CAUSES OF CRISES
Crises are caused either by the actions of human beings or by
natural disasters – fire, flood, earthquake, etc. If people are at the
root of the crisis they may be deliberately inflicting harm on the
organization from outside or, also externally, they may have
taken actions which indirectly create a major problem. Internally,
crises can be caused deliberately by people attempting to enforce
their point of view or accidentally by some colossal misjudge-
ment or a long history of compounded errors.
Crises may, however, be no more than sudden, unforeseen
events which perhaps could have been anticipated. To dismiss
strategy, as Macnamara did, is perhaps going too far, but Robert
Burns did suggest that ‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
gang aft a-gley’, and this is as true today as when he wrote it in
the 18th century.
In an ideal world, crises would not happen. You would know
where you want to go and you would get there, with only minor
deviations along the way. Problems would have been foreseen
and contingency plans made to deal with them. This, of course, is
not the way things are in real life. Murphy’s law is always ready
to strike again – if anything can go wrong it will.
Crises may appear to come suddenly, but this does not mean
that they are unforeseeable. The Garcia Márquez novella,
Chronicle of a Death Foretold, was written about a crisis, the
murder of a young man, but, as the title implies, everyone knew
it was going to happen only no one seemed able to stop it. Prior
to a crisis there are often warning signs that disaster is about to
strike. Even a volcanic explosion can be predicted.
There is a phenomenon which can be described as ‘crisis slide’.
Gradually, imperceptibly but inevitably, there is a build-up of
events. Rain falls in ever-increasing volumes; the overflowing
river is joined by equally overflowing streams, and the pressure
increases. The force becomes progressively more irresistible
until, under overwhelming pressure, the dam breaks. The crisis
management process should, of course, have started as soon as
observers had noticed the unusually heavy rainfall. Human
error, however, creeps in and dams burst.
Steady slides down the slippery slope to an outright crisis can
also happen, not because of human error, but because of human
cussedness. If crisis management techniques are used coolly to
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