Leaders who have successfully managed crises in governments and large organizations aren't innately better at it. Interviews with high-level leaders in a variety of industries found that people with strong crisis management skills have invested time and effort to develop maturity in seven key areas, dubbed the 7C's: contingency planning, cross-functional coordination, transparent communication, compassion, confrontation of hard truths, control, and continuity. Consider Southwest Airlines. When a winter storm hit in December 2022, the company suffered a meltdown. Seventeen thousand flights had to be canceled, 2 million passengers were left stranded, and the company lost an estimated $800 million. What lay at the heart of Southwest's troubles wasn't bad weather but an aging, neglected IT infrastructure that led to the collapse of its scheduling systems. Communication broke down, and front-line teams found themselves improvising in isolation. Contrast this with Microsoft. A major...
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