What Violinmaking Teaches Us About Crisis Planning
During a recent performance of Bruch’s Violin Concerto in Finland, conductor Matthew Halls accidentally knocked soloist Elina Vähälä’s 18th-century Guadagnini violin out of her hands. The audience gasped. Time seemed to stop as the violin worth millions flew through the air and landed on the stage.
Vähälä inspected the instrument and, after a few minutes, tuned it and signaled that the performance could continue. She later reported that the violin miraculously had no cracks or scratches. It suffered only a slight separation of the top from the ribs (sides), which was repaired.
As Vähälä explained, violins are intentionally designed so that the joints can separate. They’re built so that, if the instrument experiences stress, a seam will open before the wood cracks. In effect, the violin had its own built-in crisis management plan. When it was subjected to a stressor, rather than cracking the wood, the pressure went to the seam, which took the brunt of the impact and was easily repaired.
Like violins, businesses and musical groups need to plan for places where pressure can be released without causing the entire business to crack. While it’s important to prevent problems, it’s just as important to have a plan for how to deal with problems before they destroy the business.
While Vähälä’s experience was unusual, things can go wrong in all businesses and performances. A fire might burn down an apartment building. Foodborne illness might cause restaurant patrons to become ill. A musical group’s instruments may not arrive at the venue and discover that the promised sound equipment doesn’t exist.
However, as with violin making, with advance planning it’s possible to prevent many crises. Businesses call this planning crisis response planning, but I’d prefer to call it challenge response planning (CRP) because the goal should be to prevent challenges from turning into crises. This article discusses why CRP is important and how to prevent a challenge from unnecessarily becoming a crisis.
Don’t Panic Yet
When faced with a possible crisis, my mantra is Don’t Panic Yet. Panic rarely makes a crisis go better; the adrenaline rush that comes with panic can cause someone to mistake a challenge or setback for a crisis. Instead of panicking, the first step in managing any challenge should be evaluating whether it’s truly a crisis.
At a crisis management seminar I attended several years ago, a speaker conveyed wise advice: If no one has died, no one has died, no one is seriously injured, and no one is going to jail and lose their freedom over the situation, it’s not a crisis – it’s a challenge.
This speaker knew what a true crisis is because she had shepherded a business through a situation which truly was a crisis because someone had died. Fortunately, few teams will encounter situations where life, limb, or liberty is at stake. Most of us will face many challenges and a lot of money might be involved, but only rarely will we experience a true crisis.
This doesn’t mean that challenges don’t every require quick action. In some instances, delayed response to a challenge can lead to a crisis. They call for creative, thoughtful solutions rather than panic-driven triage and damage control. By acknowledging that something isn’t a crisis, one can dial back the emotion and eliminate the adrenaline rush that comes with a crisis. That makes it easier to develop thoughtful solutions so they can respond appropriately.
Control the Controllable (and Let Go of the Uncontrollable)
That takes us to my second mantra under challenging situations: Control the Controllable. Whether something is a crisis or a challenge, the next step is to evaluate what can and cannot be done about it.
The corollary to Control the Controllable is “Let Go of the Uncontrollable” (at least for now). Time and energy usually are limited, so they shouldn’t be wasted on things no one can change at that time.
Vähälä didn’t waste time on the uncontrollable. She couldn’t control that the performance had been interrupted or that her priceless instrument had fallen to the floor. She focused on what could be controlled as her next step.
She could determine the extent of the damage to her instrument. After that, if it was safe, she could tune her violin. She could decide whether to continue the performance with her own instrument or with a substitute instrument. She could determine the conditions under which she would continue the performance, whether she needed a switch in the program order so she could decompress or whether she could proceed immediately.
All teams should approach all challenges the same way. The first thought shouldn’t be to try to change things that have already happened or consider options that don’t exist. It should be to evaluate what options are available. And after that, select which options are the next best step.
Good Planning Can Minimize Bad Outcomes
The falling violin shows how good planning can prevent a catastrophe. Violins have a built-in CRP – they are designed so a seam will release before the wood cracks. It’s not possible to prevent a fall, but that planning minimized the damage. Had the violin’s glue held tight, it’s likely the wood would have given way and caused significant, possibly irreparable damage to a violin worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Good legal and business planning can work the same way. A well-drafted contract can’t prevent every dispute. A band agreement can’t make every band member easy to work with. real estate purchase agreement can’t anticipate everything that might go wrong with the transaction. A partnership agreement can’t forecast every economic development. But good design can determine where the pressure point is when something unexpected happens.
This business and legal planning isn’t glamorous. A CRP won’t draw applause for a band or generate excitement for a business opportunity. But when something goes wrong, planning keeps the challenge from cracking a relationship, business, or the deal.
This is where parties can benefit from hiring a creative attorney to help. An attorney shouldn’t be like AI and just write down what the parties already decided. The attorney asks the questions parties may not want to bring up and identifies pressure points. That makes it possible to design a CRP with release valves within the framework of the relationship, like the seams on a violin, which can minimize harm when something doesn’t go as planned.
Learning from Violin Design
The image of Vähälä’s violin flying through the air seemingly suspended in time creates a feeling that we all have experienced. It’s the sinking feeling in our stomach when something important slips out of our control. Our response in the following moments frequently will make the difference between recovery from a challenge and escalation to crisis.
Rarely is panic the appropriate response. Usually, the proper response is to stop, assess the situation quickly, and then respond. Sometimes, the answer is to delay, substitute, repair, rent equipment, make an announcement, or reschedule. And sometimes, after a careful inspection and a little tuning, the answer is that the show can go on. By not panicking and by controlling the controllable, a team can minimize harm and may even turn a challenge into a useful lesson. Planning and practice build confidence, so the team can respond calmly even when the situation is uncomfortable, expensive, or public.
This is where careful planning and legal design are critical. Whether the design is of a violin or the structure of a business agreement, the goal should be the same: when pressure comes, a seam will open before the entire team, business, or violin fractures.
© 2026 by Elizabeth A. Whitman
Any references to clients and their legal situations have been modified to protect client confidentiality.
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