A Template for Crisis Leadership

An open-source tool to guide complex crisis decision-making.

My name is Aric Williamson, and I am a physician currently serving in the Navy as an intern at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Completing my third and fourth year at Tulane during a pandemic in the combined public health and medicine program gave me the opportunity to witness crisis leadership first-hand, albeit from a medical student’s perspective. Feeling that intentional leadership training in medicine is lacking, and with guidance from some mentors, I sought to expand my expertise in this area. This led me to the Crisis Leadership Canvas for COVID-19.

What is it?

Designed by Rachel Oftedahl and the Care Collaboratory using the fabulous process of “design thinking”, this is a template which serves as a guide for leaders managing potentially complex crises; those which involve multiple agencies and have many moving parts and for which typical policies and procedures are not sufficient.

Why do we need it?

Organizationally, typical crises operate from a top-down approach. Unfortunately, COVID-19 is anything but a typical crisis. Extreme events like a pandemic require the collaboration of multiple agencies each with their own internal structure. Within healthcare, formal templates to guide such complex organizational tasks seem to be lacking, and COVID-19 has exposed that need.

Does it work?

To answer this question I surveyed healthcare leaders, both physicians and administrators, to see what they thought about this template. Results were overwhelmingly positive, with some helpful suggestions to improve efficacy.