Reaction March 4 – Think like a sociopath, act like a saint

Mitroff argues that traditional ways of thinking when planning for crises can work as a scanning mechanism for determining risky and weak areas for an organization, however conventional ways of thinking may be damaging at the same time. He argued that the conventional methods for thinking about crises are largely responsible for causing major crises instead of acting as an early detection mechanism. “Conventional methods are too ‘rational’ to anticipate and cope with abnormal states of mind” (p.43).

The new type of crises Mitroff talks about in the article are referred to as “abnormal accidents”, which are intentional accidents caused by deliberate acts of evil such as: bombings, kidnappings, cyber attacks, cheating, stealing, and manipulating the truth.
These abnormal accidents are a result of intentional break up of complex technical, organizational and social systems.

But due to the abnormality of these intentional crises, they are not easy to plan for and consider while planning for future crises. However, businesses today need to plan and get ready for the abnormal. So many of the recent business scandals and other organizational crises seem so unreal that it is hard for organizations to think that it will happen to them, but they actually can happen to any organization. Organizations need to prepare for abnormal accidents by developing special skills and new thinking skills.

Executives can start preparing for these abnormal crises by engaging in different organizational exercises. One of these suggested exercises is the “wheel of crises” where executives force themselves to select crises randomly and apply it to their organization. Another technique is asking people to act as “internal assassins” and role play to find out the weak points of the organization or the production process to identify weak points and possible scams organizations might be in danger of. One more strategy is “spy games” where people from outside the organization asses the systems of the organization and provide the company with a list of possible problem areas.

Mitroff suggests executives and managers to think like a controlled paranoid by “developing the ability to think so that one can forecast potential threats against one’s person, organizations and institutions with which one makes contact” (p. 49). This kind of thinking the absurd also helps executives to realize more bizarre situations they might be in danger of, which they cannot realize through conventional ways of thinking.

This article makes us realize that organizations need to start thinking about the unthinkable if they want to prepare for the crises of today. Being a paranoid may help managers and executives to identify certain situations and potential problematic areas that might put them in danger in the future.