“The Crisis Task Force” by brentonmayer

<p> tl;dr: when a crisis with major implications for your organisation unfolds, consider setting up a crisis task force. It should have its own org chart and adopt norms which are better suited for a crisis.</p><p> Most organisations aren’t set up to work well in a crisis.</p><p> At 80,000 Hours, we found three things tend to go wrong. Work slows down across the org, because staff are worried and distracted. Lots of people individually follow the news, duplicating each other's work, before anyone can say what it means for us. And the CEO ends up stuck with most of the problems.1</p><p> A crisis task force solves these problems.</p><p><strong> Set it up</strong></p><p> The main move is a second org chart, which sits alongside the normal one for as long as the crisis lasts.</p><ol> <li> One person leads it. They own the crisis, and they report to the CEO (or whoever it would otherwise have landed on).</li><li> A few other people join it, and it becomes their job. Their normal responsibilities get handed to someone else. At the start, pull them out completely: they should feel like the crisis is their job and they’ve left their team to deal with it. Once [...]</li></ol> <p>---</p><p><strong>Outline:</strong></p><p>(01:02) Set it up</p><p>(02:30) Who to put in it</p><p>(03:39) Run it</p><p>(05:56) When does a crisis task force make sense?</p><p>(06:51) Footnotes</p> <p>---</p>

<p><b>First published:</b><br/>

September 14th, 2026 </p>

<p><b>Source:</b><br/>

<a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YojMQNiZ5nFK79Dy8/the-crisis-task-force?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Source+URL+in+episode+description&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YojMQNiZ5nFK79Dy8/the-crisis-task-force</a> </p>

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<p>Narrated by <a href="https://type3.audio/?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Narrated+by+TYPE+III+AUDIO&utm_term=ea_forum&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TYPE III AUDIO</a>.</p>

<p>---</p><div style="max-width: 100%";><p><strong>Images from the article:</strong></p><a href="https://res.cloudinary.com/cea/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/YojMQNiZ5nFK79Dy8/n98gjik1gibqui3jq2ug" target="_blank"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/cea/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/YojMQNiZ5nFK79Dy8/n98gjik1gibqui3jq2ug" alt="Org chart diagram titled "The crisis task force" showing CEO