The BP Oil spill is only one of a multitude of crises that leaders encounter on a regular basis. I had this in mind when I ran across this quote from Patrick Lagadec's most insightful book Preventing Chaos in a Crisis. He makes the following observation:
“…the ability to deal with a crisis situation is largely dependent on the structures that have been developed before chaos arrives. The event can in some ways be considered as an abrupt and brutal audit: at a moment’s notice, everything that was left unprepared becomes a complex problem, and every weakness comes rushing to the forefront.”
What a fantastic thing to bear in mind as we are tempted to deal with the 'day to day', forget to make investments in things like awareness and safety and think it is someone else's job to point out the evidence that things are running off the rails.