The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
What really happens when a crisis hits an organization—and how technology is influencing decisions and reputation impacts. Come hear what happened when experienced leaders were actually in the middle of a crisis—and capture the lessons before it happens to you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Your host, Tom Mueller, is a veteran crisis manager and trainer with more than 30 years in the corporate communications and crisis fields. Tom currently works as an executive coach and crisis trainer with WPNT Communications, and as a contract public information officer and trainer through his personal company, Tom Mueller Communications LLC.
Our goal is to help you grow your knowledge and awareness so you can be better prepared to lead should a major crisis threaten your organization.
Music credit: Special thanks to Nick Longoria from Austin, Texas for creating the theme music for the podcast.
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#BusinessContinuity #LeadingThroughCrisis
#CrisisResponse #management #leadership
The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
NYPD detective dishes on crises, 911, leadership under pressure
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
The fastest way to lose trust in a crisis is to pretend you know what you do not know. We sit down with Sal Lifrieri, a retired NYPD detective and member of an elite hostage rescue team who later worked in New York City emergency management and intelligence operations. His stories and lessons from “Leading Through Chaos” cut through the usual slogans and get into the real mechanics of crisis leadership when the media, politics, and your own ego all show up at once.
We talk about the critical first press conference, why early “facts” are often wrong, and how strong crisis communication can be both honest and steady. Sal breaks down the tension leaders feel between public relations guidance, legal caution, and the pressure to say something right now. If you lead a company, government team, or nonprofit, you will recognize the moment where certainty is rewarded socially but punished operationally.
The conversation also goes deeper into the emotional intelligence side of crisis management. Sal shares how cumulative trauma reshapes first responders over time, why relationships and support systems matter, and how one simple question from a boss “How are you doing?” can change a career. We also explore bureaucracy, the West Nile virus response, the risk communication problem created by malathion spraying, and why scanning for secondary effects is a leadership skill, not an afterthought.
Sal's book is Leading Through Chaos and can be found at major booksellers.
#crisiscommunications #leadership #policing #nypd #911stories #crisismanagement
We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Welcome And Guest Overview
Tom MuellerHi everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. On the show we talk all things crisis management and leadership. And we're not looking for those tidbits that help you become a better leader or crisis manager. I'm Tom Mueller. Thanks for joining us again on the show today. If you'd like to email the show, you can drop me online at Tom at Leadinginacrisis.com. On the show today, we're heading up to the east coast of these United States, to New York City, and we're going to talk to Sam Luffrieri. Sally is a veteran New York police department detective and member of the elite hostage rescue team. And since his retirement now, he's doing consulting for companies and government agencies, and recently wrote a book to capture some of his stories and lessons learned from his experiences working in the NYPD. Sal, you know that your title of your book is Leading Through Chaos. And that kind of sounds like my life most days. Welcome to the show.
Sal LifrieriThanks, Sam. I really appreciate being
From NYPD Intelligence To OEM
Sal Lifrierihere.
Tom MuellerHey, give our listeners a quick uh biography about you and your experiences.
Sal LifrieriUh, you know, 20 years with the NYPD, ran through multiple assignments. The last part of my uh the last half of my career was out of the intelligence division, which is modeled after the Secret Service. So half does criminal investigations, normally organized crime, the other half does executive and you know dignitary protection. And so I was uh I was fortunate enough to to go into uh the intelligence division, and they put me in charge of Russian organized crime. So I got to chase you know Boris and Natasha around for a while, and then went to uh took over uh protective operations for the elected officials, doing the threat assessments and threat investigations. And then the last half, for the last part of that assignment, um Rudy Giuliani was the mayor in New York at the time, and he had taken emergency management away from the police department and created his own mayoral agency. And I got called in the office and told that I was gonna go over to OEM and I was gonna work on the city's chembioterrorism plan, which should really give you a warm and fuzzy considering I barely got through high school chemistry and biology, but we went over to work on it. So and we did we did a good job. We had we had a great team of people, and we so we got to do a lot of good stuff, and that's really where uh it just gave me that entire episode, it just gave me the second half of the new career that I wound up walking into, and that I I was again fortunate enough that I would I was appointed director of security and intelligence operations, and so I got good exposure literally around the world with other countries and other intelligence agencies, and really got to learn the craft that I could take into the next uh the next part of my life.
