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What Organizations Need To Survive A Pandemic

Organization 2 would fare better in a sustained crisis like a pandemic according to the document. Organization 2 has continuous sensing and response capabilities to adapt to evolving threats, rather than just having detailed contingency plans. The most robust organizations in a complex crisis are those that can rapidly evaluate changes and respond with simple principles. Companies need networks of people across the organization to coordinate responses and adapt as events unfold. Practicing crisis simulations helps build this adaptive capability.

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41 views5 pages

What Organizations Need To Survive A Pandemic

Organization 2 would fare better in a sustained crisis like a pandemic according to the document. Organization 2 has continuous sensing and response capabilities to adapt to evolving threats, rather than just having detailed contingency plans. The most robust organizations in a complex crisis are those that can rapidly evaluate changes and respond with simple principles. Companies need networks of people across the organization to coordinate responses and adapt as events unfold. Practicing crisis simulations helps build this adaptive capability.

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cuong vo
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What Organizations Need to Survive a

RISK MANAGEMENT

Pandemic
by Nitin Nohria
January 30, 2020

MirageC/Getty Images

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the Daily Alert newsletter.

Much of the organizational thinking about disease outbreaks, and about crisis
management in general, has focused on preparation. With the sudden emergence of a
deadly new coronavirus, organizational preparedness is key. In recent years, many
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companies, for example, have created risk management teams to develop detailed
contingency plans for responding to a pandemic. This is necessary but not sufficient. In
the complex and uncertain environment of a sustained, evolving crisis, the most robust
organizations will not be those that simply have plans in place but those that have
continuous sensing and response capabilities. As Darwin noted, the most adaptive species
are the fittest.

Consider the organizations described below. Which one would fare better in a sustained
crisis such as a pandemic?

Which Organization Will Fare Better?

Organization 2 is clearly better positioned to respond to evolving, unpredictable threats.


We know from complexity theory that following a few basic crisis-response principles is
more effective than having a detailed a priori plan in place. In fires, for instance, it’s been
shown that a single rule—walk slowly toward the exit—saves more lives than complicated
escape plans do.

I’m not saying that companies should not have comprehensive risk mitigation plans.
They should be asking questions about their supply chains and internal organization like,
“What’s our response if one component goes down? What’s our response if two
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components go down? Do we have redundant computer systems?” But just as important,
companies need to ask, “What real-time sensing and coordinating mechanism will we use
to respond to events we can never fully anticipate?”

Companies shouldn’t rely solely on a specialized risk management team to see them
through a sustained crisis. What if the team gets taken out? Instead, they need to develop
the ability to rapidly evaluate ongoing changes in the environment and develop responses
based on simple principles. This means that companies need a global network of people
drawn from throughout the organization that can coordinate and adapt as events unfold,
reacting immediately and appropriately to disruptions such as lapses in communication
inside and outside the organization and losses of physical and human resources. (If a main
office overseas suddenly drops out of a company’s network, who is going to jump in?) This
network needs to quickly cycle through a process of sensing threats, coordinating,
responding, and then sensing again. It needs to engage in creative and collaborative yet
disciplined problem solving on the fly, even as members of the crisis network move around
or drop out.

This is exactly what marine expeditionary forces do, to great effect. One reason the
marines are so nimble is that they practice. Companies should do likewise. A firm could
establish a globally dispersed group with shifting membership that would devote, say, half
a day every other month to engaging in crisis simulations. What would the group do, for
instance, if 30% of the company’s factory workforce in Asia dropped out? What if the
United States closed its borders? How would the team respond to an “unthinkable”
scenario? The goal is not to create specific rules for responding to specific threats but to
practice new ways of problem solving in an unpredictable and fast-changing environment.

As for the two organizations described in the table, advantage in a crisis will go to the one
that can leverage its capabilities and cooperate with other members of the community—
even competitors. Companies should think about applying an open-source model to crisis
response. Just as they invite partners and competitors to codevelop innovative products,

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they should look at whether codeveloped crisis responses would be better than proprietary
ones. If they’d lose certain capabilities in a crisis and competitors would lose others, are
there mutually beneficial opportunities for trade and collaboration?

Finally, many leaders think crisis management is not their job. That’s why they hired risk
mitigation and security experts. But creating organizations that are strong in the face of
uncertainty requires a new mind-set—and that must be driven from the top down. By
developing a culture and mechanisms that support superior adaptive capability, companies
will inoculate themselves against a range of threats, not just pandemics. They’ll become
more resilient and competitive in the complex and uncertain business of business.

(Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article originally published in the May 2006
issue of Harvard Business Review under the title “The Organization: Survival of the
Adaptive.”)

Nitin Nohria is dean of Harvard Business School.

This article is about RISK MANAGEMENT


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2 COMMENTS

Angus Kowalsky 2 months ago


La única forma de contener una pandemia es disminuir el riesgo de contagio. Tenga el ratio que tenga un virus,
contagio o mortalidad, por cada paciente contagiado tengo que aislar a unas 20 personas siendo optimista.
Ningún país del mundo tiene la infraestructura hospitalaria necesaria para ello de manera que la única
herramienta eficaz en la gestión de este tipo de riesgo es la educación social.
Yo enseño el uso del pensamiento racional en las decisiones individuales y colectivas, entendiendo la razón en
su acepción matemática. El tema de la semana ha sido el coronavirus y resolvimos, concretamente, la siguiente
falacia de pensamiento planteada por un alumno: “ Sí China construye 3 hospitales en 10 días significa que es
más grave de lo que nos dicen"
Yo soy el paciente cero. Durante 15 días asintomática he tenido contacto(menos de 1 metro) con unas 40
personas(alumnos, profes, familia…) y habré contagiado a 4. Tendría que aislar a 40 personas quienes a su vez
han estado en contacto con una medía de 30 o 40 cada uno… Concluimos que en mi ciudad habría que aislar a
1.600 personas pero el ratio camas hospitalarias/población es de 3 por 1.000 habitantes por lo que solo
disponemos de 800 camas. Tenemos dos opciones:
1) Aumentar el ratio camas/habitantes construyendo más hospitales.
2) Pedir a los posibles contagiados que se queden 15 días sin salir de casa.
Y es lo que China ha hecho.
Ningún país del mundo tiene la infraestructura hospitalaria necesaria para la contención de una pandemia de
este tipo.
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