Crisis Management Insights

IndiGo (InterGlobe Aviation Ltd) CRISIS WASN’T IN THE SKIES. IT WAS IN THE LEADERSHIP CABIN. Three things stood out. One: Employees were left alone to face furious customers. No leader should ever let that happen. If you don’t stand by your people in a storm, don’t expect them to stand by your customers in the sun. Customer experience collapses the moment employees feel abandoned. Two: In any crisis, honesty is the only strategy that works. This time, the communication wasn’t transparent. When leaders hide the full picture, years of goodwill can disappear overnight. A crisis can earn trust, but only if you tell the truth. Three: The belief that “we are too big to be ignored” has ended more companies than competition ever has. Customers always have a choice. And if they don’t, they will create one. We shouldn’t watch the Indigo crisis like spectators. This is a reminder for every leader to build their own crisis blueprint. Because crises will come, when they do, your response becomes your reputation. There is more to business than profits. There are people, trust, and how you show up when it matters most.

Have you ever heard of the “Glass Cliff” phenomenon? Coined by Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam, the Glass Cliff highlights a harsh truth: Black women are more likely to be appointed to leadership roles during times of crisis, chaos, or decline, when the risk of failure is highest. It screams, “SAVE US! And if you don’t, then we can place the blame all on you.” The glass cliff is not about opportunity. It is about risk. When organizations hit rock bottom or find themselves in turmoil, suddenly the door cracks open. Black women are called in to lead, but rarely are they provided with the same resources, networks, or institutional support that their white counterparts receive. Instead, they are handed roles already teetering on collapse and told to “fix it.” This is where the cycle becomes most damaging: -If success comes, the organization reaps the reward, but the leader is rarely given full credit. -If failure comes, she is labeled unfit, incapable, or “not ready,” which reinforces damaging stereotypes and closes doors for those who follow. It is a setup wrapped in the illusion of progress. A seat at the table during the storm, but rarely when the sun is shining. For Black women, the glass cliff is compounded by the intersection of race and gender. The expectations are greater, the scrutiny sharper, and the margin for error almost nonexistent. And yet, despite these realities, Black women continue to step into these roles with unmatched resilience and vision, determined to lead with integrity even when the odds are stacked against them. The question we must all ask is this: Why do Black women only become “eligible” to lead when organizations are desperate, and why is their leadership so rarely celebrated in moments of stability and growth? This is not just about representation. It is about equity, respect, and dismantling the systems that place Black women in no-win scenarios. If companies are serious about diversity and inclusion, they must be equally serious about providing the infrastructure, mentorship, and long-term opportunities for Black women to succeed outside of crisis. If you want to dive deeper into the realities of the Glass Cliff, I recommend exploring these resources: https://lnkd.in/e9W6vi7E https://lnkd.in/euyXcjRF https://lnkd.in/eNskKJnj The Glass Cliff is real, it is persistent, and it is time for it to be dismantled. Organizations must stop setting Black women up to fail and instead create systems where their leadership can thrive long term.

The recent news on AWS center in the Middle East going down because of the war made me relive my experience decades ago! I once helped build what we proudly called a best-in-class disaster recovery architecture. We did everything right—on paper. ✔️ Business Impact Analysis done ✔️ RTO & RPO agreed with stakeholders ✔️ Sophisticated tools deployed ✔️ DR site fully provisioned We were confident. Almost too confident and then came the day that tested everything ! A dual power supply failure hit our primary data center. Within minutes, 300+ servers went down abruptly. What followed was worse than downtime: Critical application databases got corrupted AND THEN The DR site also got corrupted ! Real-time transactions came to a complete standstill. With every passing hour, we lost millions of dollars in revenue. In that moment, all our architecture diagrams, tools, and planning meant one thing: NOTHING —because the system didn’t recover !!! What this experience taught me: 1) Testing isn’t real until it’s brutal Table-top simulations give comfort. Full-scale failover drills expose truth. Test like it’s already failing: -Simulate real load -Introduce chaos scenarios -Assume components will fail unexpectedly 2) DR is not a technology problem—it’s a systems problem We focused heavily on tools. We underestimated dependencies. Ensure: -End-to-end recovery (infra + app + data integrity) -Isolation between primary and DR (to avoid cascade failures) -Backup validation, not just backup completion 3) Communication is your real recovery engine In crisis, confusion spreads faster than outages. Build: -Clear SOPs for business continuity -Pre-defined escalation paths -Regular cross-team drills (not just IT—include business teams) 4) Leadership presence changes outcomes War rooms are intense. Fatigue, panic, and noise creep in. As a tech leader: -Your presence brings calm -Your clarity drives prioritization -Your energy keeps teams going Sometimes, leadership is less about answers… and more about Stability 5) Assume your DR will fail—and design for that This was the hardest lesson. Build layers: - Immutable backups - Offline recovery options -“Last resort” recovery playbooks Because resilience is not about one backup plan. It’s about what happens when that backup plan fails... Have you ever seen a #DR plan fail in real life? How often do you run full-scale disaster recovery drills? What’s the one thing most organizations still get wrong about resilience? Curious to hear real experiences—those are always more valuable than frameworks. #DR #disasterrecovery #drill #test #BCP #leadership #technology #resilience

