Crisis Management

Every time I turn around, I seem to hear or read someone saying something about managing a crisis. I always liked that you can look at a crisis in two ways, negatively as a problem or positively as an opportunity. I remember reading once that the Chinese ideogram is two charaters, superimposed. (I don't know if that is true - I don"t speak or read Chinese.) The two characters are 'danger' and 'opportunity'. That captures the dichotomy that I recognize. You can look at a crisis in that dark light, that there is a problem of some kind. Or you can look at with the lighter colouring, that the crisis presents an opportunity for positive change.

A local social service agency changed its name to Point In Time a few years ago. Personally, I'm not keen on it - to the public, it doesn't speak to what the agency is about- but I understand it. They deal with people in crisis of some kind (you don't go to them if everything in your life is fine) and a crisis indicates you have reached that point in time where you are willing to change. Most of the time, people aren't willing to change, even if something isn't great, because the prospect of changing is scarier (read more painful) than maintaining life as it is. A crisis presents the opportunity to change that.