Leading through Crisis and ChangePart I: Leading through Crisis and Change

Introduction

Today, organizational crises are considered an inevitable part of the life of any
organization (Lussier & Achua, 2016). Whether internally induced or externally forced,
managers must manage crises well, lest they break, or at least derail, the organization. That
said, a crisis that occurs in the middle of an organizational change effort is a different matter
altogether. While all significant crises demand managements’ immediate attention and
actions, crises that affect change initiatives have a greater setback effect and require even
more urgent interventions. Otherwise, the crises could derail or kill ongoing change efforts
(Kotter, Chan Kim, & Mauborgne, 2011). In this first part of this essay, I elaborate on a
specific instance of a crisis that occurred in the course of implementing change in a federal
organization I work for: the Department of Emergency Services (DES), located in Fort Hood,
TX. The crisis entailed the departure of many employees, all at once, at a time when we were
implementing measures to improve employee retention.

The Performance of the Organization Prior to the Crisis
Specifically, within DES, I work in a unit called Security Guard Force (SGF). This is
the unit charged with protecting the expansive federal property that DES occupies. From the
establishment of the DES facility at Fort Hood in 2003 until 2012, the functions now
performed by SGF had been contracted to a private security company. In 2013, the decision
was made to bring those functions in-house, hence the establishment of SGF. Also, to utilize
military resources the best way possible, the decision was made to staff SGF with civilians
rather than serving military officers. The staff of the unit is mostly drawn from retirees and
veterans. Unfortunately, except within its leadership ranks, SGF has suffered from high staff

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turnover since its inception. The low staff retention is mainly attributable to poor working
conditions, including a lack of prospects for job advancement and promotion.

The Crisis

As pointed out above, the crisis entailed the departure of many employees, all at once,
at a time when we were implementing measures to improve employee retention. The crisis
was an accident, not a strategically planned change. If anything, the crisis ran counter to the
measures we had just started implementing, with the aim of increasing job satisfaction and
improving employee retention among the unit’s staff. These measures included an annual
salary increment and employment benefits like medical insurance and annual paid leaves. We
were also contemplating hiring more security guards so that staff could work shorter shifts.

How the Crisis Occurred

The departure of several of our staff, all at more or less the same time, was triggered
by the launch of a five-year-long mega public infrastructure project in Fort Hood. As
indicated in the preceding sections, the main reason for the unit’s high employee turnover was
poor working conditions, including lower-than-average salaries and few opportunities for
promotion. Thus, when the contractor for the public infrastructure project came knocking in
the Fort Hood area with better offers, most of our able-bodied staff opted to leave. Our
situation was worsened by the shortage of construction workers that was being experienced
across the country.

How the Organization Found Out about the Crisis

The different divisions and units within DES do not have the mandate to hire and
dismiss their staff. Rather, that function is centralized and performed by the Office of Human
Resources (OHR) on behalf of user divisions and units. For this reason, departing employees
are required to submit their resignation letters to OHR at least a month before their intended

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date of departure. Having received the letters, OHR then officially notifies, in writing, the
concerned division or unit of an employee’s desire to leave. Thus, we learned of the crisis
mostly from OHR. While a few leaving staff also informed their supervisors verbally, most
did not, perhaps an indication of their dissatisfaction with their jobs.
How Different Factions Reacted to the Crisis

In what perhaps best illustrates the high level of power distance that characterizes
DES’ organizational culture, most people in senior leadership ranks were shocked by the
crisis. Even though they understood that, overall, the unit’s staff were dissatisfied with their
jobs, they did not appreciate the extent of the problem. On the contrary, security guards’
supervisors, who tend to be more in touch with subordinates, were less surprised by the
event; they seemed to have expected it somehow. According to the GLOBE Project’s
dimensions of organizational culture, a high level of power distance implies that senior
management is much removed from the happenings among subordinate staff (Lussier &
Achua, 2016).

How Management Communicated During the Crisis

Regardless of their reactions, one thing was clear to the managers of both OHR and
SGF: they had to move fast and calm the fears and boost the morale of the remaining staff.
They also understood that impersonal, top-down communications like emails and memos
were not going to do the job. Rather, what was needed was personal, heartfelt, and one-to-one
communications that would speak to staff’s anxieties (Kotter & Cohen, 2012). Consequently,
it was agreed that since SGF supervisors were closer and more in touch with the security
guards, most of the re-assuring communications should be left to them. Meanwhile, OHR and
SGF managers would focus on fast-tracking the implementation of the proposed incentives to
make guards’ jobs more fulfilling.

