Becoming Good at Crises: A Field Guide for Leaders

Becoming Good at Crises

A Field Guide for Leaders

Join Us for an Exclusive Conversation with Peter Willis and Gareth Morgan!

In this special Good Governance Academy fireside chat, Peter Willis and Gareth Morgan, co-authors of Becoming Good at Crises: A Field Guide for Leaders, share hard-won insights into how leaders can prepare for, and thrive, in times of disruption.

Drawing on real-world experience from the Cape Town “Day Zero” drought and COVID-19 pandemic, Willis and Morgan explore the human, organisational, and ethical dimensions of leadership when the stakes are high. They reveal what distinguishes those who falter from those who learn, adapt, and emerge stronger, and why the work of becoming “good at crises” must begin long before the next emergency strikes.

Through vivid examples and practical frameworks, participants will gain tools to build resilience into their organisations, from cultivating reflection and foresight to strengthening the six essential capabilities that help teams respond decisively under pressure.

Becoming Good at Crises: A Field Guide for Leaders
Learn more at www.becominggoodatcrises.co.za

Background information

In an era defined by uncertainty, from the Cape Town “Day Zero” drought to the global COVID-19 pandemic, leaders are being tested in unprecedented ways. The ability to navigate crises with clarity, compassion, and foresight has become a defining feature of good governance.

Becoming Good at Crises: A Field Guide for Leaders, written by Peter Willis and Gareth Morgan, responds directly to this challenge. Drawing on their first-hand experiences, Gareth as a senior city administrator and Peter as a facilitator of reflective learning among executives, the book distils lessons from real-world disruptions into a practical, human-centred approach to leadership resilience.

Endorsed by global leaders such as Dame Jo da Silva (Arup), Barbara Humpton (Siemens USA), Dr David Rubens (Institute of Strategic Risk Management), and Mark Watts (C40 Cities), the book has been described as an “indispensable tool for leaders steering organisations through turbulent waters” and “a practical field guide for preparing for and responding to the challenges ahead.”

This Good Governance Academy conversation brings those insights to life. Peter and Gareth will unpack the four phases of crisis, the six organisational capabilities essential to build during “peacetime,” and the vital role of boards in guiding and supporting leadership through uncertainty.

Participants will leave with not only a deeper understanding of what it means to “become good at crises,” but also a renewed confidence in how to embed reflective learning, ethical accountability, and adaptive governance into their organisations’ DNA.

About the Speakers

Peter Willis is a facilitator, author, and leadership coach best known for his reflective learning work with executives and boards across Africa. As the Founding Director of Conversations that Count, he helps organisations cultivate the capacity to think, act, and learn effectively amid complexity and change.

Peter’s work focuses on the human side of leadership, enabling teams to find composure, meaning, and foresight in the face of uncertainty. Drawing from his extensive experience with climate and governance challenges, Peter has guided senior leaders through crises such as the Cape Town “Day Zero” drought, exploring what it takes to sustain moral courage, accountability, and collective purpose in moments of high pressure.

Gareth Morgan is an experienced public leader and strategist with a deep understanding of urban resilience, governance, and systems transformation. As the Head of Resilience at the City of Cape Town, Gareth has led multi-stakeholder initiatives designed to strengthen the city’s capacity to anticipate, absorb, and adapt to crisis conditions.

His career spans environmental management, strategic planning, and sustainable development, with a focus on translating policy vision into operational readiness. In Becoming Good at Crises, Gareth draws from his leadership experience to outline the six organisational capabilities every institution should build during “peacetime” to withstand future shocks.

Key Questions Answered

What was the motivation behind writing a book on "becoming good at crises"?

Understanding the authors’ purpose is strategically important, as it reveals a shift in thinking, moving beyond static, procedural plans to capture the hard-won, practical lessons from leaders who have successfully navigated profound crises.

The collaboration began in the aftermath of the “Day Zero” drought in Cape Town. Peter Willis, with Gareth Morgan’s support, initiated a project to “capture the extraordinary amount of learning and adaptation” that had occurred across government, business, and households before those valuable lessons could “evaporate.” This project involved interviewing 39 leaders in depth and on camera who were involved in the drought response.

The subsequent COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the urgent need to document these leadership patterns. It became clear that while the specifics of each crisis differed, the core leadership challenges were remarkably similar. This led to the decision to write a book that was intentionally crisis-agnostic, using the drought and COVID-19 as illustrative backdrops to explore common patterns in crisis leadership.

The book was specifically designed for busy senior leaders. Recognizing that such individuals rarely have time for dense academic texts, the authors created a “thin paperback” that is “really readable” and intended to be consumed on a “two-hour plane journey.”

The ultimate goal is to spark a realization in leaders that they can, and must, become good at crises. The authors contend that major disruptions are an inevitable part of our future, and the most effective preparation happens not when a crisis is unfolding, but through intelligent thought and peer discussion during “peacetime.” This proactive philosophy is fundamental to how their methodology diverges from traditional continuity planning.

