Crisis Learning -- Lessons from Sisyphus and Others.

Introduction

In Ancient Greece there was a King of Corinth, Sisyphus, who was renowned as the cleverest human who had ever lived. He was so clever that he even once outwitted Zeus himself--who in retaliation then meted out a punishment that would last an eternity. Sisyphus' punishment was banishment to Hades, where he was given a task that kept him too busy to do much else. He was sentenced to push a great stone up a steep hill. He would push with head and shoulders, panting and sweating and covered with dust. The massive stone would reach the top of the hill only to fall back down again and again.

The myth of Sisyphus is an allegory for the human condition. It describes a situation in which the hero does not make progress, but is instead forever a part of the same monotonous sweat and toil [1]. In this special issue, this allegory is applied as a means to explore the circumstances of organizations encountering crisis and its aftermath. Did Sisyphus learn anything from his perpetual state of crisis? Are we in organizations learning anything from our crises?

Now Sisyphus, after all only human, had made many mistakes. A partial list includes:

1. He didn't recognize his recurring crisis as a time of opportunity.

2. He didn't expect to learn from this crisis.

3. He was not aware of the quality (or lack thereof) of his crisis thinking.

4. He had a terrible sense of timing.

5. He had no plan.

So too, we in organizations have made many crisis mistakes [3]. In fact, we have made the same mistakes as the above-noted. For example, Union Carbide took numerous legal actions to aggressively deny its liability following the crisis at Bhopal. The public viewed its delay tactics as evidence of Union Carbide's lack of concern for the victims. It is not surprising, then, that Union Carbide appeared to have learned very little from its crisis [9]. Following the Hubble Fiasco, a NASA insider wondered if the organization had learned anything at all from that event [2]. All through the years after the Dalkon Shield was found to be dangerous to the lives of its users, Robins Pharmaceuticals remained in a "defend-and-attack" mode. In fact, for years it was too busy disparaging and discrediting the victims of its defective product to consider crisis lessons from the event [4]. After the Herald of Free Press ferryboat wreck of 1987, managers of that company were convinced that the ferry sank because one of the membe rs was sleeping in the cabin and left the loading doors open. This single-cause explanation failed to look at other, deeper root causes that could have helped the company learn long-term lessons and prevent future incidents in the industry. In short, the quality of the learning is suspect [7]. These are just a few of many such examples of failed or deficient learning from crises.

The task of learning from crises is complex, seemingly impossible -- just as Sisyphus' task appeared impossible. This special issue of the Review of Business is dedicated to stimulating managers and crisis researchers to think again about what they have tended to expect to learn from crises, what they have actually learned from crises, and what they should learn from crises. To this end, we issued an "International Call for Papers," which resulted in six excellent papers by crisis researchers from the U.S., Canada, France, Belgium and England. These authors, all active researchers in the field, addressed the question: "How can organizations do a better job of learning from crises?"

The papers are organized into three broad topics. The first two papers call us to a higher caliber of thinking about crisis; a level of thinking that will allow us to find hidden learning opportunities and act on them. The second set of papers addresses the numerous obstacles that block opportunity to learn from crises. Finally, the third set of papers addresses the need to build learning mechanisms into crisis management plans themselves.

Seek a Higher Caliber of Crisis Thinking

The first set of papers addresses the Sisyphean limits in how we may think about crisis. Laurent Simon and Thierry Pauchant distinguish three levels of learning from crises -- behavioral (means are modified but goals stay the same), paradigmatic (both goals and means may be modified), and systemic (multiple paradigms are considered, including many different issues and stakeholders).

Using the case of the largest tire fire in North American history, the Hagersville Tire Fire of 1990, these authors found evidence of some behavioral learning, less paradigmatic learning, and even less/very little systemic learning (the most difficult yet most important type). Only the systemic level of learning is complex enough to fully encompass the crisis. How can we help managers become better systemic-level thinkers?

The second paper under this topic is by Maria Nathan, who takes her inspiration from Ernest Hemingway's provocative challenge, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold opposite ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

"Paradoxical thinking is the higher order cognifive approach to which he is referring. In the case of crisis, the challenge is to uphold the inherent paradox of both threat and opportunity, not just threat. We've heard this before -- the seeds of opportunity are found within crisis. And yet in crisis the threat dimensions are usually seen most quickly and are then acted upon, while the potential for opportunity lies dormant. When a crisis is anticipated or when it occurs, the manager should he able to see both threat and opportunity features before deciding how to proceed. Sisyphus did not appear to imagine opportunity, much less enact it. We might speculate about what would have happened if he had. Nathan offers an experiential approach to paradoxical thinking to hone this higher level approach to crisis learning.

Yes, Sisyphus needed to recognize the need for higher order thinking about crisis. He did not appear to think in big picture terms, nor did he appear to recognize the hidden potential for opportunity embedded within his ominous situation. Crisis learning also requires that we understand the barriers that could limit competent use of crisis experience.

Seek To Overcome Barriers that Block Ability to Learn from Crisis

In this second set of papers, authors suggest that understanding barriers to crisis learning is an essential step toward effective learning. First, Dominic Elliot, Denis Smith and Martina McGuinness discuss a litany of barriers to learning from crises including mistrust; rigidity of core beliefs, values and assumptions; and lack of corporate responsibility. They also talk about ineffective communication and information difficulties, denial and the disregard of outsiders, cognitive narrowing and event fixation, poor problem definition, a poor regulatory regime, and incremental and piecemeal changes to the whole system. This paper helps us understand why managers in organizations may not even expect to learn from crisis. They may be too overwhelmed!

Next, Christophe Roux-Dufort explores normalization processes that considerably restrict organizational learning from crisis. By normalization, he means that managers strive to restore the status quo as soon as possible rather than looking for opportunities for change. Using the case of the Herald of Free Enterprise ferryboat wreck, he explores familiar cognitive, emotional and socio-political norms and frameworks managers tend to use to cope with and manage crisis.

Thus, the above two articles are devoted to understanding barriers to learning and means by which these obstacles might be overcome. The next two papers suggest that we must build the expectation for learning into our crisis management plans.

Incorporate Formal Learning Mechanisms into Crisis Management Plans

When in the crisis management process can this learning be expected to occur? Using the case of Ashland Oil Company's tank explosion, Sarah Kovoor-Misra and Maria Nathan attend to the critical issue of timing in crisis learning. There is, in fact, a critical window of opportunity during which learning readiness can be expected to be at its height Perhaps not in the midst of crisis when emotions are intense and raw. It may simply be too painful to think about lessons right then. But wait too long and people may have pushed to return to the status quo, whether or not they learned anything from the experience at all. Forgetfulness may set in without any meaningful crisis learning having occurred.

Finally, in our last paper, Timothy Coombs observes that crisis learning is intensified when crisis management and communications are viewed as a daily activity rather than just a response to a particular crisis event For each of the four interlocking phases of the crisis management process -- prevention, preparation, execution, and evaluation -- Coombs offers means by which crisis learning can be maximized.

Conclusion

In short, each of the six papers addresses why learning from crises has been so meager, but also how learning from crisis can be maximized.

Actually, there is at least one alternative interpretation of the myth of Sisyphus. Not a story of despair, it is instead one of triumph over despair. As Rollo May has suggested, "Sisyphus is a creative person who even tried to erase death. He never gives up but always is devoted to creating a better kind of life; he is a model of a hero who presses on in spite of his or her despair" [5].