Sounds like a funny name for a leadership topic doesn't it. I am reminded of the title of a book on the government of one of Australia's most controversial prime ministers - Gough Whitlam. The book was called "Crash through or Crash" and described the leadership and management style of Whitlam and his government.

Leading by disaster - what do I mean by that title.

It is the process of allowing incidents to bubble along until they become significant or major incidents in your program. Then stepping in and dealing with those decisively.

Let me give you two examples:

1) In looking for a way to implement the patrol system (or boy[/girl] leadership in our older age group I allowed the fact that a camp hadn't been run for a number of months, and the ensuing discontent with the lack of camping, to come to a head - and stepped in with a presentation of the patrol system and immediately got complete support for its introduction.

Result: successful implementation [ongoing] of the patrol system, camps!

2) In getting my leaders to "own" the program as much as I do, one situation came to a head last week. We had our state-wide camp on the weekend, and at 9:30pm the night before we were to set off (we were to leave at 8am) I had a phone call from a leader saying her child was sick and she couldn't come to camp. After picking myself up off the floor (from shock!) I said "ok - you need to call all the girls in your patrols and tell them they can't come to camp" [long pause]...

Result: she found a replacement to go to camp.

So what do we make of leading by disaster, or management by crisis etc. - I think it is a powerful tool when used properly. It can be over used though. If it is people get the feeling that the ship is sinking and they better jump now!