Every leader faces a crisis.

Few are ready.

Launching Across All Major Outlets

The Blueprint for Leading Through Crisis

Crisis is the ultimate test of leadership. Whether you are dealing with literal "bombs" in a combat zone, a sudden supply-chain collapse, or a threat to your company’s survival, the underlying strategic and emotional pressures are the same.

The Science of Resilience Forged in the Trenches

In Bombs, Bacon, and Bankruptcy, Henry J. Evans distills 25 years of high-stakes experience—including two decades spent in classified counterterrorism operations after 9/11—into a definitive field manual for business leaders.

Merging Neuroscience, Psychology, and
Real-World Battle-Testing to Equip You for Crises

Balance the Timeline

Manage immediate crisis demands without sacrificing long-term strategy.

Decide with Clarity

Know exactly when to trust data and AI, and when to rely on human intuition.

Prepare Your Team

Build a culture where teams report bad news fast and use language that increases accountability and performance.

Protect Your People

Support your organization’s critical needs while safeguarding your own well-being.

The Secret Sauce
Behind High-Performing Crisis Teams

Emotional Safety® is a proprietary leadership framework used to create a culture where people bring bad news quickly, ask tough questions, and challenge their leaders without fear.

Winning With Accountability™ teaches a shared language that organizations can use to drive results and be precise at a time when every moment counts.

During a crisis, using these frameworks together is what separates finding problems early from hiding them until it’s too late. This book shows you exactly how to build and use it when everything is on the line.

How Do You Define a Crisis?

Part I: Understanding Your Crisis

Chapter 1: Why Is Crisis Leadership So Hard?

Eight consistent factors that make crisis leadership uniquely difficult, including time pressure, threat assessment, limbic system hijack, and communication breakdown.

Chapter 2: Bombs – A Terrorism Crisis

Declassified counterterrorism tactics from a massive, seven-year IED crisis involving 8,000 personnel—including bleeding-edge classified technology, intelligence databases, and covert licensing—are translated directly into actionable business leadership principles.

Chapter 3: Bacon – A Pandemic Crisis

A multibillion-dollar northeastern supermarket chain navigates the chaos of COVID-19—from supply chain collapse and union ultimatums to panic buying—while executing a massive operational overhaul and long-term transformation strategy.

Chapter 4: Bankruptcy – A Succession Crisis

A family manufacturing company collapses following the sudden death of its founder, illustrating how extended grief can trigger a months-long amygdala hijack that completely overrides rational decision-making.

Part II: Mobilizing Your People

Chapter 5: Ground Yourself, Then Focus Your Team

Box Breathing, adapted from Navy SEAL protocol. Achieving objectivity quickly is the crisis leader's first priority. "Put your own mask on first."

Chapter 6: Trust and Delegate to the Right People

Learn which kind of decision-making model to use in a crisis, and which ones to avoid. Prioritize expertise over seniority, even if it means moving beyond traditional organizational charts.

Chapter 7: Create Accountability and Emotional Safety®

Leaders use Emotional Safety® to foster accountability without fear. Encourage your team to report bad news promptly to enable swift leadership response.

Part III: Planning Your Strategy

Chapter 8: Assess the Three Levels of Threats

Incubating, emerging, and acute threat framework drawn from live counterterrorism threat assessment.

Chapter 9: Blend Data (AI) and Human Intuition (HI) to Make Decisions

The Priority Quadrants tool helps determine when
to trust data and when to rely on human intuition. