ISQua: Critical Crisis Thinking Webinar 4: As the crisis develops – Sustaining the capability to respond

During a crisis there is limited time to think and analyse before deciding what to do. There may also be incomplete or incorrect information, inadequate resources, sudden changes in goals due to external events or internal decisions, and conflicting priorities between different stakeholders. This leads to situations where the outcome of an action means that one quality or aspect of something is lost in return for another quality or aspect being gained, i.e., where trade-offs become necessary. Trade-offs are, however, not unique to crises but actually an indispensable part of everyday activities.

The lecture will introduce and explain the so-called Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off (ETTO) principle and show how it can be seen on all levels and in all kinds of activity. The irony of the ETTO principle is that people are expected to be both efficient and thorough at the same time – or rather to be thorough, when with hindsight it was wrong to be efficient.

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