In a crisis one will face multiple challenges. A lot of these challenges present themselves as paradoxes - a problem that has two opposite forces. If you solve one side of the problem, the other gets worse and vice versa. What do you do then? Isn’t this hopeless?

Your resources are scarce, and you are under immense time pressure. Your peers have already declared you are/your business is done for. What are you left with? You are left with yourself and that is where managing your own personal reseources comes in. The better you do this, the better you are equiped to face anything that life throws at you.

Miyamoto Musashi was a famous swords man and martial artist who lived in the years 1584 to 1645. Back then he was unrivalled in the realm of martial arts and revolutionized the art of fighting with the sword. In his last year just before dying he wrote the “Book of 5 Rings”, which is a manuscript of how to use his martial arts. He does not only describe martial arts on a technical level, but also from a spiritual and a psychological standpoint. There is an immense amount one can learn from this book - especially for strategic thinking and outmanoeuvring your opponent and in anything where you might have to “fight” against somebody.

In the Stanford Design Thinking Process one out of the 5 stages of the design process is called “Define”. This stage highlights the importance of defining a problem, in order to solve it. Usually in product design you will do this with a problem definition followed by a product specification. The same applies to a crisis. In order to solve a crisis, you first need to define the crisis.

In 2015-2018 I had the privilege to manage a crisis in our family business. In his article I share my top learnings from this experience and hope that this will help many in the current situation.

Unless you are a one-man show – and often even then, you will have to engage in choosing partners for you ventures. This is even more important than choosing your employees, as splitting up with a business partner usually comes with great difficulty (such as legals proceedings). Now the next question would be, what to look at? From my own experience, my family history and from many stories I have heard from current partners or mentors, we will cover some of the important points. As Warren Buffet says: “You cannot make a good deal with a bad person.”

Especially in crisis you will not have many decisions with a clarity about them. Thus, your ability to think in probabilities becomes incredibly valuable. By using probabilistic thinking your chances of success in a crisis will increase dramatically.

Coming from an engineering background, I principally use the Design Thinking Process when solving problems. After much reflection, I have noticed that the way designers and product developers think is not used a lot in management. So, how does one apply Design Thinking in crisis management?

Making the right decisions is probably the most important skill you can have in life. In a crisis scenario, the decisions you make are even more crucial than under normal circumstances. Therefore, in this article will cover nine tips for effective decision-making in times of crisis.

In this article we shall have a look at how the wisdom of stoic philosophers can be applied in a crisis or rather how stoic wisdom will help you get through a crisis.