Conquering Crisis summary

There’s a saying in the military: bad news doesn’t get better with age. And during step two of a crisis – the Report stage – that truth is especially critical. After assessing the situation, a leader’s next duty is to communicate the facts – clearly, honestly, and quickly.

In Iraq, 2008, Admiral McRaven learned this lesson firsthand. Just hours after arriving to take command, he was woken up in the middle of the night with devastating news. A security guard, who was also a relative of Iraq’s prime minister at the time, had been accidentally killed during a raid. Instead of waiting until morning, McRaven called General Petraeus immediately to deliver the bad news. Petraeus wasn’t pleased, but he made it clear: being informed right away gave them the precious time they needed to contain the fallout. And from then on Petraus trusted McRaven because he knew he would keep him informed even if the news was bad. 

In the smoky, crowded War Rooms of 1942 London, Winston Churchill thumped his walking stick against a map and growled at his generals. The German battleship Tirpitz haunted him like a nightmare. If she broke free from Norway’s fjords, Britain could lose control of the seas – and maybe the war. Frustrated with excuses about impenetrable defenses, Churchill demanded not just one plan to deal with the threat, but multiple options. In Churchill’s mind, flexibility was more than a strategy – it was survival.

So his commanders hatched daring alternatives: they could ram a destroyer into the only dock that could repair the Tirpitz. They could deploy mini-submarines to plant explosives beneath the ship’s hull. Ultimately, they pushed both of these solutions forward simultaneously. Success didn’t come all at once, but Churchill eventually neutralized the threat. This was Containment in action – the third step in Admiral McRaven’s five-phase model for managing a crisis. 

Major Dick Meadows, with his broad shoulders, chiseled jaw, and crew cut, looked like he could still run through a brick wall at sixty years old. In 1991, this legendary Special Forces operator visited McRaven, then a Naval Postgraduate School student, to discuss Operation Eagle Claw. This was the failed 1980 mission to rescue American hostages held in Tehran. Over beers, Meadows revealed what he believed was the operation's fatal flaw. He said: “We should have kept going with the rehearsal. We should have done the rehearsal again and again and again if we needed to… We rushed everything.” 

The ambitious rescue plan required Special Forces to fly with a C-130 aircraft to a remote Iranian landing zone called Desert One, where they would link up with helicopters from the USS Nimitz. The combined force would move to a second staging area, drive into Tehran, assault the embassy, and extract the hostages. The mission collapsed when three helicopters turned back due to a sandstorm. Then, during refueling at Desert One, a helicopter collided with a C-130, killing eight servicemen. The subsequent Holloway investigation identified massive failures in planning, coordination, training, equipment, command and control, and intelligence – compounded by a sense of urgency from the Carter White House.

Some crises explode in a single shocking moment. But many, especially the hardest ones, drag on like sieges. They don’t end with a press release or a battle won, and they can wear down even seasoned leaders. That’s why the final step in McRaven’s crisis playbook is to Manage the long haul, which means sustaining tempo and maintaining team morale over time.

Let’s rewind to 205 BCE. Rome was on the brink, its armies repeatedly outmaneuvered by Carthaginian general Hannibal. But the young Scipio Africanus had an audacious solution. Instead of reacting to Hannibal’s rapid advances in Italy, Rome would flip the script. They’d cross the sea and attack Carthage itself. This would force Hannibal to retreat and defend his homeland – weakening his forces and damaging morale.