If an organization faces an event or crisis situation, a management team is usually appointed. Its members come from organizational units that are affected by the situation or are experts who can help those affected. “Everyone needs everyone then,” says experienced crisis manager Martin Bühler, who is now President of the Canton of Grisons.
Those affected by event and crisis situations need support, employees seek orientation and the normal operation of the organization must continue in addition to event or crisis management. As if that wasn't enough, an organization often becomes the focus of media and the public in an event or crisis situation. Guided tours in such locations are demanding. That is why it is placed in the hands of a staff of experienced specialists who support regular management.
“You can't handle complex situations in individual silos. They require joint solutions. That is why experience and decision-making authority on all key sub-factors of a crisis are brought together,” says Martin Bühler, who led the Grisons Cantonal Management Team from 2016 to 2021. The management team has a very flat hierarchy and everyone works together on equal footing. “In crisis situations, everyone needs each other and everyone is aware of that.”
Loud thinking and factual criticism
Martin Bühler is a political scientist and militia officer. For the Swiss Army, he spent several years working abroad to support UN, OSCE and KFOR/NATO missions in the Middle East, the Balkans and African countries. He made a name for himself as a crisis manager after the rock slide at Bondo, major forest fires in South Bünden and especially during the pandemic. “Without the practice of the previous crises, it would have taken us longer to get going and would probably have had a harder time even during the pandemic,” he says looking back. In 2021, he was elected to the Graubünden Governing Council.
The work of a management team is clearly structured. Checklists, schemes, schedules and established processes promote fast and efficient work. At the same time, however, management should also provide space for unconventional solutions, “thinking out loud” and factual criticism, because coping with an event or crisis situation requires ways of thinking and decisions that rarely ever occur in a normal situation. The management staff therefore has a flat hierarchy; the head of the management staff is a “primus inter pares”.
Rules that don't always apply in everyday life
“Structures and efficiency are important in staff work,” says Bühler. “But I also want to create spaces in which creative solutions can be created.” Leadership in an event or crisis situation follows rules that do not always apply in everyday life. Not least because of this, the event and crisis organization must provide regular and transparent information about the situation and its activities and conduct a dialogue with those affected.
“Crisis management is a dialogue with those affected,” says Bühler. “If you don't speak the same language, it won't work.” Bühler also makes the language comparison figuratively: “Technical terms, abbreviations and military or management gobbledygook are not understood by the general population. If a crisis organization wants to talk to those affected, it must adapt to their language. Only then will they accept and trust the organization.”
Martin Bühler is one of the numerous experts published in the new textbook Crisis management — refocused talk about their experiences. It looks beyond traditional crisis management and enables readers to learn from related subject areas. Numerous reports include not only crisis managers, but also experts from the fields of surgery, psychology, aviation, tourism and the media. Executive work is one of the important topics of this book.
More about this book at www.gartmann.biz/author
Martin Bühler
Political scientist Martin Bühler (*1976) has been a member of the government of the Canton of Graubünden since 2023. From 2016 to 2022, he headed the Canton's Office of Military and Civil Protection and the cantonal management staff. During the pandemic, he became nationally known as a crisis manager. The Swiss Army militia officer spent several years working abroad. He is now a colonel in the General Staff of the Special Forces Command. Bühler is married and the father of three children.