Chapter 5Leading Through Crisis, Crisis, and More Crisis

Every morning when I turn on the news it seems there's another global event subverting any semblance of stability. Liz Truss's profoundly flawed economic plan ended in the shortest Prime Minister tenure in British history (six weeks!). Small businesses everywhere are struggling to return to pre‐pandemic form. And there's so much to say about the catastrophic environmental, social, and economic effects of climate change. I could write an entire book about the human face of crisis, but that won't help us find opportunities in the darkness. Leaders need to look past the gloom of perpetual crisis and find solutions to the overlapping challenges testing us like never before.

This is a defining moment for leaders. Organizations are increasingly confronted with tidal waves of disruption affecting everything from global supply chains to individual well‐being. Crises such as the violence of the 2022 war in Ukraine quickly spread via interconnected economic, ecological, and social pathways to trigger additional dangers such as unsustainable energy prices in Europe, humanitarian concerns in refugee camps, and a global food crisis. The outcome is a world filled with events we can no longer avoid or ignore. Everything will affect you and your organization—whether you know about it or not. That's why it's so important to become a digitally‐minded leader. To successfully anticipate, address, mitigate, and even benefit from the biggest ...

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