Tom MuellerSo, being that director of security and intelligence operations, what was, you know, gosh, what's a story coming out of that experience, right? I
Designing Command Centers For Reality
Tom Muellermean, I think about some of the TV shows that are out there, you know, the CSI or Law and Order, those shows, and all set in New York, because there's always something happening there, right?
Sal LifrieriWell, that's true. I mean, uh, New York was just absolutely incredible with the amount of things that happened and the frequency at which it happened. You know, you talk about, you know, planning for crisis. When we built out our new command center, you know, one of the thoughts was that we were going to put it in, you know, underground and basically build a bunker. And what we realized was that New Year, New York has over 300 water main breaks a year. And so, you know, under, I operate under LaFreerie's law, which is very simple. It just said that Murphy was an optimist. And I figured, you know, I had the security design for it. And I figured if we put it underground, you know, with my luck, we'd wind up with a water main break and we'd wind up with the world's most expensive pool. So we had, you know, we had we had to deal with issues like that. But there was always something happening.
Tom MuellerYeah. Well, now in your book, you you talk a lot about, you know, kind of the things that you've dealt with in there. And I'm curious if you can share with our audience some of the common mistakes that you've seen leaders make over the years and sort of your counsel for executives or elected officials today.
First Press Conference Mistakes
Sal LifrieriSo I think the you know, the big the big issues that you run into when it when the crisis initially happens, right, is you have those two paths that automatically pop up. You have the one path that says, you know, this is the public perception and this is what we need to do, and we got to get back to normal. Uh, or, you know, we got it isn't as bad. And then you have the you have the other path where you know you're trying to figure out what's really going on and how do you deal with it. And I think the that's probably one of the most difficult times for the for the leadership. And what they more times than not, what they don't do is in the initial press conference, you know, the normally the first comments that are made in a press conference and the first facts that come out are pretty wrong, right? And then they force themselves to have to go back and and retract from that, right? And I think the, you know, it's okay for a leader to get up and say, we don't know just yet. But these are the things that we're looking at. And if you can get in front of the questions that the press is going to be hitting you with, you know, you can anticipate it. You take a lot of steam out of it. But if you get up and you, you know, you feel that you're duty bound, you have to make those statements. You got to say something. And that's a problem. And, you know, when you look at leadership, you know, the people that are standing in front of the mic aren't not necessarily the ones with the expertise. It's the people in the background that have the expertise. And you hope that you got briefed appropriately, and you hope that you don't have to deal with all of the other corporate issues with the who gets to tell the boss the best story, right? So you got to start parsing through all of that. And so it's when the when those situations develop, it's kind of tough right in the very beginning. But probably the key most important thing is the ability to get up, take responsibility, say, listen, we're looking into it, we're investigating it. These are the questions I have, these are the answers I want. And we'll get back to you with an answer.
Tom MuellerYeah, good advice there. It can be so difficult to do that, though, if you know you've got a hostile press out there just hammering you with questions about accountability, who's responsible, uh, you know, why weren't you better prepared for whatever this thing was? A lot of tough questions you got to deal with in those situations.
Ego PR And Legal Collide
Tom MuellerUh, in your book, you talk a little bit about how ego can get in the way of uh leaders being effective. And talk to us a little bit about your experience there and your advice.