How does this approach to crisis readiness differ from traditional business continuity planning?

This distinction is strategically critical, as it exposes a common organizational vulnerability: the reliance on detailed plans that fail under the pressure of a true crisis. The authors’ approach pivots from rigid procedure to a focus on leadership and organizational adaptability.

Gareth Morgan introduces the concept of the “preparation paradox,” where the act of having a plan provides a false sense of security. He highlights two clear examples:

Cape Town’s Day Zero: The city had an existing hazard plan for drought. However, when faced with an unprecedented three-year drought, the off-the-shelf plan was “not suitable” for the severity and unique nature of the crisis.
The COVID-19 Pandemic: Similarly, many large corporations with disease-related plans found them to be “not particularly useful or helpful” when confronted with the global scale and specific challenges of COVID-19.

This highlights the core distinction of their approach. The book is not intended for the Business Continuity Management (BCM) or risk manager, but for the organizational leader. In a major crisis, the leader’s role is paramount and “cannot be outsourced” to a technical function.

Instead of focusing on static plans for specific scenarios, their method emphasizes building a range of adaptable capabilities during peacetime. These are capabilities that are valuable for the organization’s normal, day-to-day mission but can be rapidly repurposed to form the basis of a crisis response.

From a governance perspective, Peter Willis argues that a board is guilty of a “dereliction of duty” if it does not ask its executive team how they have prepared for a “major collapse of normal” beyond simply commissioning a technical plan. The critical question for the board to ask is: “Have you paused long enough during peacetime to think how good are we going to be when the floor disappears from under us?” This shifts the focus from a compliance-based document to a strategic assessment of leadership readiness and organizational agility, which is detailed in the core guidance they provide.

What is the core guidance for leaders to become crisis-ready for any situation?

This guidance holds strategic value because of its universal applicability. It moves beyond crisis-specific checklists to a more holistic model of organizational resilience, providing leaders with a durable framework for understanding and responding to any large-scale disruption. The guidance is structured around two key components: the lifecycle of a crisis and the core capabilities needed to navigate it.

Part A: The Four Phases of a Crisis

This framework, outlined by Peter Willis, helps leaders understand the typical lifecycle of any significant, large-scale crisis that affects not just the organization but the broader community or country.

Peacetime: This is the period without a major crisis. It is paradoxically the most important time for preparation, yet also the hardest time to maintain focus on it because of the pressures of normal operations.
The Wave Begins to Break: This is the critical transition phase, often marked by “weak early signals.” The leader’s job is to pay attention, investigate these signals, and eventually make the judgment call to declare a crisis and form a dedicated crisis management team.
The Turbulence: This is the sustained period when the crisis has settled in. It is highly taxing on people and resources and is often when “crises within the crisis” emerge. As Willis explains, “A simple example with COVID was it looked like a health crisis for the first few weeks. Very quickly, it became a supply crisis, and then an economic crisis, and then an employment crisis, and then a mental health crisis.”
Learning, Recovery, and Transformation: In this final phase, the leader must officially declare the crisis over. This is a critical psychological step that allows the organization to move forward. Key activities include providing rest for key people, conducting a deliberate learning process to “bottle it while it’s still warm,” and acknowledging that the organization and its people have been fundamentally changed by the experience.

Part B: The Six Adaptable Capabilities

Identified by Gareth Morgan from the learnings of the Day Zero and COVID-19 crises, these are the core organizational strengths that must be built in peacetime to ensure agility and effectiveness when a crisis hits.

Robust ICT Infrastructure: The foundational ability to produce, transfer, and communicate data effectively is non-negotiable in any modern crisis.
Usable Data and Insights: This goes beyond raw data. It requires clean, accessible data and, crucially, the in-house skills to manipulate it and turn it into the specific, actionable insights required for the crisis at hand.
Supply Chain Adaptability: A deep understanding of the full value chain, avoiding over-reliance on single suppliers, and having flexible contracts with clauses for events like force majeure.
Effective Communication: Having established and practiced communication protocols that can be quickly repurposed for the specific imperatives of the crisis, whether communicating with employees, customers, or other stakeholders.
Strong Partnerships: The ability to call on external stakeholders—such as other businesses, different spheres of government, or community groups—for help. These relationships must be built and sustained in peacetime to be effective in a crisis.
High-Quality Project Execution Skills: Cultivating a cohort of skilled project managers who can take a crisis strategy and translate it into concrete actions, drive performance, and manage the execution of the response.

Possessing these six capabilities provides the organizational toolkit for a crisis, but their effectiveness depends entirely on the leader’s ability to deploy them under pressure. This shifts the focus from what to have, to how to be, making the question of practice and leadership psychology paramount.