A few weeks ago, I met these two young mothers in Qacha's Nek, a remote part of south-eastern Lesotho, one of the areas worst hit by the El Niño drought.    Amanda Khozi Mukwashi, the Resident Coordinator for Lesotho and I listened to their concerns about the ongoing drought. Food prices had skyrocketed, making it impossible for them to feed their families properly. Tensions were rising at home, and the strain was palpable. What struck me most was their determination —their main concern was their children’s future, and their need for an education, in spite of everything. This encounter reinforced a reality we’re seeing around the world: the devastating link between climate change and gender-based violence. The climate crisis is not just an environmental issue—it's a human issue, and it disproportionately affects women and girls. A recent UNFPA study found that as global temperatures rise, so does intimate partner violence, whether it’s caused by heatwaves, displacement, or agricultural failure. Another CARE analysis found that during the 2023 El Niño floods in Burundi, many women were too afraid to go to the market or even leave their homes for fear of sexual violence. Despite increased attention on the link between gender and climate, we still have a long way to go. Only 6% of national climate policies seriously address gender issues. But there is hope. Investing in women is not only the right thing to do—it’s the smart thing to do. Empowering women could make an additional 235 million families more resilient to climate shocks, and closing the spending gap for women entrepreneurs in Africa alone could unlock $300 billion in GDP. The young women I met in Qacha’s Nek already understand this—they know that by investing in their children’s education, they are building the resilience of their families and communities. That is why we need to put gender equality central at the heart of our climate action strategies. We can’t afford not to. Photo taken by myself with the ladies' consent to tell their stories. 

📢New Article ➡️ Access, Signal, Action: Data Stewardship Lessons from Valencia’s Floods 🌊 In our latest piece, co-authored with Marta Poblet Balcell and Anna Colom, PhD, at the The Data Tank, we dive into the critical role of data stewardship in disaster response, with the recent devastating floods in #Valencia as a case study. 🤔 Despite the abundance of data in our hyper-connected world, the floods revealed a tragic disconnect: ⚡ Access to data wasn't enough. ⚡ Signals were lost in the noise. ⚡ Timely action was hindered. Key lessons explored in the article: 1️⃣ Addressing First Mile Challenges: Ensure seamless, real-time access to validated, critical data. 2️⃣ Improving Signal-to-Noise Ratio: Curate and amplify trusted data to cut through misinformation. 3️⃣ Tackling Last Mile Challenges: Build systems that turn signals into swift, coordinated community action. 📊 By enhancing data accessibility, elevating crucial signals, and fostering collective decision intelligence, cities like Valencia can better navigate crises. 👉 Read the full article on Medium: "Access, Signal, Action: Data Stewardship Lessons from Valencia’s Floods" at https://lnkd.in/enPyX-jv #DataStewardship #DisasterResponse #DataGovernance #ValenciaFloods #DigitalResilience #CrisisManagement