Sal LifrieriSo, ego is probably one of the most critical things that you have to try and get under control as a leader. You know, you people who are in leadership positions for the most part are you know type A personalities, right? They want to be in the lead, they want to take control of the situation. And the ego just doesn't allow them to believe and understand that, hey, you know, you may not be well suited to be the right guy to be able to do this, right? But they they become that duty bound, they become forced to make those decisions. And, you know, again, you're getting, you know, the where you get caught, you got public relations behind you telling you that you got to put a good spin on it. And then you have legal telling you to shut up, don't say anything, and don't take responsibility for anything. Right. So it's it's difficult. And that's where you see leadership comes out and says, you know what, I'm in charge. It's my call. And they'll go out and they'll they'll make the statements, and that's what normally gets them in trouble.
Tom MuellerYeah, if I ever write a book, I think there's going to be a chapter that's uh titled Quotes I'd like to have back.
Sal LifrieriYeah.
Tom MuellerWhere you stepped out and said something that you felt was true, but in fact, not so much. And those are those are hard lessons to learn. Um yeah.
Sal LifrieriI was gonna say a great example of that, right? With without getting into a whole lot of detail about it. But if you look at 9-11 and you look at the EPA coming out, right? Christy Todd Whitman coming out with a comment, the air is okay, it's safe, you can get in. All of the pressures that were put on her to get everybody back to normal as quickly as possible, and then having a couple of years later coming out and saying, wait a second, we were dead wrong. And that's probably a bad analogy, but yeah, we were they were just wrong. Yeah. And and you have people getting sick.
Tom MuellerWell, yeah, I mean, that's a huge issue with the fire department of New York now, right? Is with guys who are suffered inhalation injuries and are dealing with those types of medical issues today. So yeah. Yeah, that's a really good example, actually, of uh, you know, how being under pressure and moving ahead can really harm people, actually.
Sal LifrieriYou know, the other the other thing that it was in in thinking about the show and what we were going to talk about, you know, one of the things that you know popped into my mind was, you know, how in the middle of a crisis the stupid things come out and the stupid, you know, and some just the stupid people come out, right? Very well-intentioned, but doing something stupid. Uh I'll I'll give you a great story about it. We a couple of days after 9-11, I had been retired. I retired January of 01, nine months before 9-11. And 9-11 happened. I was doing some consulting work for the Department of Justice, and I got a call from one of their vendors that says, Hey, can you get into the city and see if what
The 9/11 Fishing Photo Op
Sal Lifrierithey need, what you know, what resources we could bring? And I was like, sure. And I go in, and the short of it is we stood up a new command center on the pier on the west side of Manhattan, and they asked me to take over security until the city can get their feet under them. So I'm out working on the pier, and we're about four or five days into it. And one of the people from the mayor's uh political advance group comes to me, and I and I swear the story is absolutely true. He comes up to me and he says, Hey, really good to see you. Because at that point in time, you didn't know who was still alive and who had perished. And so when you saw someone, it was like, Thank God you made it. And he comes over and we have that moment. And then he says to me, Listen, I'm glad you're here. You're the only guy that could really handle this. Because he knew for me from the detail and running Protective Ops. He said, Can you handle this? The mayor and the governor, we want them to make the city look like this is going back to normal. So here's what I want you to do. I need some fishing poles. And what we want to do is have the mayor and the governor on the end of the pier where the command center was to go fishing this afternoon. And I think that this is an absolute joke. Right? So thinking that he's just putting me on and we're having a giggle, so I said to him, sure. I said, you know what? I could get you the fishing poles, but I got a better idea. I have scuba divers that are searching the pier to make sure that we don't have bombs put under it. We'll coordinate it. I'll get a couple of fish, I'll give it to the scuba divers. When they throw the line in the water, the scuba divers will grab the hook, put the fish on it. This way it looks like they caught fish. I think it's hysterical. He looks at me and he goes, Great idea, but just do me one favor. Make sure the fish aren't frozen because the press is going to take pictures of it, and walks away. And it's like, you can't be the stupid. I mean, you oh my gosh. True story. So, you know, how they wanted to manipulate the public perception of what was going on and how do we get back to normal was these two guys to go fishing. And I never did get a chance to ask the mayor if he ever wanted to go fishing, but I I was I assumed the answer would, you know, probably be a serious no.
