Signs of a Brewing Crisis

Abstract

Crises have the destabilizing power to shift incentives and invert power structures. Crisis is a label often applied to the conditions of an organization’s complex systems by practitioners and by managers to coerce prioritization. Infrequently, it is used to describe a situation nearest its definition: a crucial turning point of change, which requires adaptive resilience for procession. There are technical and organizational practices that are effective, or available, only during a real crisis. With a combination of existing research, lived experience, and real-world examples, this article outlines a set of five criteria useful for evaluating the presence or imminence of a crisis: fundamental surprise, failure of sensemaking, disruption of core processes, high visibility, and a rigid deadline. Ability to identify and evaluate these circumstances can allow operators and engineers to anticipate opportunities when adaptive resilience will be required—when a different set of technical features and organizational behaviors will be most successful in the management and operations of complex systems.