category archive: Crisis Management

April 24, 2013

Post-Boston: A More Effective Battle of Ideas (Part II)

By . Filed Under: Crisis Management, Intercultural Communication, International Politics, News and Journalism, Political Analysis, Politics and Policy, Strategic Leadership, War and Violent Conflict.

Boston MarathonReprinted from The Globalist, April 24, 2013

Instead of getting sucked into heat-of-the-moment reactions to Boston, let’s base our responses on a more stable paradigm of contemporary global terrorism. To fight a battle of ideas successfully, one must first show what one is going up against. Amy Zalman makes the case that there are three distinct trends in terrorism — Hybrid, Multi-motivational and Narrative Terrorism.

This paradigm is evolving, but several trends are coming into view and are likely to deepen in the future:

  • Hybrid terrorism:

In traditional categorization of terrorists, there are “lone wolves” who are unconnected to any organized group and those who are members of organizations.

Today, a hybrid type appears to be evolving: someone who works without full organizational support or direction, but who is not working in total isolation from others. Continue reading

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Post-Boston: Keep Calm and Think Clearly (Part 1)

By . Filed Under: Crisis Management, Decision making, Intercultural Communication, International Politics, National Security, Political Analysis, Politics and Policy, War and Violent Conflict.
Boston Marathon

Reprinted from The Globalist, April 23, 2013

The Boston Marathon bombings provide an opportunity for the United States to consider how to combat extremist ideas more effectively than it did a decade ago. But this is not the time to let fear and uncertainty drive us into misguided and — as importantly — ineffective forms of countering violent extremism.

Warning: Prominent policy makers are already making demands to disinter the discredited concepts of the Global War on Terror. Options presented range from designating the bombers enemy combatants to calling for sweeping surveillance of majority Muslim communities.

The motivations that led Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev to set off lethal bombs at the Boston Marathon last week may not yet be clear. But the characteristics of that event already tell us a substantial amount about the direction of 21st century terrorism — and how we might combat it with increasing effectiveness. Continue reading

Posted in: Crisis Management, Decision making, Intercultural Communication, International Politics, National Security, Political Analysis, Politics and Policy, War and Violent Conflict Tags: , , , , , , , ,
January 23, 2013

Resilience Narratives Key to Resilient Systems

By . Filed Under: Conferences, Crisis Management, Decision making, Intercultural Communication, International Politics, Politics and Policy, Strategic Communication, Strategic Leadership.

The 2013 World Economic Forum Conference that began today in Davos is dedicated this year to resilient dynamism. As Arianna Huffington noted earlier in the day, the key concept that gives rise to the need for resilience is our global interconnectedness. Quoting Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin, she cites five attributes that resilient systems characteristically share:

  • Spare capacity
  • Flexibility — the ability to change, evolve, and adapt in the face of disaster.
  • Limited or “safe” failure, which prevents failures from rippling across systems.
  • Rapid rebound — the capacity to reestablish function and avoid long-term disruptions.
  • Constant learning, with robust feedback loops.

Huffington adds a sixth, “the will to want to be resilient.”

To that list, I feel we must add a seventh requirement for the present and future, Resilience Narratives: stories that will help disparate and potentially adversarial players see themselves as active participants in collaborative futures. Continue reading

Posted in: Conferences, Crisis Management, Decision making, Intercultural Communication, International Politics, Politics and Policy, Strategic Communication, Strategic Leadership Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
August 20, 2012

Narrative Believability Trumps Probability in Decision Making

By . Filed Under: Crisis Management, Decision making, Narrative and Cognition, Narrative Research.

We may be better at telling the story behind a bet than the probable roll of the dice

We are not statisticians by nature, but storytellers. Why don’t we make better use of that insight in our effort to predict and understand complex problems?

British economist John Kay presented the following problem in a recent Financial Times column When Storytelling Leads to Unhappy Endings:

Linda is single, outspoken and deeply engaged with social issues. Which of the following is more likely? That Linda is a bank manager or that Linda is a bank manager who is an active feminist?

If you chose the second answer you are in good company. Most of us do. Sadly, we’re wrong. Kay explains:

Many people say that the second option is more likely. Yet, the standard response goes, this cannot be. The rules of probability tell us the probability that both A and B are true cannot exceed the probability that either A or B is true. It is less likely that someone is a female Jamaican Olympic gold medalist than that a person is female, or that a person is Jamaican, or that a person is a gold medalist. Yet even people trained in probability make a mistake with the Linda problem. Or is it a mistake? Little introspection is required to understand what is going on. Respondents do not interpret the question as one about probability. They think it is a question about believability.

