Leading in a crisis The power of transparency
December 2015
Key points
- The power of transparency is a core theme.
- Leaders who promote and model transparent behaviours and instil a transparent culture in their organisations can use crises as learning and improvement opportunities.
- Those that don’t work in this way may be destined to recurrent failure.
In this thought paper, Blair Sadler and Kevin Stewart draw on experiences from their roles as chief executive of a children’s hospital in San Diego, California and as chief medical officer of a general hospital trust in the south of England.
The authors review the management of serious clinical crises in the United States, lessons learned from other industries, the experience of the Mid-Staffordshire crisis in the NHS and the subsequent reports by Robert Francis and Don Berwick. They look at legal and media barriers to effective action, review lessons learned from the ‘second victim’ literature and provide recommendations for action for both organisations and leaders.
Further reading
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