Early Crisis Management Lessons From The Rush To Find A New U.K. Prime Minister

10-23-22: The story was updated with information about Boris Johnson.

The race is on to find a replacement for Liz Truss, who announced Thursday she was stepping down as prime minister of the U.K. after serving only 45 days in the job.

There was a short list of people who are known to be interested in the job, including Truss’ predecessor Boris Johnson who dropped out of the compeition on Sunday. The rush to fill the country’s top elected position has already yielded several crisis management lessons that are applicable for companies and organizations—and those who want to lead them.

Lessons For Companies

Never Assume

• Don’t assume that because you did not have a crisis today, that you won’t have a crisis tomorrow.

Admit Your Mistakes

• When you’re wrong, say so. And the sooner, the better.

Don’t Wait To Act

• As soon as you realize that your approach to a crisis is not working or not working fast enough, change course.

Have A Plan B, C, and D

• Be prepared to implement different strategies and tactics to help address the crisis.

Update Succession And Crisis Management Plans

• Have the latest protocols in place for when the CEO is fired, resigns, or dies.
• Prepare and review on a regular basis corporate crisis management plans and ensure they address the latest threats or dangers the company could face; test plans at least once a year to ensure they will work.

Have The Right Priorities

• “Look for someone whose skill set and experience match the problems being faced. Make the practical choice, not the political choice. as they did with Truss,” Robert Kelley, a professor of management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, said via email.
• “Make sure that the individual can bring diverse interest groups together to address the problem and get that group to collectively ‘own"’ the problem and solve it for the public good,” Kelley advised.

Set Realistic Expectations

• “Announce up front and widely that the replacement is facing a very large and messy problem and that no replacement is going to fix the mess immediately,” Kelley counseled.

Establish Parameters

• “Put parameters on the problem and identify what the [new] leader has control over, e.g., operations, stakeholder management, etc., and what the leader has very little control over, [such as] inflation, energy prices, global supply chain problems, the fallout from the war in Ukraine, etc.,” he recommended.

Lessons For Aspiring CEOs

Distance Yourself From The Crisis

“Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt are eying a run towards 10 Downing Street [all]have one thing in common: they can distance themselves from the [current] crisis quite easily,” Juan Carlos Lascurain, CEO of Grosvenor Square Consulting Group, a politically-focused consulting firm, said via email.

Why are they able to put daylight between themselves and the crisis?

“Because they were not part of Truss' cabinet,” he noted.

Results Matter

“No matter how much support you have to lead, your power comes from delivering results and from creating consensus with the power brokers,” Lascurain observed.

‘Failure Is Not Fatal’

‘Winston Churchill said it best: ‘Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts,” Irina Tsukerman, a geopolitical analyst and president of Scarab Rising,” said via email.

“Business leaders should not despair even after being ousted from power or suffering other significant setbacks. Even grave errors in judgment and missed opportunities can be recouped by following the strategy that seems to be working for [Boris] Johnson,” she said.

‘Be Ready For The Next Opportunity’

“Be ready for the next opportunity—it can be ‘ out of the blue’ just as it [was] for Liz Truss—and just as it is now happening with her remarkably expeditious burnout,” Tsukerman pointed out.

Have Humility

“Have the humility to assess your mistakes and explain why and how your strategy will be different. You may not be changed as a person entirely, but if you are willing to demonstrate what you will do differently, you may still persuade relevant parties and regain their trust, especially in the absence of particularly striking alternative options,” she recommended.

Take The Initiative

“Be persistent and take the initiative,” Tsukerman advised. “Boris Johnson reportedly has been privately lobbying the very people whose confidence he lost recently and some of whom even betrayed and undermined him, convinced that political or business interests, when aligned at the right times, can push past grievances and tensions aside.

“While many leaders in the business world may be tempted to obsess over loyalty or close alliance and personal histories, if they want to succeed, they have to keep in mind that most alliances are temporary in nature, interests and paths may diverge, so when there is an opportunity seize the chance as it [is] currently shaping out to be and maneuver the obstacles as they come,” she said.

Capitalize On What Worked Before

“If you came to leadership to begin with, something must have worked for you along the way. Figure out what in your past made people believe in you, return to your roots, set aside past errors, and focus on making your past achievements shine under new circumstances,” Tsukerman concluded.