Managing the Crisis You Tried to Prevent (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)

This is an enhanced edition of the HBR reprint 95602, originally published in November/December 1995. HBR OnPoint Articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. New reports announcing that yet another business has stumbled into a crisis--often without warning and through no direct fault of its management--seem as regular as the tide. And the spectrum of business crises is so wide that it is impossible to list each type. On a single day this year, the Washington Post reported a series of crashes suffered by American Eagle Airlines, the bankruptcy of Orange County, and Intel's travails with its Pentium microprocessor. Fortunately, almost every crisis contains within itself the seeds of success as well as the roots of failure. Finding, cultivating, and harvesting that potential success is the essence of crisis management.