Tom MuellerYeah. Doesn't feel like something that Rudy would have uh you know put on the top of his list. Uh let's go appear that everything's normal and that, especially if that's not a normal activity for him in the first place.
unknownYeah.
Sal LifrieriIt's true.
Tom MuellerWell, yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
Emotional Toll On First Responders
Tom MuellerUm hey, one of the other things you talk about uh a little bit is kind of the emotional aspects, you know, the I've just kind of noted as emotional quotient uh when dealing with crisis situations like this. Tell us your um your takeaways on that.
Sal LifrieriI think the you know, as first responders, I think aone in the first responder community can, you know, can attest to you when things happen, you don't get the ability to walk away from it. You don't get the ability to, you know, to to fall into a puddle, if you will, right? That the an average person would. And over a period of time, those things build up. And when you run into a situation like a 9-11, where you run into like a mass casualty incident, you know, the the ability to be able to control that and to control your emotions is critical. And it wears on you. And the toll that it winds up taking by the time you get home is something that, you know, it it's not a switch that gets turned on immediately, but over a short period of time, it starts to build up. And it's something that you really have to be aware of and recognize the the changes that are going on. You know, I think a lot of you know a lot of the situations in personal relationships the first responders wind up having with you know the families, and you know, divorce rates are incredibly high, right? Because you start to change. There's a progression of time, right? And things, you know, let me just you don't you you become a totally different person. You become harder. And that's that's a lot, that's a lot to deal with on the home side.
Tom MuellerUh yeah, it is. And you, you know, the the psychological impacts of dealing with some of the horrific things that firefighters, police officers oftentimes have to deal with can be difficult. The emotional trauma is a serious, uh, a serious issue. And and of course, anybody who's been through a major trauma will suffer some of that. You know, it may not be full PTSD, but it's you know, it's an emotional impact that's affecting your life, your personality, and of course your loved ones then.
A Case That Changes You
Tom MuellerWell, Sal, did you have a particular um incident in working with as a detective or hostage rescue that uh you know really sort of imprinted on you with the the emotional side?
Sal LifrieriAh, the emotional, yeah. I mean, I when I was a detective, um, I had, you know, I was sort of fortunate again, and I use that term a lot, but I just really was. I was blessed in the career that I had had. And I got to live out a boyhood dream. I always wanted to be a New York City cop since I was in the fourth grade. So I, you know, got I got to live out the dream that I wanted to be a homicide detective, and I got it. And when one of the, you know, one of the cases that I had had there was a a woman who, albeit accidentally, roasted a baby. And having to react and respond to that, we went to went to the hospital when the baby was brought to the hospital by by her and her boyfriend. And we got to the hospital and you know, the baby, the infant that you know had was deceased. And while we're talking to her, you know, she realizes and she starts crying and save my baby, my baby. And we thought it was her, you know, the baby that was with her. And she said, No, my other baby. And we wind up, we get the address of where she is, we race back to the house. And when we get into the room, what she had done was there were these propane heaters or gas heaters that she had had hooked up. And she had given the baby a, the baby and the little toddler. She gave them, you know, the bath, fed them, gave them a bath, put the pajamas on, put them in the bedroom, put the baby in a crib in a crib right next to the heater. And then the other little toddler was on the bed, gave them a bottle, and then she locks the door and went to a boyfriend's house. And in the morning wakes up and realizes she slept through the night, goes to the and then goes home, finds the infant, picks the infant up, runs out, and leaves the toddler in the in the bedroom. And she goes to the boyfriend, the boyfriend jumps in a cab, they take her to the hot, they take them to the hospital, and that's where we get involved with it. And when we get back to, when we finally get to the house to get to the toddler, he's lying on the floor, and I walk up to him and didn't know if he was alive or dead. And he just looks up at me with these little brown eyes, and he hands me his bottle and he goes, Juice. And he just like tears at your heartstrings.