📘 A must read from the Feminist Africa journal Leah Eryenyu’s paper is more than a critique it’s a necessary warning. In “Domestic Workers as Instruments of Accumulation,” she shows how Ugandan migrant domestic workers are not just overworked and underprotected, they are constructed as commodities in global and state systems. From the racial and gendered assumptions that define “domestic work,” to the kafala system and Uganda’s role as a labour broker, Eryenyu exposes how the state, migration industry, and global capitalism conspire to turn Black women’s labour into raw material for development agendas—no matter the cost to their lives. ⚠️ The implications go beyond Uganda: Across the continent, African people are being pushed into increasingly precarious work exported, informalised, devalued while being sold a dream of economic mobility. But who benefits? And at whose expense? This paper reminds us that: Remittances ≠ justice Policy ≠ protection Exporting labour is not a development strategy it’s a symptom of deeper crisis. 📥 Download, read, reflect, and share: 👉 https://lnkd.in/d_828Q9F This is essential reading for anyone concerned with feminist political economy, labour justice, and the future of African livelihoods. #FeministAfrica #LabourJustice #AfricanFeminism #MigrationPolitics #Remittances #DecolonialEconomy #LeahEryenyu #BlackWomensLabour #Uganda #Kafala #GlobalSouth Nawi Africa FEMNET - African Women's Development and Communication Network Feminists In Kenya (FIK) Gender Is My Agenda Campaign - GIMAC Network Mama Cash Kisumu Feminists Society

The best crisis strategy is written in hindsight and used for foresight. I keep a crisis journal. Not to relive the chaos. To learn from it. Every major crisis I've worked on—every headline, every misstep, every win—gets an entry. Not a diary. A debrief. Because the patterns matter more than the individual fires. Here's what I track: ⇢ What happened (the facts, stripped of emotion) ⇢ What we did (our strategy, our messaging, our timeline) ⇢ What worked (the decisions that moved the needle) ⇢ What didn't (the mistakes, the delays, the blind spots) ⇢ What I'd do differently (the hindsight clarity) It's not about shame. It's about evolution. Some of the best crisis strategies I use today came from entries written years ago—when I was scrambling, improvising, and learning in real time. Here's what the journal has taught me: 1.) Patterns repeat across industries. Different companies. Different crises. Same mistakes. Delayed responses. Defensive messaging. Legal-first thinking. When you see the pattern, you can prevent it. 2.) Speed beats perfection. The entries where we moved fast—even imperfectly—almost always ended better than the ones where we waited for perfect clarity. Action creates options. Hesitation creates headlines. 3.) Emotion drives poor decisions. In every crisis, someone wanted to fight back, defend the brand, or go silent out of fear. The entries where we led with strategy instead of emotion? Those are the wins. 4.) The first 48 hours define everything. What you say, when you say it, and who says it—those decisions set the trajectory. Get those right, and you can recover. Get them wrong, and you're playing defense for months. 5.) Most crises are preventable. Looking back, the majority of the crises in my journal didn't have to happen. A policy audit. A difficult conversation. A proactive statement. Small decisions that could have stopped the fire before it started. The crisis journal isn't just a record. It's a playbook. And every entry makes me sharper for the next call at 2 AM. Follow for weekly insights on crisis psychology and leadership under pressure.

Most CEOs laid off thousands of employees during the 2008 crisis. Bob Chapman asked his 10,000 employees to take unpaid leave instead. By 2010, Barry-Wehmiller reported the best financial year in company history. When the crisis hit, Barry-Wehmiller lost 40% of its orders within weeks. The board's advice was clear: lay off 10% of the workforce, protect margins, stabilize the business. From a financial standpoint, it made sense. But Bob Chapman believed that layoffs don't just cut costs. They break the system, the trust, the capability, and the momentum you've built. So he reframed the problem from "How do we reduce cost?" to "How do we protect people and still survive?" He introduced a company-wide furlough program. Every employee took four weeks of unpaid leave. Applied across all levels. Teams adjusted distribution among themselves. Some employees volunteered extra leave to support colleagues. His framing was simple: "It's better that we should all suffer a little than any of us should suffer a lot." Here's what we can take away from his decision- 1. In difficult moments, it's easy to see roles, costs, and headcount. Leadership begins when you continue seeing people as people with families, lives, and dignity tied to your decisions. 2. You don't build trust through speeches. You build it through what you choose to protect when pressure is highest. 3. Fear shuts people down. Shared responsibility brings them closer. When everyone carries a little of the burden, people start caring about each other, not just their own survival. 4. How you lead in a crisis becomes part of your organization's memory. Long after numbers recover, people remember how they were treated when things were uncertain. Crisis decisions don't just determine survival. They define identity. The way you treat people when things are uncertain becomes the foundation of everything that follows.

