Why smart teams do stupid things in a crisis—and how to prevent it

A video of an incident on board a United Airlines flight received 16,000 shares in just one day. It shows a man with a bruised face being removed from the airline's plane. The company sold more tickets than there were seats, so it chose who had to leave the plane. Among them was a doctor who refused to leave because he was rushing to see patients. He was forcibly removed.

The CEO's reaction: a dry, legally vetted comment about the "need for passenger reaccommodation." The technical language of the response seemed like a mockery and caused even more outrage than the incident itself. As a result, not only the company's reputation and capitalization suffered, but also the entire industry — the amounts of basic compensation for passengers who gave up their seats on overcrowded flights increased tenfold.

This example illustrates the fundamental mechanism of any crisis: its first casualty is objectivity. A business begins a war not only with an external problem but also with its own, often distorted, perception of its scale, causes, and consequences.

How do smart teams do stupid things?

Corporate teams experience significant internal and external pressure during a crisis. This often leads management to start protecting their own comfort zone. As a result, even the best teams retreat into their own "echo chamber," where, under time pressure, they make decisions detached from reality.