Conquering Crisis

Ten lessons to learn before you need them

Jun 21, 2025

Antonio Gramsci

What Happens During a Crisis Intervention? | Evoke Wellness at Miramar

Welcome to another edition of “Students of Leadership,” today to reflect on the lessons from a small but mighty book about the life and career stories of Admiral McRaven, that illustrate principles of effective leadership during times of crisis.”

Ten Leadership Lessons for Tough Times

Admiral William H. McRaven, a retired Navy SEAL commander shares the wisdom drawn from over 40 years of high-stakes service. His wisdom is both timely and timeless: crisis will come for all of us, what matters is being prepared to lead through it.

Here the ten lessons to help leaders navigate chaos with clarity and resolve.

1. First Reports Are Always Wrong

The first information you get in a crisis is often incomplete or inaccurate. McRaven counsels leaders to question and verify initial reports. In the fog of crisis, take time to assess the true situation before reacting. Double-checking facts and assumptions, to avoid chasing rumors or false leads. The initial patience in the assessment phase will ensure that subsequent decisions will rest on solid ground. You need to take your time here, don’t rush, don’t judge, observe and gather quality information.

2. Have a Council of Colonels

Even the most senior leaders need frank counsel. McRaven recommends assembling a trusted inner circle (his metaphorical “council of colonels”) of advisers willing to speak truth to power, removing all your blinders. Surround yourself with people who have expertise and the courage to tell you what you are not seeing or when you’re wrong. In a crisis, a leader acting solo can make huge mistakes or miss major insights.

3. Bad News Doesn’t Get Better with Age

In a crisis, delay is deadly because problems fester and trust erodes if leaders hide unpleasant truths. It’s critical to report up and out quickly, deliver bad news promptly and candidly. Ripping off the band-aid early allows you to begin damage control and maintain credibility.

4. Weaponize the Truth

Transparency is a leader’s friend in a crisis. Rather than spin or obscure, use the truth as a strategic asset. Leveling with stakeholders builds trust, buys time, and disarms rumors. By “weaponizing” the truth, leaders gain credibility and position in the moral high ground. For example, if mistakes happen, openly acknowledging it and vowing to fix it will engender public goodwill (people will “give leaders more latitude to resolve things if they feel they’re getting honest progress reports.” Candor can be as potent as any crisis-management tool.

5. Move All Your Options Forward

In rapidly evolving crises, pursue multiple solutions in parallel. Don’t bet everything on Plan A. Instead, develop Plan B, C, and D concurrently. By “moving all your options forward,” you won’t be caught flat-footed if circumstances change. This lesson reflects the need for agility: teams should explore contingency plans, organizational changes, alternate suppliers, legal and PR responses, all at once. By having several options ready you can pivot fast and smooth as new information emerges.

6. Trust the Second Law of Thermodynamics

The second law states that entropy (disorder) increases in a closed system, and crises are no different. Left unchecked, chaos will compound. McRaven’s point: assume things will get worse unless you act. Leaders must inject energy and order to counteract a crisis’s natural downward spiral. This means taking decisive steps to contain damage or clarify confusion before it snowballs. In practice, trusting this “law” means creating structure in the middle of chaos by establishing clear communication lines, defining emergency roles, and directing proactive measures. Anticipate that systems will trend toward chaos and intervene early to prevent total breakdown and restore order.

7. Don’t Rush to Failure

In urgent situations the impulse is to act immediately, but rushed action can backfire. “Be quick, but don’t hurry,” (coach John Wooden). Maintain urgency without sacrificing judgment. “Don’t rush to failure” means don’t charge ahead blindly and risk compounding the crisis. Take a moment to gather the team, analyze options, and then act swiftly and deliberately on a well-formed plan, it links to the first principle, prevent knee-jerk mistakes. A leader must find the sweet spot between paralysis and reckless speed so that they can move fast but with foresight.

8. Micromanagement Is Not an Ugly Word

In stable times, you can delegate and empower others, avoiding micromanagement. But a crisis is a different beast. When the stakes are existential, leaders must dive into the details. “In a crisis, leadership involvement in every detail is critical,” the goal isn’t to undermine your team’s competence, but to ensure nothing slips through the cracks when margin for error is zero. When the house is on fire, a leader can’t stand back; hands-on leadership can make the difference between extinction and survival.

