Crisis Management for Leaders Coping with COVID-19

Abstract

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.