On an early Sunday morning in October 2015, I was flying overseas aboard the U.S. Department of Defense’s specially equipped 747 when the first video images of an attack on a medical clinic in Kunduz, Afghanistan, started airing around the world. The clinic was operated by the international nonprofit Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders). And though the evidence was sketchy, some immediately blamed the U.S. for the bombing. MSF quickly denounced the attack as a “grave violation of International Humanitarian Law.”
Managing High-Stakes Situations: 5 Lessons from the Pentagon
National security routinely involves life-and-death decisions that must be made under the extreme scrutiny that goes along with doing the people’s business. This is especially true at America’s single largest institution: the Department of Defense. While the Pentagon may be in a class by itself when it comes to organizational complexity and high-stakes decision making, nearly all business leaders can expect to be confronted with crises that may threaten their organization’s reputation and perhaps even its survival. In this article, a former U.S. secretary of defense explains that a high-stakes situation requires more than a communications plan — it also requires a workplace culture where people are encouraged to face problems with integrity, accountability, and tenacity. He describes his checklist of actions for communicating with transparency and taking responsibility during a crisis.