9. Dictate the Tempo

Great crisis leaders move to reacting to events to setting the pace of events. Once ready you must seize the initiative, you can’t be overwhelmed by the crisis, you must get ahead of it: drive the narrative, timeline, response and next steps. Find a way to slow things down or speed them up advantageously. Be proactive and make the crisis play by your rules whenever possible.

10. There Is Always Time for a Morale Check

In the fog of crisis, leaders can forget the human element, please don’t.

McRaven’s final lesson is a reminder that “morale isn’t just about making people happy, it’s showing them you care.” No matter how frantic the situation, there is always time to check on your people. A few words of support, a visible gesture of empathy, or a rallying call can bolster the team’s spirit when they need it most. Always find those moments to gauge and boost morale. This might mean convening the team for a quick huddle to express confidence, or walking the floor to reassure employees. High morale can be a game-changer in a crisis because it will fuel resilience, create unity and spark creativity when needed most.

Take care of your people, and they’ll take care of the mission, even in a crisis.

“Sometimes no matter how hard you try, no matter how good you are, you still end up as a sugar cookie. Don’t complain. Don’t blame it on your misfortune. Stand tall, look to the future, and drive on!”

Admiral McRaven

Together, these lessons emphasize principles such as preparedness, honesty, decisiveness, flexibility, control, and humanity.

When a crisis hits, the job of the leader is not to merely survive it, but to conquer it and emerge with the credibility intact, with the team in a better place and the strategy in a position of strength

Conquering Crisis: Ten Lessons to Learn Before You Need Them [Book]

Leadership in Action

It’s one thing to list principles, and another to see them in action. History offers powerful examples of leadership challenges that required the embodiment of these lessons to navigate crises. Here is a case that no matter how many years go by and how many times I read about it, the inspiration that fuels in me remains intact:

Apollo 13 “A Successful Failure” (1970)

Not all crises are corporate, and a shining example from the global stage is NASA’s handling of the Apollo 13 emergency, the famous line “Houston, we have a problem.”

When an oxygen tank exploded , the mission to the Moon turned into a do-or-die crisis in space. Flight director Gene Kranz led NASA’s best minds to get out of what could have turned into a disaster. First, he convened a team of experts (his council of colonels) composed of engineers and mission specialists to assess the problem and generate solutions, under a bold motto “Failure is not an option,” which helped galvanized his team with optimism. He basically weaponized the truth into a motivational cry naming what was at stake clearly: failure meant the death of astronauts. Under Kranz’s leadership, NASA moved all options forward: they simultaneously worked on conserving oxygen, working on power solutions, plotting a new course home, and improvising a CO2 filter with available materials. Only by pursuing multiple fixes at once, they maximized the chances of saving the crew.

Gene Kranz’s leadership also exemplified “don’t rush to failure,” as he was urgent but methodical, telling his team at one point, “Let’s work the problem, people. Let’s not make things worse by guessing,” reflecting a cool-headed refusal to act on unverified assumptions, carefully checking all available data before executing each option and launching a new maneuver. Micromanagement was essential: every burn of the spacecraft’s engine, every power switch was calculated and triple-checked under Kranz’s direct oversight. Yet even amid the tension of the high stakes, the flight controllers and astronauts drew strength from each other, never forgetting the human aspect of it all, the needed morale checks. Kranz and his team maintained steady voices and encouragement in communications.

The result was of historical proportions. Apollo 13’s crew returned safely to Earth, the lives saved, the team in a stronger place because of what they were able to pull off, and the narrative rewritten in an epic manner. The crisis that could have represented one of NASA’s darkest hour became, in retrospect, one of its finest, precisely because the crisis leadership principles had been all at play: honesty, creativity, sense of urgency without rushing unprepared, tight control of details, and care for people. The Apollo 13 story demonstrates that leadership with preparation, adaptability, and calm competency, can overcome even the “insurmountable.”

This example underscores McRaven’s fundamentals of crisis leadership. Act fast, act truthfully, lean on your team, plan for chaos, launch all options at once, mind the details, and never forget that people count on you.

