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Crisis management professional love acronyms, the easier to remember the better. Thus the simplest is appropriately one of the most important, STPA (Stop, Think, Plan, Act).

When you are in the heat of an emergency, all you need is STPA. STOP, and take a deep breadth, stop doing anything, have everyone be quiet for a second and mentally slow down. THINK, about what happened, is there still an imminent threat? Let everyone quickly float their ideas. Then, PLAN. What are the specific steps you could follow to solve this crisis? List them, which is first, second, and so on. Only then with a written plan, and a single person coordinating the actions of everyone else, should you finally ACT.

In a crisis everyone defaults to the mindset that more activity is better. People respond to the person giving orders and acting decisively. If you look like you, got this handled, then everyone assumes you do. When in fact, leadership skills and a bad plan can get you fired in a crisis. If you don’t slow down and think you will flail <sic>.

When the available time only allows for fast action, you have to practice beforehand until you can do it in your sleep. This makes predicting potential crisis situations a high priority management task. The field of Emergency Management offers some excellent principles.

We teach an incident management course with a full day practical exercise on the last day. We have asked every class to hold an STPA every two to three hours during the day. We then tell them they will fail at this, and to make sure they do it or they will not solve the case. Even with all the warnings, I have never seen a class do more than three in a twelve hour day, and most do one and then never remember again. So if you want to succeed in the next crisis you encounter, just remember to STPA and everything else will fall into place.