Crisis Management: Framework and Principles with Applications to CoVid-19

Abstract

This article tries to sum up lessons all facing any crisis should be aware of. We use the CoVid-19 crisis to illustrate these lessons and put them in a context that concerns us all today. What is particularly painful in the crisis – a fact that motivated the writing of this article - is to see that these principles are regularly ignored. Crisis is not a time for learning or reinventing what should already be known. Crisis management is a time for experienced hands, endowed with healthy doses of both science [or “facts” instead of “science” to make it more generic sounding] and intuition. and that not learning from the past or the present can be very costly. These lessons are organized in a general framework for crisis management that consists of 5 phases to be implemented in a virtuous cycle. Other points made by the framework is that framing and reframing the crisis is key, that the way one gets into a crisis is typically not the way one gets out, and that the how in crisis management is as important as the what.