On the morning of May 18, 2012, at precisely 11:05, Nasdaq planned to execute the first trade in in Facebook’s hotly anticipated initial public offering. The opening trade was an auction of sorts — buyers and sellers entered orders, and Nasdaq calculated a price that would cause as many shares as possible to change hands. As the start of trading approached, hundreds of thousands of orders poured in. But when 11:05 arrived, nothing happened.
How to Prepare for a Crisis You Couldn’t Possibly Predict
Resist the urge to leap into action.
March 16, 2018
Summary.
Sooner or later, every team faces an unexpected crisis: technology breaks, a competitor makes a disruptive move, a promising project fails, a key employee quits, consumers have a negative reaction to a new product — the list goes on. Some teams are good at handling the unexpected, but most aren’t. Under stress and time pressure, it’s difficult to stay calm, diagnose a problem, and come up with solutions. Three ways companies and workers can prepare include learning to stop (even when your instinct is to keep going along a path that isn’t working); taking the time to cycle through doing, monitoring, and diagnosing the problem; and knowing a little about everyone else’s jobs.
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Crisis Management Course
Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning’s online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Crisis Management. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.
Learn how to manage uncertainty, dispel rumors, and help your team recover.