Crisis management puts huge strains on CEOs [View All]

"Executives aren't military commanders," Sapriel told Reuters from the Brussels headquarters of her crisis management consultancy CS&A. "They're not trained for crisis management. The whole style of management these days is often do things by consensus. That simply doesn't work in a crisis. It's much more about command and control. The strains are enormous."

"The first thing you often find is that... not a single senior member of a company is willing to talk directly to the media for fear of being the one to take the fall for the crisis," sad U.S.-based crisis consultant Eric Dezenhall.

With BP in the Gulf of Mexico, Sapriel said too much pressure was put on CEO Tony Hayward who also became the media point man and something of a hate figure in the U.S.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/30/uk-business-crisis-management-idUSLNE72T03420110330