Blindsided is the authoritative guide to crisis management.

This "how to" handbook gives essential advice that every manager needs to know when a crisis hits. Written by CMI Founder/CEO Bruce Blythe, it's a fascinating, easy-to-read guide that draws on Blythe's 20+ years of experience as a pioneer in crisis management.

  One Title, two authors, two books well worth reading
      By Richard Pachter

Blindsided: A Manager’s Guide to Catastrophic Incidents In the Workplace, Bruce T. Blythe, Portfolio, 224 pages, $24.95.

Blindsided: How New Technology Affects Your Business, Jim Harris, John Wiley & sons, 320 pages, $29.95.

These two books, which share the same title, cover vastly different subjects, but both are very important for business today.

Bruce Blythe is CEO of Crisis Management International, an Atlanta-based consulting firm with clients around the world. Good for him, bad for us, that his services are more in demand now than ever. Like it or not, crisis and worst case scenarios are serious management and planning issues for all firms—or they should be. Especially post –9/11: security, natural and unnatural disasters, and other catastrophes must be constant concerns.

Mr. Blythe is experienced and articulate, and his book provides a clear, comprehensive and comprehensible look at planning, implementation, communication and myriad other big and little things related to coping with and surviving the unthinkable.

He’s a man with mission, Mr. Blythe writes: “My goal was to bring order and purpose to the potentially overwhelming task of preparing for crisis. I want to help reduce your company’s exposure to chaos and threat, by teaching you to analyze foreseeable risks and create a master plan for crisis response. There are lessons that until recently may have seemed merely interesting. Now they have become essential.”

At the end of each chapter, Mr. Blythe offers a Quick Use Guide for emergency reference, as well as checklists, guidelines and other tools for coping with any number of crisis, from natural disasters and workplace murders, to corporate kidnappings and air crashes. It’s not pretty, but it’s important.

Jim Harris’ book is light-years away from Mr. Blythe’s, but is focus on preparation and business intelligence is equally intense. Here, Blindsided refers to companies that are, in a sense, ambushed by competition. Think Sears and Kmart by Wal-Mart, or the record business by Napster.

Mr. Harris takes a freewheeling and far-ranging approach, looking at business life cycles from both a micro and macro point of view. He’s nothing if not eclectic, examining the so called New Economy industries, as well as traditional enterprises, while citing wisdom from sources as diverse as Courtney Love and the Dalai Lama. Word of wisdom from the usual subjects—the ubiquitous Jack Welch and Tom Peters among them—are also part of the mix.

In the case of Ms. Love, the former leader of the rock group Hole, Mr. Harris includes her breathtaking lucid dissection of the record business. It was originally part of a speech given at an industry gathering –though he doesn’t specify which—that appeared in Salon, the online magazine.

But he doesn’t stop there, he continues his assessment of the “dead man walking” music biz by quoting ethicist Elizabeth Kubler Ross on her five stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depressions, and acceptance—that those diagnosed with fatal illnesses go through: The point is how those stages match the behavior of this dying industry.- Brilliant stuff!

Overall, Mr. Harris presents a nice mix of case studies, strategy and lessons. He’s an entertaining and capable writer with a solid business foundation and vivid imagination.

Mr. Blythe’s volume would make a suitable gift for one’s corporate operations manager, while the Harris book would be worthwhile to bestow upon one’s CEO, for both must prevent their company from suffering the consequences of being Blindsided.