Coping with a crisis century: while it is impossible to prevent all crises, organizations that are prepared in advance recover substantially faster and at much less cost to themselves and others than those that aren't.

• Author: Mitroff, Ian I.
• Position: American Thought

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE of crisis management, the first few years of the 21st century have been extraordinary. As a society, we went from the Ford/Firestone fire debacles (May to September, 2000) to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. These were followed in close succession by unsavory revelations that Catholic priests had committed serious acts of child abuse and, furthermore, that these acts were repeatedly covered up by the Church: massive fraud by the top executives of Enron and Arthur Andersen: and allegations that the CIA and FBI failed to do their basic jobs in compiling terrorist information that, if it had been collected and gotten to the right persons at the right time, 9/11 conceivably might have been prevented altogether. Moreover, serious breakdowns in communications occurred inside the CIA and FBI so that an accurate portrait of terrorist intentions could not be formed within their respective agencies, let alone an integrated portrait that could have been formed by sharing information between them.

When it surfaced that the top executives of Adelphia, WorldCom, and Tyco had engaged in criminal and fraudulent behaviors, added to the previous crises, the stock market plummeted. Furthermore, corporate heroes and major cultural icons such as Martha Stewart and General Electric's Jack Welch had their reputations seriously tarnished as the result of "corporate improprieties." While none of these events necessarily "caused" the others--with the possible exception of the relationships between the loss of confidence in the auditing and stock analyst professions, the criminal behavior of a few highly visible CEOs, and precipitous drops in the stock market--they led nonetheless to major drops in consumer confidence and a general lowering of trust in all of our major institutions, as evidenced by the wealth of stories in the major news and business publications.

The question "In which individual, organization, or institution, public or private, can one really trust?" is no longer moot. If the major business and popular press are to be believed, more and more Americans are asking this very question. The general feeling is one of serious and massive betrayal by prominent individuals, major organizations, and institutions.

The fact that the previous crises are unrelated causally does not diminish the general feeling that we are suffering from a psychological overload--in effect, a massive trauma to the nation's psyche. Indeed, overwhelming feelings of vulnerability are, in fact, prominent among the typical outcomes associated with every major crisis. These feelings are magnified and compounded when catastrophes are experienced in quick succession.

The...