If traditional plans are insufficient, can this more adaptive leadership approach be tested or practiced?

While technical drills are a common feature of business continuity, testing leadership thinking and the human response to pressure presents a different and more complex challenge. The authors offer a nuanced perspective on how to practice for the unpredictable.

Peter Willis cautions that mass simulations are often not the answer. They tend to focus on a very specific scenario (e.g., “an internet crisis”), which can cause participants to fixate on the technical problem rather than exercising the generic “quality of leadership thinking” that is applicable to any crisis.

Gareth Morgan builds on this, agreeing that the goal is not to perfect a plan for a specific event. However, he argues there is immense value in testing, with a crucial shift in focus. The true purpose is not to test the plan, but to “test ourselves and our capabilities as humans in the crisis.”

This idea is anchored in a key chapter of their book, “Know Yourself.” Practice, in this context, is about a leader gaining self-knowledge under simulated pressure. It is an opportunity to explore critical personal questions:

“Am I going to go into a dark place?”
“Am I going to clam up?”
“Am I going to shout?”
“Am I going to fear making a decision?”

The ultimate goal of such practice is to build “muscle memory” and the internal confidence for a leader to feel “I’ve got this” when a real crisis emerges. It is about preparing the leader’s internal state and decision-making capacity, which is even more critical than rehearsing a procedural checklist. This self-awareness directly informs how different leaders should approach their distinct roles when a crisis hits.

What are the specific roles of the CEO and the Board during and after a major crisis?

Defining leadership roles with clarity is strategically essential. Ambiguity at the top can cripple a response, while a clear understanding of who does what ensures effective governance, decisive execution, and a healthy transition back to stability.

The CEO’s Role: Leading or Delegating

The first responsibility of a CEO in a crisis is to “know yourself.” If a CEO recognizes that they are “not the right person to lead the crisis,” making the conscious choice to delegate is a sign of profound and effective leadership, not weakness.

A practical example comes from the City of Cape Town’s COVID-19 response. The City Manager, recognizing his own strengths were better suited elsewhere, hand-picked another senior executive to lead the crisis response, granting that individual full authority. This illustrates a core principle: leaders must be willing to “break the organogram” to build the right team for the crisis, which may not align with the standard day-to-day hierarchy.

The Board’s Role: Supportive but Hands-Off

The board’s primary role during a crisis is to support the executive team. This includes ensuring necessary resources are available and providing a rapid turnaround on any decisions that require board approval.

However, what the board must not do is equally critical. Board members, particularly former executives, must resist the “itching” temptation to get over-involved and micromanage the crisis response. This interference creates a “too many cooks” problem, undermining the appointed crisis leadership. The board’s stance should be one of active support but operational distance.

Leadership’s Role in the Aftermath

The period after a crisis is as important as the crisis itself. Key leadership responsibilities include:

Officially Ending the Crisis: A leader must make a psychologically important declaration that the crisis is “over.” This allows people to stand down, recover, and shift their focus.
Care and Appreciation: The aftermath requires deliberate acts of appreciation, thanks, and care for people experiencing mental and emotional fatigue. A leader must facilitate a learning process and create space for people to express what they have been through.
Commitment to the Future: A powerful post-crisis leadership action, illustrated by the Day Zero drought, is to make a public commitment to ensure the crisis won’t happen again. This promise was made credible by a staggering prior achievement: the city and its 4.1 million residents had collectively reduced water consumption by 50% without the taps ever being turned off. The subsequent promise that “Our city… will never ever come close to running out of water again” was then translated into a concrete “peacetime action” plan, turning the trauma of the past into a catalyst for future resilience.

Glossary of Key Terms

Agnostic (Crisis Approach): A perspective on crisis management that is not specific to any particular type of crisis (e.g., drought, pandemic, cyber-attack), but instead focuses on universal principles and capabilities that apply to any major shock.
Breaking the Organogram: The act of a leader setting aside the formal organizational chart and creating a new, temporary team structure specifically for managing a crisis, pulling the best-suited individuals from across the organization.
Day Zero: The name given to the crisis moment in Cape Town when the city was projected to run out of municipal water due to a severe, multi-year drought.
Peacetime: The period when an organization is not in a state of major crisis. It is identified as the most important time for building the culture and capabilities needed for crisis resilience.
Preparation Paradox: The phenomenon where an organization has a formal disaster or business continuity plan that proves to be unsuitable or inadequate when faced with a real-world crisis of unprecedented magnitude or unique characteristics.
The Turbulence: The third phase of a crisis, characterized by a prolonged period where the crisis has settled in but the end is not yet in sight. This phase is taxing on resources and morale and is often when secondary crises emerge.
Weak Early Signals: The initial, often subtle, pieces of information that indicate a potential crisis is developing. Leaders have an obligation to pay attention to these signals and investigate them seriously.