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How the Organization Resumed Normalcy

To enable normalcy to return and to address the problem of acute staff shortage
occasioned by the crisis, DES contracted a private security company for three months.
Meanwhile, fortunately for DES, the public infrastructure did not take off as planned; there
was a three-month delay, a delay that ultimately worked in favor of the organization. Even
though the construction company offered to pay its new hires for the three months so as not
to lose them, in the end, some staff who had tendered their resignations changed their minds
and stayed with DES. It turned out that these were people who were otherwise proud of their
jobs; all they needed were some incentives here and there.

How I Would Have Responded to the Crisis

As a leader, I would have responded to the crisis in many of the ways DES managers
did. My most immediate priorities would have been to put the remaining staff at ease and
restore normalcy, say by engaging the services of a private security company on a short-term
contract. Next, I would have expedited the implementation of the planned incentives to make
the remaining staff feel that they had made the right decisions to stay. However, going
forward, I would have instituted drastic changes to make DES a great place to work, not just
for senior management but also for the staff of all cadres. I believe that would have been the
best way to avert a similar crisis in the future.

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Part II: Scholarly Analysis

Bundy, J., Pfarrer, M., Short, C., & Coombs, T. (2017). Crises and Crisis Management:
Integration, Interpretation, and Research Development. Journal of Management,
43(6), 1661-1692.
Bundy, Pfarrer, Short, and Coombs are American scholars. Bundy is affiliated with
Arizona State University, Pfarrer and Short to the University of Georgia, and Coombs to
Texas A & M University. For a long time, organizational scholars have been interested in
organizational crises and how organizations manage them. Whether focused on the factors
that bring about crises, managing a crisis, or outcomes of a crisis, research has revealed many
significant findings. Unfortunately, research and research findings in this area remain
fragmented, making it difficult for scholars to track the literature’s major conclusions,
identify unresolved problems, and propose ways forward. The authors attempt to address
these issues by proposing an integrative framework of organizational crises and crisis
management. The framework draws from research in corporate communications, public
relations, organizational behavior, organizational theory, and strategy. They identify two
over-arching perspectives in the literature: one focuses on the internal dynamics of crises and
the other on the management of external stakeholders. The authors’ proposed framework is
integrative in the sense that it takes into account both internal and external perspectives
across the crisis process: from pre-crisis prevention, crisis management, and post-crisis
outcomes. The main takeaway from the article is that to make better sense of crisis
management; one should examine the subject from a broader perspective that takes into
consideration both internal and external perspectives and think about the entire crisis process.

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Horvathova, P., & Mikusova, M. (2019). Prepared for a crisis? Basic elements of crisis
management in an organisation. Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja,
32(1), 1844-1868.
Mikusova and Horvathova are scholars based in the Department of Management,
Economics Faculty, the Technical University of Ostrava in the Czech Republic. In this
article, the authors report the findings of their survey in which they investigated the crisis
management practices of small businesses in the Czech Republic. The survey respondents
were the owners and managers of small Czech businesses. A business was considered small if
it had fewer than 25 employees and annual revenue not exceeding 400,000 Euros. While the
questionnaire had twenty questions, the results presented in the article are in response to just
one question: why do small businesses not prepare for crises. Small business owners and
managers reported that while they would like to prepare for a crisis, they do not, mainly
because they do not know-how. Other reasons given were: crisis prevention is too expensive;
crisis prevention does not keep crises from happening anyway, and crisis prevention does not
make sense because one cannot tell which crisis will develop. This article’s most important
contribution is that it demonstrates that crises happen to small and large organizations alike
and that small organization too are aware of the fact and would like to do something about it,
except that their means are limited.
Imad, A., Elbuzidi, K., & Chan, T.-J. (2021). Crisis Management and Communication
Approach: A Case of Boeing 737 MAX. Journal of Arts & Social Sciences, 4(2), 7-
14.
Imad, Elbuzidi, and Chan are all scholars based at SEGi University’s Faculty of
Business, Social Sciences, and Hospitality in Malaysia. In this article, the authors examine
the role of communication in crisis management, using Boeing 737 Max as a case study. The

