Steven Fink (1)

This book, almost 35 years old, still distills how to manage a crisis better than any other book known to me. It covers basics like damage control and crisis communication. More importantly, by providing plentiful examples from American government and business, it covers how to identify, isolate, and then manage crisis-level events that threaten one’s professional or personal life.

In a prior life, Fink served as an advisor to a United States governor. That wide-open, real-world experience is evident in his writing. The author has evidently given deep thought to serious issues affecting American culture. He doesn’t just own part of a crisis or evasively seeks to escape a crisis with the highest profit margin. No, he seeks to manage every element in an about a crisis and to produce the highest amount of good from the “opportunity” of a crisis.

Like many, he cites the Johnson and Johnson/Tylenol crisis as the best lesson in project management in recent memory. In that crisis, the brand of Tylenol was at risk. Some culprit had laced a few pill-bottles with cyanide in Chicagoland stores, an action which killed several people and caused general terror. In response, Johnson and Johnson management did just about everything right, by Fink’s estimation, to cause the brand to recover quickly and even flourish. Even though public safety and the Tylenol brand was placed under unavoidable stress by an outside party, Johnson and Johnson’s Credo provided a framework to put public needs first (even above that of stockholders). The public responded in kind by gratefully returning Tylenol to its dominant market status soon after the crisis.

If you are going to read one book on crisis management, this is it, and at only 245 pages, it’s an easy read. It’s well-written and devoid of language that seeks to place blame on outside forces. In an era where the American president will not take any responsibility for his actions, Fink’s responsibility-driven approach is welcomed and refreshing. Of course, since the book was published in 1986, the examples could be updated for contemporary life: In light of computers and globalization, for instance, technological and international-business situations could be better addressed. Nonetheless, the concepts extirpated by Fink’s analysis ground this book as the seminal work in its field… still.… (meer)