Move Slower. See the Crisis Clearly.
To be able to tell the story of crisis, we first have to take the time to reflect on what we’re seeing.
Crisis does not usually begin where people think it begins. It does not begin with the press conference, the resignation, the lawsuit, the public backlash, the failed response, or the moment everyone finally admits something has gone wrong. Those are usually the moments when crisis becomes visible.
The actual crisis often begins much earlier.
It begins in the overlooked signal. The pattern no one names. The tension people learn to work around.
Simply put, we fail to understand the story of crisis because we too often want to move through it quickly. There are many reasons why—our fears about facing those damaged by crisis, professional or familial imperatives to move on, and even our own needs to get back to something “normal.” In the U.S., there is also the cultural tendency to prize moving quickly and not spending time to reflect. Our society simply doesn’t emphasize such contemplation. In a 2017 interview, psychologist Tasha Eurich says that 95 percent of us think that we’re self aware when really only 10 percent are. That’s why we hear a lot about the “attention economy” where what we can reall use more of is a reflection economy. That is, incentives to actually slow down and think about what we are doing, especially as involves telling the story of crisis.
We can’t tell the story of crisis until we have a better understanding of where we fit in. What role did we play? What could we control? What could we not? What can we learn from it? What are we still needing to learn? How did what we brought to the crisis, or failed to bring, contribute? How did our strengths and weaknesses contribute to the crisis? And, moreover, what can we do going forward?
That’s why I loathe the Silcon Valley ethos of “move fast and break things.” Obviously, it can provoke a crisis. And, it can contribute to our not being able to reflect on our role in a crisis. If we can’t see where we contributed, then it’s difficult to tell the story of crisis in a way that can be beneficial to others.
That’s why I offer this counter to the Silicon Valley ethos: Move slowly and do something constructive.
The Story of Crisis Begins Before the Breaking Point
When we move more slowly, we can ask the right questions that help us tell the story of crisis.
What conditions made this possible?
What warnings were ignored?
What assumptions shaped the response?
What pressures distorted judgment?
Where did communication fail ?
And here’s an especially difficult one:
What did we believe about ourselves that prevented us from seeing the truth of the cris?
These questions are uncomfortable because they move crisis out of the realm of surprise and into the realm of responsibility. But they are necessary. Without them, crisis storytelling becomes shallow. It reduces complex failure to a single event, a single person, or a single bad day. Too often, those are rationalizations. And rationalizations don’t make for telling a useful story about crisis.
Slowness Is a Discipline
We live, however, in an environment that rewards immediacy, so rationalizations can be very useful. But crisis does not become more understandable simply because we think we need to immediately reply to that last accusation on social media.
Often, the opposite is true. To tell the story of crisis well, we must slow down enough to notice patterns, examine assumptions, and separate the visible event from the deeper conditions that produced it.
That kind of slowness is not indecision. It is, instead judgment informed by the discipline that comes from experience. It is the discipline to resist easy explanations. It is the willingness to look at what the crisis is revealing. It is the ability to tell a story that does not merely protect us and how we feel about ourselves, but helps people understand reality.
That’s moving way beyond moving fast and breaking things. It’s moving deliberately, seeing clearly, and telling the story in a way that makes repair possible.
