KATRINA REPORT - AN ABJECT FAILURE OF LEADERSHIP

When a crisis strikes - who do you want leading you?

The person you select to lead your Business Continuity Team should be a person who has dealt with crisis before, repeatedly in their life. Why?

Because once you dealt with them enough, you realize you want to avoid them at all costs, and what the intelligent leader does is start the next day making sure this problem and other similar ones will not bring such havoc and destruction to their lives and businesses.

If you think the only way to deal with a crisis is to respond to it after it happens, you will fail every time - guaranteed.

You must be proactive, have a plan, be prepared to execute the plan, and then deal with what happens when the plan goes off badly with further intelligent contingencies.

PROACTIVE VS REACTIVE

I find it interesting that the person in charge of Homeland Security has a background as a prosecutor and a judge. While these are honorable professions, I am hard pressed to find a background that is so far from what is needed in crisis planning and response. A prosecutor and a judge both have a habitual professional style of acting after the fact, that is what their job is. They wait for the crime the charges and all the facts to be brought to them before they make any judgement to act. Even then they act only on the facts, well after the fact if you will.

The head of homeland security even said, he waited after he got the first warning that the levee's had broken (even though that was over 12 hours after it had occurred), and he still did not act, he said he knows that often times the first reports are not correct in emergencies, so he did not act. WELL DUH!

In a crisis you have to act and act fast without 100% knowledge of all the facts. Ask any business leader.....it is rare they are 100% sure when they are making business decisions in the comfort of the boardroom, don't expect to have all the answers and info when disaster strikes, you have to act. The sooner and the more intelligent your response the greater your chance for success, and your opportunity to avoid disaster.

You need to have a proactive mindset to manage risks and deal with the response.