Crisis
Engineering
Crisis engineering is the art of restructuring technical systems and organizational functions during times of peak urgency.
Overview
Lead your team through a crisis
All organizations experience crises. An existential threat from a competitor, a loss of funding, a merger, or a disruptive reorg can all land you in the same place. The organization has to adapt to continue to exist. New habits and coordination structures are required. Team members have to perform at their best, and do it while stressed and short of time.
In such conditions, change is coming to your organization. In a position of leadership, you have choices. You can struggle to preserve the status quo, try to deny that the crisis exists, or passively wait to see what happens. Or, if you are prepared, you can direct and shape the changes, leaving systems and structures that are stronger than before.
Our careers have landed us in front of crises in organizations of all shapes and sizes. We have learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. We have worked to identify the under-appreciated skills, and some repeatable and reliable processes, that we are calling crisis engineering.
A crisis might be an "incident" or a "failure", but not necessarily. Our techniques are useful in any situation where old maps no longer work, old habits are unsustainable, and old systems cannot be maintained. In fact, we have found that these windows of urgency and opportunity are the only times large organizations are capable of rapid directed change.
Our work draws on the sensemaking scholarship of Karl Weick and others (e.g. "Sensemaking in Organizations" and "High Reliability Organizing"), systems safety work by Nancy Leveson, and forgotten texts on organizational science by the likes of Anthony Downs and Arthur Squires. We distill the most valuable parts of these time-tested frameworks and use our own experiences to recontextualize them in the current technological environment.
We use case studies from HealthCare.gov, small startups, large international banks, and other places we have helped. We also incorporate live examples from class participants for discussion and analysis. Our classes contain both individual technologists working across functions, and leaders managing technology projects.
There are no specific prerequisites; any strange jargon that gets used will be defined.
Questions? Email us at team@layeraleph.com
Who this course is for
- Executives who want to catalyze lasting change after a crisis.
- Operators who want to escape a crisis loop by addressing root causes.
- Outsiders and misfits who need to adapt to new organizations quickly and seamlessly.
What you'll get out of this course
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Clarity on identifying a crisis
How to identify the characteristics of a real crisis opportunity, and distinguish them from routine incidents, poor management, and other pseudo-crises
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How to structure and operate a crisis team
The environmental cues and human traits that you will need for a successful crisis intervention
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A close look at organizational sensemaking
The oft-overlooked process by which groups understand a consensus reality and each person's role within it. Like oxygen, it's imperceptible until you don't have it.
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How and when to recognize the end of a crisis
Best practices for preserving the valuable changes in habits and systems when the urgency fades.
Modules
- What Makes a Crisis?
- Crises in the News
- How To Find Your People
- Mapping Your System
- What Should Leadership Do?
- Sensemaking I and II
- Crisis Teams and War Rooms
- Case Studies (varies)
- Technical Mitigations
- Risk Analysis
- Managing and Sensemaking by Action
- When Are You Done?
- Preserving Useful Changes Post-Crisis
Meet your instructors
