Person:

Giles, David

Communication with employees, customers, investors, constituents, and other stakeholders can contribute decisively to the successful navigation of a crisis. But how should leaders think about what they are trying to say – and how to say it? This policy brief lays out simple frameworks that can be used to formulate the messages that leaders can and should – indeed, must – convey to help their communities and organizations make their way forward as effectively as they reasonably can.

In the face of the rapidly evolving coronavirus crisis that demands many urgent decisions but provides few clear-cut cues and requires tradeoffs among many critically important values, how can leaders and their advisers make effective decisions about literally life-and-death matters? This policy brief contrasts the current “crisis” environment with the more familiar realm of “routine emergencies.” It argues that for crises, leaders need to adopt a more agile, highly adaptive, yet deliberate decision-making method that can move expeditiously to action, while retaining the capacity to iteratively re-examine tactics in light of decision impacts. This method can help the team take account of the multiple dimensions of the COVID-19 crisis and cope as well as possible with swiftly changing conditions.