Panic attacks include crippling, extraordinarily intense, sudden fear of a general/specific nature, pounding obsessive thoughts as well as  physical symptoms such as shortness of breath, sweating and increased heart rate. As  the French Canadians say, c’est pas un cadeau or loosely translated- it’s no great fun. (Literally, not a gift).

Individuals with panic disorders are treated by drugs and counselling. The therapies lessens the frequency and intensity of the panic attacks and in many cases, eliminate them entirely if one adheres to therapy. Panic attacks however are not limited to individuals.

Organizations also have panic attacks. Sensing either an intense internal or external threat,  an organization can loose  its judgement and  respond to  threats with irrationality,  often damaging itself more than the perceived threat,

When an organization panics, its response to the untrained eye may appear as routine managerial precaution. However, to the trained eye this is not the case.

In my experience, constant reorganizations, ongoing resizing, overly obsessing about values like religious fanatics, incessant  aggressive finger-pointing and a culture of constant escalation indicate an irrational response to threat. Furthermore, when “what do we need to do” is not proceeded by “how do we need to think differently”,  it is highly indicative of an organizational panic attack.

There are other responses to panic attacks that organizations have: throwing bodies at a job, intense time pressure, self deception and looking for one silver bullet.

Sometimes consultants are commissioned to implement inappropriate responses to panic attacks.

My suggestion is to work the management to identify triggers to anxiety, and map out effective and not effective coping mechanism for the rampant irrational fears which characterize organizational life.

Learning to discern panic and its triggers and developing healthy responses to threats  is a critical component of an advanced organizational skill set.