It was a Saturday morning, and my phone lit up during breakfast. News of an escalation in the Middle East had just broken. A colleague in Singapore had already been in touch with the local team. Within an hour, we had connected the right people and activated a task force. Less than two hours after the news broke, our first update was online: our people are safe, operations continue, updates to follow.
From the outside, that looked like speed. It wasn't improvisation. Speed in a crisis comes from preparation.
But a quick response doesn't mean every question has an immediate answer. Once the first steps are taken, the harder decisions often begin. What do we know? What are we assuming? And which direction should we take?
Sooner or later, someone asks: "So what's the answer?"
It's a fair question. In a corporate environment, we are trained to deliver the answer. One message, one decision, one direction. In a crisis, the pressure to deliver it is enormous.
I learned to distrust that reflex in two training rooms, a few weeks apart.
The first was during my training as a mediator. In a simulation, the two parties began writing their preferred solutions on the whiteboard. I instinctively tried to find common ground between them. The trainer stopped me. "It's not about discussing solutions," he said. "It's about exploring options. And you have to help them find those options."
The second was a crisis management training. In the middle of a simulation, the trainer said: "You don't want the leader to choose a solution. You want them to choose from a set of options. Then you develop the solution."