In Sydney Finkelstein’s classic study of corporate collapses, Why Smart Executives Fail, the evidence that business leaders would have needed to avoid fiasco was available to them in every one of the cases that the author and his team examined. The book was written in 2004, yet the problem it highlights persists. My colleagues and I have spent almost 20 years examining crises, including Hurricane Katrina and the current coronavirus pandemic. In these situations, too, the cracks in organization, system, and community foundations have often been clear to see, if leadership had been looking. But despite warnings, leaders have been unable, or unwilling, to give credence to the risks. They overlooked or ignored them — and the cost of their inaction has been high.
