Great post.
I can’t emphasize enough how often there is a failure to act in a crisis while leaders search for the optimal solution or try to find a nuanced communication strategy. Usually this is about a solution that minimizes all the awful side-effects of acting—how can revenue be preserved, how can employees remain, how can some elements of business as usual remain, and so on. It is a crisis, the solution is painful and trying to find a solution that is less painful than the crisis is futile and time spent doing that is likely to make the crisis worse. The communication of action needs to be blunt and crisp—not for a lack of empathy but as a way to assure accountability for the actions that seem counter to most intuition.