What This is Spinal Tap Teaches Us About Crisis Management
This year marks the anniversary of This is Spinal Tap, the cult classic mockumentary about a fictitious rock band that has defined the genre. One of its most famous scenes features the band unveiling a Stonehenge stage set that was supposed to be monumental. Instead, due to someone confusing double quotes (inches) with single quotes (feet) in the technical specs in the production notes, the individual stones are only 18 inches tall.
Although the scene is satirical, it's a lesson in perseverance. Instead of stopping the show, the band soldiers on with its heavy metal music while dwarves dance around the miniature monoliths. The scene is comical and iconic in mockumentary history. Still, it also conveys a message to all of us: not everything that feels like a catastrophe in the moment qualifies as one, and your response to a situation can significantly change its impact.
This article discusses how a calm mind, coupled with a creative but rational response, can transform challenges into successes. Those who don't do crisis planning might find that their mantra is "when in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."
Don’t Panic Yet
The first step in managing any high-pressure situation is evaluating whether it’s truly a crisis. That’s why when faced with a possible crisis, my mantra is Don’t Panic Yet. Panic rarely makes a crisis go better. Plus, the adrenaline rush that comes with panic can cause someone to mislabel something that’s only a setback as a crisis.
At a crisis management seminar I attended years ago, a speaker conveyed wise advice: If no one has died, no one is seriously injured, and no one is going to jail, it is not a crisis. This speaker, unfortunately, had shepherded a business through a situation where someone had died. But fortunately, few businesses will encounter situations where life, limb, or liberty is at stake.
It bears repeating -- If no one could die, be injured, or go to jail, it’s a challenge, not a crisis. Challenges can still be significant and require quick action, but they require creative, thoughtful solutions rather than the panic-driven triage and damage control a crisis demands.
Some might argue that huge financial losses are crises. A mortgage foreclosure, bankruptcy, or loss of a major business contract can cause substantial financial or reputational losses. But someone can recover eventually from the loss of wealth or status. Financial losses may be devastating, but they aren't in the same league as loss of life, limb, or liberty, where recovery may be impossible. The possibility of recovery from the situation distinguishes challenges from crises.
This distinction not only instructs next steps, but it also is vital to the mental state of the decisionmakers. Treating every setback as a crisis drains energy and resources from situations that actually involve life-or-liberty stakes. If everything’s a crisis, then a team can become so fatigued by repeated drama that it can't respond effectively when a real crisis arises.
Team members should practice distinguishing between a challenge and a crisis. Practice enables individuals to better assess the true stakes before escalating a situation. Teams also should foster a culture where pointing out challenges early is rewarded, so the team can address them before they become crises.
Control the Controllable and Let Go of the Uncontrollable
Whether something is a crisis or simply a challenge, the next step is to evaluate what can and cannot be done about it. Whether dealing with a crisis or a challenge, time and energy are likely to be at a premium.
That takes us to my second mantra under challenging situations – Control the Controllable. The corollary to that mantra is Let go of the Uncontrollable. It makes no sense to waste time or energy on things that cannot be controlled or changed.
Spinal Tap couldn’t control the fact that their monoliths were in miniature. So, they let go of the uncontrollable and focused on the controllable, which turned out to be their musical performance.
In the movie, the band didn’t seem to put much thought or planning into the process. Businesses can and should do better. That's what a CRP comes into play. You can call it a "crisis response plan" or "challenge response plan" to suit your needs, but prior planning can help either a crisis or a challenge resolve more quickly and with less adverse institutional impact.
The CRP Development Process
Each team’s CRP must be tailored to that team’s needs. Ideally, a business would plan for foreseeable crisis/challenge situations. For example, violinists “plan” for the challenge of a broken string or bow by keeping extra strings and a backup bow close at hand. Or an apartment complex might “plan” for the crisis of a hurricane or flooding by mapping out safe places for staff who must shelter in place, evacuation routes for tenants and staff who can leave, and possible temporary alternative housing for tenants.
Even if the challenge or crisis wasn’t foreseeable and there is no advance plan, rather than reacting immediately, a team can benefit from taking a few minutes to identify the controllable and plan how they will control it – before taking action.
When creating a CRP, whether in advance or mid challenge/crisis, teams should follow a similar process:
Consider the Possibilities
The first step in developing a future CRP is to determine the types of crises the business is most likely to face. A string player can anticipate a possible broken string, and an apartment complex in a hurricane zone can anticipate that a hurricane might hit. Once the list is created, there should be a response plan for each possible incident.
Assign Responsibility.
For each scenario, create a response team and assign a team leader. One individual should be appointed as a point of contact for the public. There should be backup team members and a backup leader if the assigned leader is unavailable or is central to the crisis/challenge. Each team should have a “game plan” to address the scenario.
Individual team members should be assigned specific jobs and responsibilities. The game plan should specify the order of execution of those jobs. Some of these jobs may be executed simultaneously. Others may be sequential and depend on the completion of another "trigger event" before they can start. Regardless, individual team members should be empowered to perform their jobs automatically in response to a trigger event.
Communication Templates.
The business should create scripts for public announcements and templates for news releases for every scenario, leaving blanks for details. Scripts facilitate clear communication, enable the team to focus on priorities of health and safety, and can mitigate the risk of creating unnecessary legal liability should someone be required to ad lib off script.
Accessible Documentation
Game plans and scripts should be stored in at least two locations, including online in a place where team members can access them via cell phones or laptops. For major crises, such as hurricanes, businesses should maintain at least one version of the documentation on paper since the crisis might involve a loss of cell phone or Internet access.
Practice.
The business should practice responding to each type of scenario, including adapting responses and scripts for a crisis that differs significantly from the scenario. Both the primary and backup team members should practice their jobs. Staff not involved in the response might pretend to be customers, law enforcement, government regulators, or other third parties.
Evaluate and Revise.
After the practice, the business should evaluate the response. The plan should be modified to address any perceived weaknesses. The business also should review the plan periodically and revise it to reflect staff changes and other new developments.
Post-crisis/challenge, the team should evaluate what did (and didn’t) work and revise their CRP. Treating a setback as an opportunity for improvement is a hallmark of a resilient team. Spinal Tap’s Stonehenge debacle happened because of incorrect technical specs, so a fix might be to start a review process for specs before they go to production.
When It Truly Is a Crisis
True crises involving life, limb, or liberty happen. In those cases, speed and decisiveness can be critical. Hopefully, the team will have a plan for the crisis at hand. Regardless, everyone will react better in a real crisis if you have not exhausted your energy treating every disruption as one. And the techniques the team used to develop CRPs will have provided valuable training on how to evaluate and respond to crises.
From Stonehenge to Strategy
The Stonehenge moment in This is Spinal Tap has lasted because it captures a universal experience: the deer-in-the-headlights moment when grand plans fall short. However, by not panicking and focusing on controlling the controllable, a team can minimize adverse impacts and may even turn a challenge into a positive. Planning and practice that build on these ideas can create even better outcomes by fostering team confidence, so that they can respond calmly and rationally even to true crises.
© 2025 by Elizabeth A. Whitman
Any references to clients and their legal situations have been modified to protect client confidentiality.
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