After the dust had settled, the division CEO confided he had never seen a culture as broken as the one he encountered when he was hired. What it took to get his organization on its feet and moving in the right direction was an amalgam of powerful forces: an unprecedented regulatory fiat, third-party oversight and, above all, leaders at every level who were open to learning. The CEO would be the first to admit there was no solitary hero.
Observers often label an organizational crisis as financial or technological or as a failure of leadership, but the reality defies simple categories. We have studied firsthand a crisis in the ultimate high-pressure industry. The resolution demonstrates that organizations are more likely to weather a storm and emerge stronger if leaders avoid oversimplifying the situation and instead allow a gradual understanding to emerge and be tested in action.1 In the case study, managers and employees at every level learned life-changing lessons — lessons that can be used in all industries to improve managers’ effectiveness and companies’ competitiveness in turbulent business environments.
The crisis at Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford, Connecticut, is a tale of lost trust, external pressure, internal strife, personal transformation, cultural change and emergent leadership.2 The resolution evolved from daily decisions, reactions to decisions and many contributors’ creative solutions.... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
Become a premium subscriber today to read this and all MIT Sloan Managmeent Review articles.
Buy this article. Purchase one or more copies of this article in PDF form.
Become a premium subscriber today to read this article and the entire archive of MIT SMR articles.
Upgrade your existing subscription to premium
Sign in if you are a premium subscriber.
Do you subscribe the MIT Sloan Management Review in print? Enter the email address and password you used when ordering. Don't remember? Lookup your subscription account information
- Register for free access to recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
- Subscribe and read articles from the past three years online.
- Premium subscription give you access to the entire archive of articles.
