Fear Trumps All

As the swine flu outbreak nears official World Health Organization designation as a pandemic, all around us are examples of the way fear drives out rationality and reason as a motive for human behavior.  From countries banning imports of pork, to others ordering the slaughtering of all hogs, to bans on kissing, we see an escalation of fear-driven responses to the crisis.  The problem, of course, is that none of these steps are useful, nor do they benefit from scientific evidence.

But, each action makes it appear that the leaders of those countries are doing something.  And that's what people seem to want: someone to do something, anything, even if it won't work.  

The leader's challenge in guiding an organization or society through crisis is to resist the "do something" demands long enough to frame a reasoned, credible, and scientifically valid response.  That's tough work!  Doing anything might make people feel a bit better in the short run, but it ultimately just drains energy and resources from better calibrated sets of actions.