When multiple crises hit your organization simultaneously—think COVID-19 disrupting operations while facing a cyberattack and supply chain breakdown—traditional crisis management approaches fail. Most leaders discover this reality too late, through costly coordination breakdowns.
This groundbreaking research from the Center for Creative Leadership reveals why coordinating multiple specialized teams during interconnected crises requires fundamentally different approaches than managing isolated emergencies. Drawing from decades of research across military, healthcare, and emergency response contexts, the authors identify the five critical coordination challenges that determine whether organizations survive or thrive when facing what researchers call “polycrisis”—multiple cascading crises that amplify each other’s impact.
The Five Make-or-Break Coordination Challenges:
- Team Formation Under Uncertainty – You can’t predict which crisis combinations will hit, but you can prepare your teams to collaborate across unexpected boundaries
- Real-Time Coordination Dynamics – Managing rapidly shifting team interdependencies as crises evolve and multiply
- Competing Loyalties and Goals – Keeping teams aligned on shared objectives while maintaining their specialized expertise
- Information Overload – Balancing rapid decision-making with critical knowledge sharing across team boundaries
- Leadership Authority Confusion – Clarifying who makes decisions when multiple urgent situations demand immediate attention
What You’ll Learn:
Rather than theoretical frameworks, this research provides battle-tested tools including team mapping exercises, coordination protocols, communication structures, and leadership transition processes. You’ll discover how organizations like Rotterdam’s port authority rapidly configure different team combinations based on crisis severity, and why the most effective responses alternate between centralized command and distributed decision-making.
The research includes practical implementation guides with templates for team charters, coordination cycle frameworks, and assessment tools you can use immediately. Whether you’re preparing for potential future crises or currently managing multiple challenges, these evidence-based strategies help you avoid the coordination failures that derail most organizations while positioning your teams to achieve breakthrough results under pressure.
Bottom Line: The choice is clear—invest now in building multiteam coordination capabilities, or learn their importance through potentially catastrophic failures. The tools exist, the research is proven, and the need is urgent.
