative procrastination is the case book example of “How not to deal with crises”.