In August 2005, I was deployed to the Gulf Coast as part of the American Red Cross response to Hurricane Katrina. What I found on the ground was unlike anything I had managed before. Systems were gone. Communication infrastructure was down. The scale of human suffering was beyond any training scenario I had ever participated in. And thousands of people were looking to our teams to have answers we did not yet have.
That experience changed how I think about leadership permanently. Some lessons come from books. Some come from mentors. Some come from standing in a destroyed neighborhood at 2am trying to figure out what happens next. The last kind tends to stick.
The Illusion of the Plan
Every emergency response has a plan. Ours was detailed. We had protocols, pre-positioned resources, and a clear chain of command. Within 48 hours of landfall, most of it was irrelevant. The conditions on the ground bore no resemblance to the scenarios we had planned for, which is the universe's way of reminding you that planning is a mindset, not a document.
What I learned is that a plan is not meant to survive contact with the actual crisis. It is meant to build the mental models and relationships you need to improvise well when the plan fails. The value is in the preparation, not in what ends up printed and laminated.
Leaders who remain rigidly committed to the plan in the face of changed reality become dangerous. Leaders who have internalized the intent behind the plan can adapt without losing their bearings.
Three Things That Held When Everything Else Fell Apart
When systems failed around us, three things kept our teams functional:
- Clarity of mission. Everyone on the ground knew why we were there. When we could not reach command for guidance, that mission clarity gave people a framework for making decisions on their own. You do not need a script if you know the purpose well enough to reason from it.
- Psychological presence from leadership. I could not solve most of what we were facing. But I could show up. I could be visible and human and present. Leaders who disappear during a crisis, who retreat into logistics and operational details and stop being real people in front of their teams, lose their people. Not always to resignation. Mostly to disconnection, which is harder to recover from.
- Honest communication, especially when the news was bad. We did not always know when the next supply shipment was coming. We did not always know if a specific location would be viable the next day. I told people what I knew, said clearly what I did not know, and told them when I expected to have more information. That is the entirety of crisis communication. It sounds simple. Executing it when you are exhausted and the answers you have are inadequate is considerably harder than it sounds.
What This Looks Like When the Crisis Is Organizational
I think about Katrina every time I walk into an organization in crisis. The crisis looks different. A failed leadership transition. A sudden loss of major funding. A board conflict that has paralyzed decision making for six months. But the human dynamics are largely the same.
People are unsettled. They need clarity, presence, and honesty. They need someone to absorb some of the uncertainty so they can stay focused on their piece of the work. They need to know the person in charge is not panicking, even when the situation genuinely warrants concern.
None of that requires having all the answers. It requires showing up consistently and being straightforward about what you know and what you do not know. In my experience, that alone separates the leaders who stabilize organizations from the ones who accelerate their decline.
The greatest gift crisis gives you, if you are paying attention, is clarity. What matters rises to the surface fast. So do your real capabilities as a leader. I am grateful for what that deployment showed me about my team, about the work, and about myself. Even the parts that were uncomfortable to see.
