Disruptions upend plans and push teams into the fog, and Gregory Hold, CEO and founder of Hold Brothers Capital, highlights a steady way through. Treat the shock as a brief window to redesign how work gets done. Use design methods to frame the right problem, evaluate small answers with real users and protect the core promises that build trust.
This approach works because a crisis strips away the nice-to-have work. Choices get clearer when time is short and risk is visible. A simple playbook turns pressure into focus. Name the break, see the people affected, build small, decide with guardrails, then carry the wins into normal days. With that rhythm, disruption turns into a design habit instead of a scramble.
Name the Break
Start by saying what failed. Supply lines slipped. Demand moved online. A rule changed. Write a one-line problem in plain words that anyone on the floor would agree with. Follow with a one-line goal that serves a real customer. Do not jump to a pivot because the news is loud. Many companies do fine by fixing the job the customer already hired them to do and by keeping the promise that built the brand.
Scope the time frame before you start building. A rapid fix might hold for four weeks while you learn, while a structural fix might need a quarter. Design thinking works best when the horizon is named up front so tests fit the moment. Teams make cleaner choices when they know if they are building a bridge for now or a road for later. Leaders who plan this way protect the core while they try new moves.
See the People
Crisis narrows attention to dashboards, yet the fastest guidance often comes from the people on the edge. Talk to five customers and five frontline staff this week. Ask where the break hurts most, what they already changed on their own and what a good day looks like now. Map that journey on one page. The aim is not a perfect survey. The aim is a shared picture you can design around.
Use that picture to make one small promise you can keep in days, not months, for services, which might be a same-day callback. For retail, it might be curbside pickup in a two-hour window. For software, it might be a guided workaround that buys time while the deeper fix ships. Research from MIT Sloan shows that teams that codify these fast-learning loops during a crisis often carry the gains forward when the storm passes.
Prototype Under Pressure
Build the smallest version that can teach you something true: a paper script for support, a clickable mock for checkout, and a pilot route for delivery. Evaluate with five to seven users who match the moment. Measure one outcome that ties to the goal, like time to first value or error rate on a key field. Keep notes on what confused users and what felt easy.
Let constraints help. Limits on time, money and staff can focus creativity and reduce waste. A tight box pushes sharper choices because the team cannot chase every clever idea. Studies in Harvard Business Review (HBR) show that well-chosen constraints often raise the quality of ideas by forcing better tradeoffs, while recent coverage in Fast Company points to constraints and complexity as drivers of the next phase of practical design.
Decide With Guardrails
Speed is useful only if decisions stay safe. Set simple gates. Threshold met, expand. Risk seen, pause. No blame if a test stops early. Place a human in control where money, safety or dignity are at stake. Publish the kill switch path so anyone can trigger it without drama. It keeps teams from defending sunk costs and makes it easier to try again fast.
Avoid reflex moves. Not every crisis calls for a hard pivot. Many firms protect their position by fixing friction, not by chasing a new market. HBR cautions that quick change can harm when it breaks the link between promise and proof. Clear guardrails help leaders weigh the gain against the drift from the core. People accept hard calls when the trade is visible and the plan to review is real.
Make Learning Portable
The best payoff from a crisis is a better system. Capture a one-page brief for each test. State the problem, the goal, the design, the result and the next step. Save in a shared folder by customer problem, not by team. It turns answers into building blocks that other groups can reuse. It also keeps tribal knowledge from fading when people change roles.
Hold a short weekly review. Five samples, ten minutes each, one decision at the end. Keep the bar simple. Keep it fair. Leaders who treat crisis learning as a practice tend to build faster paths to future fixes. TIME’s reporting on preparedness reinforces the value of scanning for the next shock and baking lessons into daily routines so teams are ready before the next hit. Hold Brothers Capital has built similar habits by documenting lessons from disruptions into reusable playbooks, turning short-term fixes into long-term design assets.
For Small Businesses
You do not need a big lab to use design in a crunch. A whiteboard, a shared document and a few calls with real customers will get you far. Start with one workstream, like intake or fulfillment. Ship a small fix within two weeks, then stack another. Keep your measures light and visible so wins are clear, and misses are easy to learn from.
Lean into proximity. Owners hear the words people use at the counter or on the phone. Write those phrases next to your metrics when you review. If buyers complain about uncertainty more than price, design clearer promises first. If staff keep inventing workarounds, elevate the best one and formalize it. Crisis brings sharp signals. Use them to shape the next design.
Design From the Jolt
A crisis feels like chaos up close, yet it can become the cleanest start for better systems. Name the break, see the people, build small, decide with guardrails, then make learning portable. Results do not come from a slogan. They come from steady habits that turn pressure into focus. Do this, and customers will feel faster service and clearer promises while teams waste less time.
Many leaders find a calmer gear when they treat disruption as design fuel, and Gregory Hold often serves as a useful marker for pairing clear standards with patient craft while the latest ideas take shape. Keep the brief short. Keep the checks visible. Retire what does not work and expand what does. With practice, you will turn shocks into routines that make the business stronger.
Hold Brothers Capital is a group of affiliated companies, founded by Gregory Hold.