Tom MuellerOh my gosh, that is so much better than where I thought this was going. That is wonderful.
Sal LifrieriYeah, so it, you know, it's things like that, right? You run the emotion of, you know, you're you're absolutely frustrated and you want to shoot her for being that stupid, and then you realize, excuse me, you realize you know, she was stupid in what she did, but she had no malice. There were during the course of my six years in the detective squad, there I handled a lot of the baby cases. And it was something that just continually built up, and it was ultimately the reason why I requested a transfer to get out and went to the intelligence division. Uh dealing with, you know, the baby cases was just after six years, you just kind of it wears you out. And that was that was one of them where you just you know, you just got the range of emotions where you saved the kid, but at the same point, you know, the baby is dead, and you just don't know which way you want to twist and turn on something like that. So that was probably one of the more emotional ones.
Tom MuellerWell, you feel so helpless uh oftentimes in those situations, right? Especially when you're accustomed to, you know, stepping in and intervening and helping people and fixing things and to find a situation there that you really had no control over and that you know had some horrific uh outcomes from it. I that takes an emotional toll on you. How do you how do you advise you know other detectives um or officers who you know maybe going through something like that or starting to feel the effects of, you know, the cumulative effects of dealing with situations like that?
Sal LifrieriYou know,
How Leaders Check On People
Sal Lifrierione of the one of the problems that we have in the department is that we've we're very much inward, right? We we wind up, you know, your your friends off duty become, you know, with the cops that you worked with, or guys who were on the job, or women that were on a job, uh, so that, you know, there's that camaraderie between us all. And that's not totally healthy, right? Because you're just constantly in that, and while there's that support mechanism that they understand, right? They've they've been there, they understand the issues and the feelings that you have, but you also need that outside, you know, sort of touch point where you need those friends that aren't the cops, right? That aren't on the job, that isn't in first responder community that can, you know, that'll listen to you and at some point, you know, close enough to you to be able to tell you, listen, you got a you got a potential problem here, you know, you know, gee, what's happening? What's going on, right? Uh, are you okay? Right. That was one of the great lines, you know, and I wrote about it in the book. You know, I I was fortunate enough one of the one of the chiefs who got me into the intelligence division when I interviewed him, when I went to brief him rather, on a uh on a homicide case, just he pushed the folder back on me and he says, How are you doing? And that was a great leadership point. And I and I I mentioned it in the book in Leading Through Chaos. It's, you know, the the ability of a leader to be able to talk to your staff and ask them, How are you doing? And that was probably the most one of the most critical things in in my career. And it, you know, it made me realize, wait a second, he's actually asking me how I'm doing. And it and it's important, and it was heartfelt. It wasn't, you know, check a box. Right. And so it something that I think would be important for you know for guys to realize is sort of get out of that inner circle if possible, and then as a leader, Understand that the people that you have under you, if you have somebody that's on is that that appears to be at that breaking point or is is having a problem, ask them how are you, you know, what are you how are you doing? And see what they're up to. I mention it in the book, you know, it it's sometimes it's just give them a lifeline. They that what they're doing right now may be burnt out, but they got a lot to give. And recognizing that ability and to to kind of point them in the direction is part of what being a leader is all about.
Tom MuellerAnd there's a little bit of management by walking around there too, right? It's getting out and visiting the troops, uh, the people who are, you know, out in the field working, dealing with these incidents. I think about a you know, a couple of large incidents that I worked, like one major oil spill out on the Gulf Coast. Uh, and the executives that I worked for, I was a public information officer uh for that executive, and I spent a lot of time out in the field, you know, walking beaches, talking to the teams who are working there, uh, and just checking in to see how are you doing, how are we doing? Because there's in those situations, there's so much pressure, you know, there's media coverage, there's politicians trying to get in there to, you know, to get in front of the cameras, and they don't always necessarily have your best interests or others' best interests in heart when they're doing those kind of things. So I think that's a terrific point around, you know, leadership and being close to your people. And that comes back to that emotional quotient as well. Uh, but I think it takes a lot of confidence, you know, to be able to do that, to sort of turn off the give direction every moment uh kind of mentality that leaders often have, and to be able to stop and just open up the empathy and talk to people as human beings.