My grandmother used to say, ‘If your hands are in the soil, don’t complain about dust, grow something instead.’ That’s what Africa’s women have been doing for decades. Not waiting. Not complaining. But building quietly, strategically, and brilliantly. For too long, the world saw them as vulnerable. But new data is finally catching up to a truth we’ve always known on the ground. A recent study https://bit.ly/3G1fx0A revealed: → Women-led small businesses are not just coping with climate change; they are quietly leading adaptation. → When floods destroy roads, women’s cooperatives reroute supply chains. →When drought hits crops, they shift to drought-resistant varieties and diversify income. → When shocks come, they don’t collapse, they reconfigure. The data confirms it: ↳ Women-led businesses adopt more sustainable strategies, such as crop switching, forming cooperatives, and reshaping markets. ↳ With even modest support, they outperform male-led businesses in long-term resilience. ↳ They do more with less: Less capital. Less access. Less visibility. Yet greater results. Now ask yourself: If this is vulnerability, what does real strength look like? Africa holds over $4 trillion in untapped domestic financial assets: ↳ $455B in pensions ↳ $320B in insurance ↳ $150B in sovereign wealth ↳ $473B in foreign reserves But less than 2% reaches the women building grassroots climate resilience. Not because their models aren’t sound. Not because the returns aren’t strong. But because traditional finance was never built to value the informal, the community-led, the underestimated. From our work across the continent, the proof is overwhelming: ↳ Women-led cassava cooperatives manage microloans and run solar-powered processing hubs. ↳Decentralised energy systems run by women are powering not just homes, but local industries, digital hubs, and value chains. ↳ Young women mapping waste with AI, turning trash into trade, and floods into foresight. These aren’t just projects but blueprints for a new kind of economy. What must change? → Finance must flow differently. Long-term climate capital must also leverage what is within, unlocking pensions, insurance, and remittances. →  Energy must be redefined. Not just light bulbs, but power for agro-processing, mineral beneficiation, and digital economies. →  Policy must be inclusive by design. Women-led SMEs must be co-creators of infrastructure, not afterthoughts. → Data must be people-powered. Credit scores built from Njangi records, mobile transactions, cooperative data, not outdated collateral. Leadership must mean systems change. We cannot solve 21st-century challenges with 20th-century tools. Women must be at the centre of the redesign. Because resilience is not a slogan, it’s a system. And systems that exclude the very people solving the hardest problems are built to fail. Let’s stop admiring resilience. Let’s start financing it. Let’s fund the future by funding her. Dr. Richard Munang

Every communication professional should understand this: Crisis communication is not only about responding when things go wrong. It is the strategic management of information, perception, and trust under pressure. It is how you speak when stakes are high, emotions are elevated, and people are watching closely. Handled well, it can preserve credibility. Handled poorly, it can damage years of trust in a matter of hours. So what should every communication professional know? - Before a Crisis (Preparation is your advantage) Prepare before the crisis, not during it. The strongest organizations do not improvise crisis communication. They plan for it. They define protocols, assign roles, and anticipate scenarios. Preparation is what allows composure under pressure. This also means knowing your risks, aligning leadership, and ensuring everyone understands how communication will flow when it matters most. Because when a crisis hits, confusion inside the organization will always show up outside. - During a Crisis (This is where trust is tested) a. First, speed matters; but accuracy matters more. Silence creates a vacuum, and that vacuum will be filled with speculation. But rushing out unverified information can worsen the situation. The balance is to respond quickly, while ensuring what you say is grounded and reliable. b. Second, acknowledge before you explain. In a crisis, people are not just looking for information; they are looking for reassurance. Acknowledge the issue clearly, show awareness., then provide context. Skipping acknowledgment often comes across as avoidance or insensitivity. c. Third, control the narrative early. If you do not define what is happening, others will define it for you. The first few communications in a crisis often shape public perception long after the situation is resolved. d. Fourth, consistency builds trust. Mixed messages from different spokespeople create confusion and weaken credibility. Align internally before speaking externally. One message, clearly delivered. 5. Fifth, tone is as important as content. In high-pressure moments, how you say something matters just as much as what you say. Defensive, dismissive, or overly technical language can escalate tension. Calm, direct, and human communication helps stabilize it. - After a Crisis (Reputation is rebuilt here) The work does not end when the storm dies down. You must continue communicating, clearly and consistently, until confidence is restored. Rebuilding trust requires transparency. Review what happened. Identify gaps, strengthen your systems and most importantly, reshape the narrative so the crisis does not become the only story people remember about your organization. Because the truth is this: A crisis is not the time to decide how your organization communicates. It is the time your communication is tested and when that moment comes, your response will do more than address the issue.