In this discussion, renowned Crisis Management Leader Dr. Ian Mitroff makes the case for ‘thinking the unthinkable’ in today’s chaotic environment. Crisis management is, at its heart, thinking systemically and doing all the things we need to do before, during and after a crisis. Most importantly, it’s also anticipating the crises for which we NEED to prepare, and not always the crises we are COMFORTABLE preparing for. Therefore, organizational change is a key part of crisis management: leaders working together to form worst case scenarios, thinking the unthinkable, and most importantly challenging assumptions. For example, epidemiologists have done multitudes of simulations of pandemics, but no one ever simulated the fallacious arguments used against vaccination, masking, and social distancing during the COVID pandemic. The CDC, FDA, and Public Health professionals were caught completely off guard. The lesson? It is not enough to prepare medically—but also we need to focus on the behavior of people. Consequently, crisis management requires cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Join Dr. Mitroff and host Dr. Julia Storberg-Walker in this exciting session. Ian I Mitroff is Professor Emeritus of University of Southern California Marshall School of Business and Annenberg School of Communication. Dr. Mitroff is currently affiliated with the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB). His PhD is in Engineering Science and Philosophy of Science from UCB. He’s published 41 books, and his latest is Socially Responsible Organizations: Lessons from COVID-19, Springer, 2022.