Crisis Leadership Essentials
The Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative is collaborating with Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Coronavirus Local Response Initiative to support mayors as they manage COVID-19
Coronavirus Local Response Initiative Session One
Crisis Leadership Essentials
“The coronavirus is new. Crisis management is not.”
— Juliette Kayyem, Belfer Senior Lecturer in International Security, Harvard Kennedy School
In collaboration with the Bloomberg Coronavirus Local Response Initiative, the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative and faculty from across the university, including Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health are leading classes focused on emergency preparedness, emergency response, crisis leadership and crisis communication. Each session also features informational updates from experts at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
In the first session, Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health provided critical public health information. Dutch Leonard, the George F. Baker, Jr. Professor of Public Management, at HKS and Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration at HBS and Juliette Kayyem, the Belfer Senior Lecturer in International Security at HKS, taught crisis leadership and management.
They outlined the three important leadership tasks that underlie all other aspects of the work of responding to a crisis.
The first is to assess where you are in the life cycle of the crisis with as much accuracy as possible. This will inform the ways in which you allocate your attention and activities and organize the work.
The second is to establish a problem-solving process for a novel threat. Routine emergency management processes will not be sufficient for responding to this crisis, which will require rapid integration of new (and incomplete) information, learning on the fly, and nimble reactions to emergent issues.
The third is to understand the political aspects and identify risks to be managed in order to keep order, secure and retain support, and create the conditions for effective collaboration under extreme circumstances.
↗️ Click to explore key takeaways from the session
↗️ Click to view slides on crisis leadership
↗️ Click to view slides on critical public health information
About the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative
The Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative is a collaboration among Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Its mission is to inspire and strengthen city leaders, as well as equip them with the tools to lead high-performing, innovative cities. Learn more on the Initiative’s website.