Believability, as Kay explains further, is narrative’s emblem. In the face of the messy, multi-faceted and open-ended situations that confront us, we humans tend to produce “simplifying narratives” that help make sense of events in a way we find believable, based on our personal, cultural and historical predispositions. Continue reading

Posted in: Crisis Management, Decision making, Narrative and Cognition, Narrative Research Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
July 21, 2012

How Power Works in the 21st Century

By . Filed Under: Crisis Management, Decision making, International Politics, National Security, Political Analysis, Politics and Policy, Public Diplomacy, Strategic Leadership, War and Violent Conflict.

We live in stories. That is, we are always in the process of trying to make sense of what is happening to us and around us. That process drives us – to vote, to go into the street and fight for a nation, to make changes in how we consume, or to do none of the above.

Political leadership that understands that stories, perceptions, values, ideas, culture are present wherever there is human activity have a powerful tool for understanding what drives both change and apathy.

There is no name more firmly associated with linking political power and values and ideas than that of Joseph Nye. He coined the term soft power, which is power that stems from the intangible sources such as “institutions, ideas, values, culture …” as he explains in The Future of Power.

Earlier this week, The Globalist published my article, How Power Really Works in the 21st Century: Beyond Soft, Hard and Smart. In it, I explain how, in a networked, information driven age, the power of symbols and ideas is always an important part of the strategic landscape. Nye’s insight that culture, ideas, perceptions, stories has been deeply assimilated into strategic thinking—a great tribute to him. But the insight has outgrown the categories that once described them. Continue reading

Posted in: Crisis Management, Decision making, International Politics, National Security, Political Analysis, Politics and Policy, Public Diplomacy, Strategic Leadership, War and Violent Conflict Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
April 23, 2012

Measuring National Power

By . Filed Under: Crisis Management, Decision making, International Politics, Marketing & Branding, National Security, Politics and Policy, Public Diplomacy, Public Relations.

Has the Eurozone crisis led to a loss of European Union power?

Washington D.C. was even more full of diplomatic cars and dark suited men than usual this weekend, as the the World Bank and International Monetary Fund held their annual spring meetings. Historically dedicated to shoring up ‘developing’ regions, this year’s focus was on the Eurozone crisis, that ongoing ripple of effects from the near financial collapse of several EU countries.

Some policy makers think that the EU’s loss of economic power will reduce its power on other issues, as the New York Times has reported: Continue reading

Posted in: Crisis Management, Decision making, International Politics, Marketing & Branding, National Security, Politics and Policy, Public Diplomacy, Public Relations Tags: , , , , , ,
November 27, 2011

High Powered Collaboration, a New Narrative for Leaders: an Interview with Kare Anderson

By . Filed Under: Crisis Management, Decision making, Intercultural Communication, Narrative and Cognition, Public Relations, Strategic Leadership.

Kare Anderson Coaches Leaders to Get from "Me to We"

Kare Anderson has been a leader in communication in virtually every medium there is for over 30 years. She is an Emmy-winning former Wall Street Journal and NBC reporter, the author of a number of books about conflict resolution and collaboration in business, and publishes the online newsletters Moving from Me to We and Say it Better.

Kare’s most powerful communications though, come through in her coaching. She has led issue teams for the Obama 2008 campaign, advised CEOs, professional athletes, and cause advocates. All seek to have their story heard in highly competitive environments.

When we met recently, I immediately knew I’d like to interview Kare about how she uses narrative in her practice. In our few minutes on the phone last week, she offered concise wisdom and specific strategies for using collaborative techniques to achieve preferred outcomes—no small feat in a complex, noisy world.

AZ: How does storytelling and narrative play a role in your coaching?

KA: For me one of the most difficult things is that people instinctively talk about themselves. When they’re standing on the stage talking to their employees, they talk about their company; they don’t talk about what’s in it for the employees. Many times when people are trying to tell their story they miss the biggest part, which is to construct it so it’s a purposeful narrative-so that the listener can see a role for themselves, want to jump in, retell it and play a role in it. When I think about storytelling, it is to understand what a person most stands for, what they want to get across and how they can authentically discuss it with someone elsewhere that person wants to jump in. The instinct is for people to ask a question and revert it back to themselves. Even when they want something from someone else. Continue reading

Posted in: Crisis Management, Decision making, Intercultural Communication, Narrative and Cognition, Public Relations, Strategic Leadership Tags: , , , , , ,
October 23, 2011

Overconfident Narratives Skew Decision Making

By . Filed Under: Crisis Management, Decision making, Narrative and Cognition, Narrative Research, Strategic Leadership, Uncategorized.