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Boeing 737 Max is a commercial aircraft manufactured and sold by the Boeing Company.
Founded in Seattle in July 1916 by William Edward Boeing, the company is a pioneering
brand in the aviation industry. However, in 2018 and 2019, the company suffered serious
damage to its reputation following two fatal accidents involving the Boeing 737 Max. The
two crashes happened within five months and killed all three hundred and forty-six people on
board. Based on how the company managed the crisis in terms of communicating with its
stakeholders, three main lessons can be drawn from the case study. First, it is important for
companies to close communication gaps among their employees so that all employees
authorized to do so communicate the same information to external stakeholders. Second,
transparency is a must in business dealings. The Boeing Company acted unethically by
withholding from stakeholders critical information on the safety of the Boeing 737 Max.
Third, large companies like Boeing should have well-trained teams specializing in crisis
communications.
Kuzmanova, M., & Ivanov, I. (2019). Relationship between change management and
crisis management: Survey evidence. International Conference KNOWLEDGE-
BASED ORGANIZATION (pp. 255-260). Sciendo.
Mariana Kuzmanova and Ivaylo Ivanov are Bulgarian scholars based at the University
of National and World Economy and the University of Forestry, respectively. In this article,
the authors present the results of an empirical study they conducted on the extent to which
Bulgarian ICT companies link solutions in the fields of change management and crisis
management. The study involved one hundred and eight respondents, including ICT experts,
heads of departments and team managers, and senior managers. However, before reporting
their methods and findings, the authors first summarize the literature on change management
and crisis management. Of note are the differences and similarities between change
management and crisis management. While organizational change can either be planned or

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reactive, organizational crises are almost always reactive because, in most cases, they are
triggered by external forces that are beyond the control of an organization. One of the things
the two have in common is that they both demand speedy managerial interventions. If
management fails to respond to a crisis fast enough, the damage could be irreparable. On the
other hand, if the change is implemented slowly, the change effort risks losing its momentum
and failing. This article is particularly important because it is one of the few scholarly works
that explore the relationship between change management and crisis management. Indeed, an
online search returns very few such scholarly works. This, despite the real possibility of
crises, both internal and external, disrupt change efforts.
Sapriel, C. (2003). Effective crisis management: Tools and best practice for the new
millenium. Journal of Communication Management, 7(4), 1-8.
Caroline Sapriel is the founder and Managing Director of CS&A, a specialist crisis
management and risk consulting company with offices in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Specifically, CS&A specializes in controversial and high-risk industries like construction,
food, tobacco, airline, shipping, nuclear, chemical and gas, and oil, where it works with the
senior management teams of multinational corporations to evaluate risks, develop scenarios,
formulate response mechanisms, train staff and executives, and carry out multi-site
simulation exercises. The article describes the new approach to crisis management. In the
new approach, crisis management forms an important part of business contingency planning,
with the crisis management plan being a component of the business contingency plan (the
other two-component plans being business continuity and recovery plans). Also, in the new
approach, crisis management is no longer the sole responsibility of the corporate
communications department. Rather, to effectively address the various risks and complex
issues that today’s organizations face, crisis management must be backed by top management
and jointly driven and implemented by all the main business functions. Finally, the resulting

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crisis management plan needs a corporate custodian who will ensure that the plan is current
and implemented across the organisation. This article is unique from the rest because it
presents the perspective of a crisis management practitioner rather than a scholar.

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References

Bundy, J., Pfarrer, M., Short, C., & Coombs, T. (2017). Crises and Crisis Management:
Integration, Interpretation, and Research Development. Journal of Management,
43(6), 1661-1692.
Horvathova, P., & Mikusova, M. (2019). Prepared for a crisis? Basic elements of crisis
management in an organisation. Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 32(1),
1844-1868.
Imad, A., Elbuzidi, K., & Chan, T.-J. (2021). Crisis Management and Communication
Approach: A Case of Boeing 737 MAX. Journal of Arts & Social Sciences, 4(2), 7-
14.
Kotter, J. P., & Cohen, D. S. (2012). The heart of change: Real-life stories of how people
change their organizations. Boston: Harvard Business Press.
Kotter, J. P., Chan Kim, W., & Mauborgne, R. A. (2011). HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Change.
Boston: Harvard Business Press.
Kuzmanova, M., & Ivanov, I. (2019). Relationship between change management and crisis
management: Survey evidence. International Conference KNOWLEDGE-BASED
ORGANIZATION (pp. 255-260). Sciendo.
Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2016). Leadership: Theory, Application & Skill Development.
Boston: CENGAGE Learning.
Sapriel, C. (2003). Effective crisis management: Tools and best practice for the new
millenium. Journal of Communication Management, 7(4), 1-8.