To live by these principles makes you earn trust in calm times, and it’s this deep trust what in a crisis will carry the day.

A Blueprint for your team to be Crisis-Ready

I’d like to close with a few personal notes on how to turn these principles into a high level leadership blueprint to internalize before any crisis strikes, a way to build a crisis-ready culture:

Cultivate a “First Report” Skepticism

Train your team to pressure test and challenge every assumption they continuously operate under. Pick the 1-2 most critical pillars of your book of work and run crisis simulation drills, imagine worst case scenarios, use inversion as a mental model and force your team to always verify facts and make a habit of seeking additional information. You can’t operate in a constant state of paranoia, but are you sure the core pillars of your strategy are as bullet-proof as they can be?

Establish Your “Council of Colonels”

Identify a diverse group of trusted advisors and tap into their collective experience to review regularly big projects, launch readiness plans, high-stakes presentations, and the progress of signature projects for strategic priorities. Choose people from different ranks and experience who can offer honest perspectives in tough moments and ask really good questions. Empower this council to challenge your thinking and offer alternative perspectives to help you identify your blind spots.

Embrace Rapid Reporting and Radical Transparency

Create a culture where bad news travels fast upward, focus your team in working the problems, force them to clearly define problem statements, to get to the root of issues before offering solutions. Set clear expectations: hiding problems is a cardinal sin because bad news only gets worse with delay. The goal is to make honesty your default setting, so in a crunch, your team will instinctively opt for transparency over spin.

Plan for Options and Contingencies

Don’t let your team operate on “Plan A.” Implement contingency planning as a standard part of strategy. For any major initiative or identified risk, ask your team: “What are Plans B and C?” Encourage parallel problem-solving and multiple solutions analysis because in a crisis you will likely need to move multiple options forward at once. This practice is about training for flexible, lateral and adaptable thinking. In a crisis everyone will ned to feel comfortable juggling several potential solutions at the same time.

Impose Order on Chaos (Fast)

Make it part of leadership training to recognize the signs of entropy: confusion, conflicting information, and compounding chaos leading to paralysis. Give your team leaders checklists for the first 24 hours of various crisis types, teach them to operate with structure over improvisation, to inject clarity and direction. Use this simple framework to they know how you expect them to operate: 1. assess, 2. report, 3. contain, 4. shape, 5. manage. When things go wrong, it’s your job to grab the reins and create order.

Balance Urgency with Deliberation

Reward quick properly-informed, well-thought out action and penalize speed without proper facts checking. For example, you can run a timed decision-making exercise: present a crisis on an important topic and force a decision in 15 minutes, then reveal information that was missed due to the rush. Conversely, show the team also the cost of waiting too long when enough information was at hand. Drive home the “be quick, but don’t hurry” ethos, teach them you expect them to act promptly while keeping their heads cool, “don’t rush to failure.” To train on critical thinking, bring this simple question to all your huddles “What don’t we know yet?”

Train to Take the Initiative

“We go first” in communication, “we set the schedule” for updates and briefings, and “we anticipate” competitor or media moves and preempt them. In any fast-moving situation, the crisis team’s first question must be, “How do we get ahead of this?” This could mean breaking the news yourself (rather than reacting to a leak), or launching a bold initiative (like an aggressive customer outreach) that seizes the moral high ground. Train your team to think both offensively and defensively, so in a crisis they proactively work to shape desired outcomes.

Embed Empathy and Resilience in Leadership Development

Finally, make morale management a core competency for all leaders in your team, teach specific techniques like the “the 15-minute rule” which states that in every critical meeting, spend at least 15 minutes checking in on people’ stress levels and needs. Encourage visible empathy: “How are we holding up?” and “What do you need?”. The aim is to hard-wire the understanding that taking care of your people in a crisis is not optional; it’s a driver of successful outcomes. People need to know their leaders “have their back.”

Focus on what matters, never shy from the truth, lift others up, and stay the course through adversity.

Embracing these principles will not only help you conquer crises, but also inspire your team to achieve the extraordinary in the face of any regular challenge.

“True leaders must learn from their failures, use the lessons to motivate themselves, and not be afraid to try again or make the next tough decision.”