Ninety Seconds to Check the Facts Before a Crisis Decision

By Grace Kim

An Entrepreneur commentary says a 90-second pause can turn a reflexive crisis decision into a considered one.

Entrepreneur contributors write: “Your first instinct is adrenaline wearing the costume of clarity.” Their example starts with a leader absorbing bad news, asking the right questions and setting a steady course while everyone else scrambles.

Then the phone rings late on Friday. The first thing that arrives is a reaction, not a thought. It feels urgent, confident and clear. The commentary warns that this response often solves a different problem from the one facing the leader.

Under acute stress, the body prepares to act, the contributors say. Heart rate climbs. Attention narrows. The brain favors speed over nuance. That pattern works well against a physical, immediate threat. It works poorly when a threat is ambiguous, involves many people and unfolds over days or weeks.

What makes the first reaction unreliable?

The information leaders need may sit across a team, a customer inbox and a conversation that has not happened yet, the commentary notes. In that moment, the urge to act right now can feel like leadership. The authors call it discomfort looking for an exit. Panic rarely leads to sound choices, they write, while staying calm lets a leader guide a team rather than react.

Which four instincts tend to backfire?

The commentary identifies four recurring patterns:

• Fix it immediately. Speed feels responsible, but acting before a leader understands the scope can create a second problem on top of the first.
• Explain everything. Exposure triggers the urge to fill silence with context and justification. Long explanations offered early sound defensive and lock leaders into details that may change as more facts surface.
• Find out who is at fault. Assigning blame feels like control, but it shifts the team’s energy from solving the problem to protecting themselves.
• Go quiet. Silence may feel safe, but the people who depend on a leader will fill an information vacuum with assumptions. The commentary says those assumptions are rarely generous.

The common thread is action before the leader understands the scope of the problem.

What should a leader do in those 90 seconds?

The goal is not to ignore the first instinct, the contributors write. It is to give that instinct a brief review before it becomes a decision. Even in serious situations, the commentary says, 90 seconds is almost always available. Leaders usually have more time than adrenaline suggests.

They put it this way: “Ninety seconds of asking what you actually know beats a week of cleaning up what you assumed.”

The commentary proposes three questions for that window:

• What do I actually know, versus what I fear?
• Who is affected, including people who have not said anything yet?
• What happens if I wait one hour before responding publicly?

The contributors also recommend looking at the problem as an outsider would. Stepping outside a leader’s role creates distance between facts and feelings. The exercise is simple: write down what you know on one side of a page and what you assume on the other. The assumptions column, the commentary notes, usually runs longer than expected.

Waiting for perfect information is not the aim, the contributors add. They say leaders will rarely get it, and acting decisively and then adjusting as facts arrive usually beats freezing. The first move should be considered rather than reflexive.

How can a team prepare before the pressure arrives?

Once the initial surge passes, a second instinct usually arrives better calibrated, the commentary says. It considers the timeline and the audience, and it separates what a leader can control from what they cannot.

Leaders can build that response long before a crisis, the contributors write. They advise deciding in advance who has authority to speak, who needs to be in the first conversation and where reliable facts will live. A team can also walk through plausible scenarios while everyone is calm. That preparation, the commentary says, lets leaders choose among considered options rather than invent them under pressure.

The contributors also advise spreading the thinking around. Listening actively and pushing decisions closer to people with firsthand information lets leaders see problems more completely. The commentary warns that the person closest to the issue often knows something the leader does not, and a crisis is the worst time to discover that no one asked. Teams that handle difficult moments well, it says, tend to improvise less.

In plain terms, a calm team should arrive with its decisions already considered.

What do employees, customers and partners remember?

The commentary says stakeholders rarely remember the exact words a leader used. They remember whether the response felt proportionate, addressed their real concern and held up as new information emerged. Employees, customers and partners who never spoke also watch for evidence of care and judgment, the contributors add.

That impression often forms within the first day, the commentary says, and small choices shape it. The contributors’ conclusion is direct: a short, deliberate pause gives a leader a better chance than the first instinct alone.

For the next crisis, the commentary’s practical test is simple: decide who speaks, where the facts live and how long the team will pause before acting.