Barry A. Turner didn’t just study disasters. He dissected the slow burns behind them. His Six-Stage Model, often called the Disaster Incubation Theory, shows how most organizational crises are less about shocks and more about blind spots. It shifts your perspective from reactive damage control to proactive insight.
Each stage in Turner’s model reveals a pattern that too many executives ignore until it’s too late. This isn’t a checklist for PR cleanup. It’s a framework for spotting risk before it escalates—and using culture as your first line of defense.
Table: Turner’s Six-Stage Model of Crisis Management
Stage | Strategic Meaning |
|---|---|
Notionally Normal | Foundational assumptions shape risk perceptions |
Incubation Period | Problems silently build beneath accepted practices |
Precipitating Event | A triggering event disrupts the narrative of control |
Onset of Direct Consequences | Immediate damage reveals the system’s real fragility |
Rescue and Salvage | Fast, often chaotic responses attempt to stabilize the situation |
Full Cultural Readjustment | Learning phase that rewrites organizational beliefs and behaviors |
1. Notional Normal Starting Point
Every crisis begins with confident assumptions.
At this stage, your organization operates under a shared set of beliefs. These are your norms, rules, and expectations about safety, risk, and control. Everything seems stable. You believe you understand your environment. Keyword: “you believe”.
But that belief can become a liability. Turner’s insight here is that crises are rooted in what the organization takes for granted. Cultural blind spots become embedded in procedures. Risk isn’t ignored maliciously, it’s rationalized away as “not relevant” or “under control.”
Leaders often miss that this phase isn’t static. It evolves. Assumptions calcify. Overconfidence creeps in. Audits lose their edge. Metrics focus more on what’s easy to track than what matters.
2. Incubation Period
Small signals get ignored while risk quietly builds.
This is the most dangerous phase—and often the longest. Errors accumulate. Deviations from protocol become routine. Warning signs emerge but are rationalized or dismissed because they clash with the belief that “everything is fine.”
Turner reframes failure as a cultural drift. This is where disconnected teams, silos, and misaligned KPIs do their damage. Problems don’t trigger an alarm because they’re interpreted through outdated beliefs. Worse, those closest to the issues may fear speaking up or assume someone else is handling it.
Strategically, this is your best chance to intervene—but only if you’re measuring more than just outcomes. You need systems that track how and why decisions get made, not just what results they produce.
- Mitroff’s Five-Stage Crisis Management Model emphasizes prevention and preparation. It includes signal detection, probing, containment, recovery, and learning. Mitroff focuses on anticipation, encouraging organizations to hunt for weak signals before a crisis forms.
- The Relational Model of Crisis Management takes a stakeholder-centered approach. It highlights transparency, empathy, and trust as essential during and after a crisis. This model is especially relevant for brands managing public perception and social response.
- Steven Fink’s Crisis Model divides crises into four stages: prodromal (early warning), acute, chronic, and resolution. It’s useful for identifying how long a crisis can linger and how reputational damage can extend far beyond the initial event.
- Burnett’s Crisis Model introduces the concept of a strategic window. It suggests that crises can create unique moments for organizations to demonstrate leadership, reframe public narratives, and even gain a competitive advantage.
3. Precipitating Event
One event breaks the illusion.
Suddenly, a specific incident exposes the reality you’ve been avoiding. It could be a whistleblower, a system crash, or a viral story. This is what Turner calls the “ill-structured event” – the thing that forces you to confront the hidden flaws.
But here’s the twist: the event itself is rarely the real problem. It just reveals how brittle your systems are. The fact that one event can bring operations to their knees means your defenses weren’t built for complexity.
This moment also marks a shift in perception. Stakeholders outside your walls see the event as a crisis. Inside, people may still be clinging to denial. Strategic misalignment begins to snowball.
4. Onset of Direct Consequences
The crisis hits full force.
Now the fallout becomes visible. There could be reputational damage, operational shutdowns, or physical harm. Established safeguards collapse. Panic sets in.
Turner highlights how the magnitude of damage is often shaped by earlier inaction. What seems like a sudden collapse is actually a reflection of how deeply the organization ignored its own data, people, and warning systems.
Strategically, this is where leaders face their toughest test: communicating clearly while operating in ambiguity. If you’re not decisive and transparent, you compound the crisis by eroding trust.
5. Rescue and Salvage
Scramble mode begins.
Teams rush in to contain the damage. Plans are improvised. Some efforts help, others backfire. External players often join the response, bringing their interpretations and expectations.
The danger here is mistaking activity for strategy. Organizations often mistake quick fixes for long-term solutions. Crisis response teams may stabilize symptoms but miss the root causes.
Turner reminds us that this stage is more than cleanup. It’s your first opportunity to show stakeholders that your organization can learn, adapt, and lead through adversity.
[Insert visual: Emergency response or media handling scene]
6. Full Cultural Readjustment
If you’re smart, this is where the real value happens.
After the dust settles, you start asking hard questions. Investigations begin. New protocols are written. People are hired, fired, or retrained. But more importantly, cultural norms shift.
Turner isn’t calling for new checklists. He’s urging a rethinking of how your organization understands risk. Superficial fixes won’t cut it. If you want lasting change, you need to confront how decisions were made, how warnings were handled, and how culture filtered both.
Strategically, this phase defines your future. Either you institutionalize learning, or you repeat history.
Wrap Up
If you want to lead through a PR crisis, don’t just prepare for the flashpoint. Study the slow burn. Turner’s model helps you see where failure starts—and how to stop it before it grows. But Turner’s isn’t the only framework leaders rely on. Other crisis models offer valuable and sometimes more tactical perspectives. No matter which model you follow, the lesson is clear: planning must happen long before a headline hits. Crisis management isn’t just a function, it’s a mindset. And the smartest brands don’t wait to get smart.
Recommended Reading
In Pursuit of Foresight by Mike Lauder reimagines Turner’s Disaster Incubation Theory as a practical tool for developing foresight rather than just explaining failure. The book challenges the hindsight bias common in crisis reports and asks whether early detection was realistically possible.
Through a detailed exploration of Turner’s theory and a worked example, Lauder provides executives with frameworks and mental models to better recognize and act on warning signs before a crisis unfolds. It’s a guide to thinking differently, not just acting faster.
