How to Survive a Crisis

Description

‘Sir David Omand is undoubtedly one of the most able people to have served in British government since the Second World War’ TLS

We never really know when a crisis might arise. Some ‘black swan’ events, like terrorist attacks or natural disasters, blow up suddenly out of a clear sky. But some crises build slowly, often with warning signs along the way underestimated or ignored, until as if from nowhere, a tipping point is reached and a wildfire breaks out that suddenly spreads at a ferocious rate.

Coincidental bad luck can easily cause a situation to spiral out of control. By then, it might be next to impossible to pull things back together, and there’s a real crisis to manage rather than just a local emergency. Slow burning crises, and bad luck, happen more often than they should in the world of business and politics.

In How to Survive a Crisis, Professor Sir David Omand, formerly both a director of GCHQ and the UK’s Security and Intelligence Coordinator, shows how to manage crises in myriad forms, using methodologies employed by the British intelligence agencies. Through gripping examples from Professor Omand’s storied career, including from the COBRA room in government, to lessons from historic crises such as Chernobyl or the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, this book will equip you with military intelligence techniques such as situational awareness and adaptive resilience that can be used in any crisis, from the professional to the personal.David Omand was the first UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, responsible to the Prime Minister for the professional health of the intelligence community, national counter-terrorism strategy and “homeland security”. He served for seven years on the Joint Intelligence Committee. He was Permanent Secretary of the Home Office from 1997 to 2000, and before that Director of GCHQ.GB