In his new book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Princeton professor and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman describes how, as a psychologist serving in the Israeli army, he selected candidates for officer training based on their success in a series of leadership tests. Despite his own and his colleagues confidence in their choices, “the evidence was overwhelming”: they were no good at predicting success at all. Kahneman explains:

You may be surprised by our failure: it is natural to expect the same leadership ability to manifest itself in various situations. But the exaggerated expectation of consistency is a common error. We are prone to think that the world is more regular and predictable than it really is, because our memory automatically and continuously maintains a story about what is going on, and because the rules of memory tend to make that story as coherent as possible and to suppress alternatives. Fast thinking is not prone to doubt. Continue reading

Posted in: Crisis Management, Decision making, Narrative and Cognition, Narrative Research, Strategic Leadership, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,
August 30, 2011

Hurricane Irene News Coverage Pummels Viewers with Worst-Case Scenarios

By . Filed Under: Crisis Management, Decision making, News and Journalism, Public Relations.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:8.28.11IreneSunsetByLuigiNovi13.jpg

Union City, New Jersey, following Hurricane Irene's passage. Photographed by Luigi Novi under Creative Commons License

Turbocharged Reporting Underwhelmed Us

As we now know, the adrenalized coverage of Tropical Storm/Hurricane Irene as it traversed the U.S. East Coast overstated the risk of worst-case scenarios in a number of areas, like lower Manhattan and made them seem as if they were certain outcomes. In fact, hurricane modeling is not a perfectly predictive science. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, is explicit about how its annual hurricane outlooks are probabilistic, which means that potential events simply have some likelihood of occurring (and, in fact, there were areas such as Vermont where the potential for damage was under-forecasted)

I know I wasn’t alone in sensing that much of the media coverage was over the top. My relatives and friends, especially those of us in areas where the worst-case scenarios being put forth didn’t live up to the reality ended up feeling dismissive and irritated and, if we were frightened, slightly humiliated that we had been so easily spooked. I’m sure we’ll all wonder next time whether we should follow authorities’ most stringent instructions about emergency preparation.

When events don’t arrive in the dramatically bad proportions we’ve been expecting, we as likely to tune out authorities or forget entirely that the drama at hand was destructive weather, like the Washington DC woman who reported feeling that the milder than expected storm “”was a bit of a let down.”

The Challenge Communicating Uncertainty

On the other hand, there were also areas in which the degree of potential damage was under-forecast, as in Vermont. Continue reading

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April 13, 2011

SIETAR Conference on Intercultural Communication Begins Today in Denver

By . Filed Under: Conferences, Crisis Management, Intercultural Communication.

The Eleventh Annual Society for Intercultural Education Training and Research (SIETAR) Conference begins today in Denver. This year’s conference is dedicated to the topic of “Risk and Resilience in an Intercultural World.” In crisis, or other adverse circumstances, reaching across cultural borders can appear to be unduly risky, and it is resilience—the ability to recover from adversity—that must be cultivated if we are to remain engaged with others

SIETAR is a membership organization with satellite groups throughout the United States and abroad. Founded in 1974, the organization was created:

To provide a forum for exchanging ideas about training, theory, and research, and to learn from each other as well as to provide a place where interculturalists could strengthen their bonds with each other. They envisioned an exchange between people in different disciplines and professional activity that would strengthen the theoretical development and practice of intercultural communication.

Keynote speakers include Dr. Todd Conklin, Dr. William Cross and Dr. Pari Namazie. Conklin is a specialist in human error and safety at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the other of an upbeat book on Simple Revolutionary Acts to make ourselves more engaged, happier workers. Cross heads the Social-Personality Psychology subprogram at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Cross is well known for his work on African-American identity, and particularly for his 1991 book Shades of Black: Diversity in African American Identity Namazie works in the field of international human relations management and intercultural management. She is the managing director Atieh International, a strategy, HR and training company focusing on developing business opportunities between the Middle East and Europe.

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