The Prepared Leader
Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before
Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before
The next crisis might be here now, or it might be around the corner. In The Prepared Leader: Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before, two history-making experts in crisis leadership--James, dean of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Wooten, president of Simmons University--forcefully argue that the time to prepare is always. In no other time in recent history have leaders in every industry and on every continent grappled with so many changes that have independently and simultaneously undermined their ability to lead. The Prepared Leader encapsulates more than two decades of the authors' research to convey how it has positioned them to navigate through the distinct challenges of today and tomorrow. Their insights have implications for every leader in every industry and every worker at every level. In their fast-reading and actionable book, James and Wooten provide tools and frameworks for addressing and learning from crises, and they provide insight into what you need to know to become a Prepared Leader, including: The five phases of crisis management and the skills you need for each phase. They examine how the National Basketball Association and its commissioner, Adam Silver, responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Making the right decisions under pressure and how to avoid common mistakes. They reveal how Burger King CEO Jose Cil began planning for the aftermath of a crisis right in the middle of one. Building a crisis leadership team and how to lead one that you've inherited. They detail how Wonya Lucas, CEO and President of the Crown Media Family Networks, aligned and mobilized an executive team during a time of crisis. James and Wooten argue that--in addition to people, profit, and the planet--prepared leadership should be the fourth "P" in a company's bottom line. They bring decades of world-renowned research on crisis leadership, diversity and inclusion, management strategy, and positive leadership to the table to help leaders better prepare themselves to lead through crises--and for whatever lies around the corner.
Reviews with the most likes.
The Prepared Leader: Emergency from Any Crisis More Resilient than Before is easily one of the best crisis leadership books I've read in a while. It will be amongst a small group of texts to which I frequently refer in my own teaching on disaster/emergency management and crisis leadership.
James and Wooten do a great job of making this work accessible. That's a strength of their scholarly writing, and this book takes that up a notch. The text is written such that practitioners can keep it on file as a reference, checking in with it again and again as they encounter new situations and seek to develop their crisis leadership capability. That's a real strength of this title.
I found myself highlighting several “sound bytes” across my social media channels from the text. I appreciate pithy, memorable quotes, and there were several here dealing with framing, the importance of learning, technology as a tool, etc.
The text approaches crises from the organizational perspective, though the lessons don't exclude and are certainly applicable to community-level crisis management. In fact, in the seemingly age-old debate over the differences between crises and disasters, I felt the authors did an admirable job of providing language that works in both contexts. Put simply, a disaster is a specific type of crisis.
In truth, I found the text to be just a bid heavy on COVID-19, but you know what? How can you blame crisis leadership scholars and authors for writing about COVID-19? In the mid-2000s, the writings grappled with Hurricane Katrina, and the pandemic will feature at least as much as that (I would imagine). (Disclosure: I have published papers on COVID-19.) So even though my brain cries a little every time I read “covid,” I recognize it for the crisis leadership laboratory that has been, is, and will be. Kudos to James and Wooten for pulling out the lessons from the pandemic and making them relevant to “the crisis” more generally.
It's obvious that my recommendation is to read the book.
But don't just read it. Buy it. Highlight in it. Mark it up. Put sticky note flags in it. Use it as part of a comprehensive effort to be a better crisis leader.
