Carrie Lam has to reconnect with the people if she is ever to understand the root of Hong Kong’s crisis
- Since the handover, the government has systematically dismantled grass-roots listening channels. So it is hardly surprising Lam stumbled blindly into the extradition crisis
- She needs to realise the problem is rooted in the plan itself, not the way it was communicated
Once upon a time, I used to spend a large part of every working day helping companies on crisis preparedness and crisis management, in particular helping them communicate as crises raged.
I would like to claim that most recognised that it paid to be prepared: to have plans that would swing into action in a crisis. Such plans would identify who had to focus on what in those sweaty, frantic moments after a crisis erupted. They would identify “tripwires” that provided early warning signals to ensure the response was as speedy as possible: it is a platitude that every minute lost explodes the prospective harm.
Such plans would make clear who talks to stakeholders, including the media, and would make sure those chosen executives had been pushed through the mill of crisis simulation exercises.
I say I would like to claim companies were prepared, but in truth they rarely were. Committing funds to building crisis preparedness almost always came under “Any Other Business” at the bottom of an already-overcommitted agenda, always deferred to the next board meeting.
Even among companies that committed to developing a “crisis plan”, it was almost always a “manual” that sat undisturbed on executive shelves. In a crisis, those executives always seemed to think they could resolve it by simply reaching for the plan and “turning to page 46”.
Such is the “control freak” mentality of many senior managers that they seem incapable of realising that each and every crisis is unique and that “plans”, to be useful, need to be living documents that shape attitudes and routine practices rather than engine repair manuals.