Sal LifrieriSo and the ability, and the ability to be able to, you know, do the job themselves, right? Lead by example. You know, I would, you know, if I was going to ask one of my guys when we were on a protective assignment, if I was, if it was raining outside and we needed to take a look around the building, I'd go out and walk out, walk around. And I know somebody, one of the one of the executives had looked at me one day and he said, You have people to do that. Why are you doing it? I said, Because when I ask my people to go out and do it, they know I have done it. And they'll, you know, there's there's no problem. It's not me telling them, I you go in the rain, I'm gonna stay here. You know, I'll go out with them, I'll walk with them. And I think that's the you know, that's the the key thing where people, if you're being led by someone, you want to know that you know that they can do it and that they're there with you. And then if they can't do it themselves, they'll get you the resources that you need.
Bureaucracy West Nile And Backlash
Tom MuellerWell, Sal, another thing that I picked up from the uh the book is sort of the issue of managing bureaucracy. And you know, of course, we see that in in government agencies, we see it in you know, in corporate uh in companies as well, right? You get layers that add up that slow decision making. And uh in a crisis situation or developing situation, you know, that can really hamper your response. So what's your take on on you know dealing with that bureaucracy and still being an effective leader?
Sal LifrieriYou know, sometimes you have to lead by you know by your convictions, right? And I think a a great example of it is, you know, everybody's familiar with you know what's now West Nile virus, right? And you know, dealing with you know the encephalitis when it came through. Um, you know, and I one of the great examples of it was why why I bring it out, is that when that first happened, we had gotten a call in the office. Again, I was running intelligence operations, we had gotten a call in the office at OEM that two individuals had two senior citizens, had not related to each other, not connected to each other, had both died from an encephalitis. And originally it had come in that it was equine encephalitis. And so we at the at that point in time, you know, sometimes a little bit of information is a dangerous thing. We had known that Saddam Hussein was working with mosquitoes. They were practicing with mosquitoes to use them as a vector for biological agents. And we knew that they were playing with equine encephalitis, and we thought that that was coming in. And ultimately, you know, as it's a long-involved case, but the the short of it, ultimately, it winds up being determined that it wasn't equine encephalitis, it was St. Louis encephalitis. And, you know, the as the case was going, there was a um a woman named, I believe her name was McNamara, who was the was a vet and at the Bronx Zoo, and she started recognizing that birds were dying, and she started looking at what was going on. And she just constantly, like, in our opinion, the real hero out of the story, she was convinced that this could have been West Nile, that there would there was a problem with it. And the the issue at that point in time was that West Nile had not been in the Western Hemisphere. And so she, you know, her coming out and realizing it, and she just kept pushing and going from lab to lab to lab until somebody actually took serious looks at it and came back and said, and you know, no, you're right, this isn't this isn't St. Louis, this is West Nile. But the entire process where she just kept getting pushback and saying you can't we've never seen West Nile, therefore it can't be, and how she had to manage through the system, I think is a great case study about how to deal with with situations like that when you're running up against, you know, people didn't want to know about West Nile. Think about the political implications of that or the public risk. You know, all of a sudden you have something that was never here, never seen in the Western hemisphere, and now it's here. Well, what now what do we do? Right? Similar to, you know, COVID, right? But the, you know, the the the other parts of that was that when we realized that mosquitoes were the vector that was producing this, we wound up making a decision that, okay, recommendation rather, that we were going to overspray the city with mallathion. And so the decision was made we were gonna, we were gonna start the cereals again, ground spraying to get rid of the mosquito population. What was problematic for us in the middle of all of that other crisis was the fact that a couple of months earlier, we had issued a report that said if you take malathion and boil it down to a 50% reduction, you can get sarin out of it. And all of a sudden, people read that and then came out and said, Well, you're gonna you're gonna hit us with sarin to get rid of mosquitoes, and created that secondary crisis, right? Which you know became a became a rather big problem to contend with. Right. So you know, how do you how do you stay within your convictions and then you know, at the same time dealing with, you know, the the public outcry and those secondary effects, you know, one of the things I talk about in the book is the stop technique. And you know, what it's how do you how do you look at a situation and plan and process it? And in short, what it winds up doing is it gives you that opportunity to stop and look at secondary effects. And that was not something that we had thought about when with the spraying on the mallathion was what what was that secondary effect that could have occurred? And somebody would have realized, wait a second, you know, we're gonna have a political issue here that we have to jump out and get in front of. So yeah.
