WEBINAR: “I Am in Control”: Lessons in Crisis Management from Past Crises
When President Reagan was shot on March 30, 1981, Al Haig, then Secretary of State famously said: “ As of now, I am in control at the White House”.
The President was in the hospital, the Vice President was in the air and incommunicado, and the Secretary of State wanted to indicate that their nuclear arsenal was under control. Except he sort of had it wrong. The order of succession in the US goes to the Speaker of the House and the Speaker Pro Tempore of the Senate and THEN to the Secretary of State. On the other hand he was managing the crisis and trying to convey confidence and wave off any foreign leader who might have wanted to test the command and control structure of the United States. He was in control.
There have been many crises in Canadian history and many of them have benefitted from ex post reviews and post mortems. We have seen the Conscription crisis, the Oka standoff, Referenda crises, the 1998 Ice Storm, the Red River flood just before an election, Y2K, 9/11, SARS, H1N1 and many others.
How do you manage in the “fog of war”? Imperfect information is endemic and judgments made ex ante are almost always wrong ex post. How to deal with decision making in the presence of extreme uncertainty?
Nobody is ever totally in control. How do you exercise your authority when the wheels are falling off?
Interpersonal relations only matter when you need them. How do you build trust during a crisis? How important is it to build good, trusting, confidence inspiring interpersonal relations during times of calm so that they can be used when needed in times of crisis?
Calling on several of these we will look at lessons to be learned from past crises. Can you plan for a crisis? How do you mobilize your staff? How do you manage during a crisis? How important is situational dynamics? How do you manage a crisis and still plan for the long run future?
Current crisis management of COVID-19 has brought out the best and the worst in people. Several of our political leaders have risen to the occasion and have shown genuine talent at leadership. Some of our leaders have known when to get out of the way and defer to others. Some of our compatriots have chosen to spam us with nonsense pandemic hoax cures and treatments. Some of engaged in price gouging and exploitation of the vulnerable. Should prices go up during a crisis? Some would have us rely on the value of the price system to signal responses required. Others would have us suppress the price system to have government intervention supplant individual decision making. When is it correct to rely on prices and when should the market be managed?
All of these questions will be addressed in this webinar. A few of them will be answered. And all of them should be considered stimulation for your thinking as we learn for the future from this crisis.
This webinar with Mel Cappe is part of our Policy Challenges During a Pandemic Series.
Register here.
This webcast is open to the public. Priority during the Q&A section of this webcast will be given to Max Bell School MPP students. You can access the full series of briefs and webinars for the Policy Challenges During a Pandemic series here and sign up to receive email updates about this series here.
