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Category: Crisis Leadership

Posts relating to crisis leadership

Public Leadership Through Crisis 14: Lessons on Crisis Communication from Liberia’s Ebola epidemic

written by Matt Andrews Peter Harrington is an alumni of the Harvard Kennedy School, and a former fellow with the Building State Capability program (BSC). In 2014, Peter worked with the  Africa Governance Initiative helping Liberia’s government deal with its Ebola epidemic. He assisted in an area called ‘Social Mobilization’; an area of the organizational…Continue Reading Public Leadership Through Crisis 14: Lessons on Crisis Communication from Liberia’s Ebola epidemic

Listen to our third virtual discussion on Leadership Through Crisis

On April 10th, 2020, we hosted a third virtual discussion with Matt Andrews, who answered audience questions on his new Public Leadership Through Crisis blog series. Here are some of the questions he answered: How do you best gain community buy-in to a response strategized and enforced by institutional and government actors? Given how long this crisis…Continue Reading Listen to our third virtual discussion on Leadership Through Crisis

Public Leadership Through Crisis 13: Tolbert Nyenswah on leading through Liberia’s Ebola epidemic

written by Matt Andrews Tolbert Nyenswah is a Senior Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2014 he was the head of the Liberian Incident  Management  System (IMS), leading the operational aspects of the government’s response to the Ebola epidemic. Following this, he led the establishment of Liberia’s First National…Continue Reading Public Leadership Through Crisis 13: Tolbert Nyenswah on leading through Liberia’s Ebola epidemic

Public Leadership Through Crisis 12: Course correct; it’s hard, but you must—and can—do it

written by Matt Andrews My last blog post recounted, briefly, how Liberia changed the organizational structures it used to respond to the 2014 Ebola crisis, mid-stream through the crisis.  I wanted to tell the story primarily to demonstrate how the country ultimately adopted a flat, fast, and  flexible ‘snowflake’ like structure  (in the Incident  Management …Continue Reading Public Leadership Through Crisis 12: Course correct; it’s hard, but you must—and can—do it

Listen to our second virtual discussion on Leadership Through Crisis

On April 3rd, 2020, we hosted a second virtual discussion with Matt Andrews, who answered audience questions on his new Public Leadership Through Crisis blog series. Here are some of the questions he answered: What advice do you have for coordinating a cohesive responsive in Developing Countries that may be faced with increased development partner interest in…Continue Reading Listen to our second virtual discussion on Leadership Through Crisis

Public Leadership Through Crisis 11: Reorganizing to address the crisis

written by Matt Andrews I was on a call two days ago with a former student who is now deeply involved in his country’s Covid-19 crisis response. He said something like the following: “Our  government  is not set up to respond to this; there are multiple challenges coming at us all at once, requiring multiple…Continue Reading Public Leadership Through Crisis 11: Reorganizing to address the crisis

Listen to our first virtual discussion on Public Leadership Through Crisis

On March 27th, 2020, we hosted a virtual discussion with Matt Andrews, who answered audience questions on his new Public Leadership Through Crisis blog series. Here are some of the questions he answered: What, in your opinion, are the capabilities required for public leadership through crisis, and what are the biggest challenges to building these capabilities?…Continue Reading Listen to our first virtual discussion on Public Leadership Through Crisis

Public Leadership Through Crisis 10: Lessons from experience

written by Matt Andrews As we ponder how you as a leader should consider organizing your organization(s) to respond to the crisis, let’s listen to some advice from someone who has led through various crises. Below is a podcast interview with Shruti Mehrotra, who  has advised various Heads of State on effective government and statebuilding…Continue Reading Public Leadership Through Crisis 10: Lessons from experience

Coronavirus and behaviour: Why leaders need better ‘risk communication’

Guest blog written by Peter Harrington Last week I wrote a post on how the Coronavirus pandemic, like Ebola, needs to be understood as a complex adaptive problem which requires mass learning to solve. In this post I want to focus in on one area of that learning – the behaviour change required to stop transmission,…Continue Reading Coronavirus and behaviour: Why leaders need better ‘risk communication’

Public Leadership Through Crisis 9: Pursue flat, fast, and flexible organizing structures

written by Matt Andrews In my last post, I argued that you should prepare to work differently. In this blog  I will offer ideas on doing that. I am informed by my BSC team’s work with countries employing PDIA (problem driven iterative adaptation) in the face of problems (some crises) and the work of people like…Continue Reading Public Leadership Through Crisis 9: Pursue flat, fast, and flexible organizing structures