Tom MuellerAnd is that a real thing, Sal, if you're spraying malathion? Is that a potential, you know, mutation of that, if it's, you know, on the ground mixing whatever, or was that just kind of one of those minor things that got blown up big?
Sal LifrieriIt sort of got blown up big. You know, we were at the time, we were really, you know, concerned about chemical and biological terrorism. We were looking at the different plannings, we were looking at different attack methodologies that could be deployed. Excuse me. So we will we were looking at things like that. And there was the report that was written about you know how normal common things like malathion is a is a regular insecticide that you could buy over the counter. And if you go to like farmland, you know, they could buy it in 50-gallon drums to be able to spray large areas of crop. And so the idea was if you went up and you bought something like that, you were able to boil it down. And we didn't get through the entire process. We didn't believe all of it. But the the short of it was you can reduce it to create a uh a sarin-type gas.
Tom MuellerWow, so many fascinating, you know, side roads uh from that role that you were in there, Sal. I, you know, thinking about trying to keep New York City safe and secure is just mind-numbing for me. So, you know, God bless you for being part of the team that was working actively to do all of that. It's a lot of sleepless nights, I would think.
Planning For Being Overwhelmed
Sal LifrieriYou know, one thing that just bounced into my mind, I just want to, when you talk about leaders and what you should be considering and thinking about is, you know, we have a tendency of never lead, never planning for being overwhelmed. And, you know, the you always write the plan to say, if this happens, I could do this, I could do that, right? And this is what the resources I'll throw at it. But in the print in the planning for 9-11, we had always planned that maybe a little piper club plane with small plane would hit the trade center. We never anticipated hijackings and ultimately would happen. But we had had a cockiness about us that there was that we would never be overwhelmed. We had a first response capability between the police, fire, and EMS of over 60,000 first responders, right? With which was the size of small armies, right? Yeah. With with an aviation unit that qualified as a uh as an Air Force and a harbor unit that qualified as a Navy. So we always had that cockiness about us. And one of the key things in the planning was that we'd never be overwhelmed. And 9-11 proved that you can be overwhelmed. And I think subsequent planning over the years has shown that companies are getting smarter about how what would happen if we got overwhelmed. What would we do? And traditionally it was always you throw your hands up and you go, Well, what can I do? You know, you just then you just walk away. Well, you can't walk away if you're in a leadership position. So um just it was a thought as you were talking about, you know, preparing for the city, that was protecting the city. That was something that was a hard-learned lesson.
Book Plug And Sign Off
Tom MuellerWell, Sal, the the book is Leading Through Chaos, and um good luck with that. And thank you for being on the show today. It's been a really fun conversation.
Sal LifrieriYeah, I've enjoyed having the conversation that's been uh seeing it again soon.
Tom MuellerAnd that's gonna do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Hey, if you'd like to email the show, drop me a line again, comment leadinginacrisis.com, and we will see you again soon for another episode. Take care.
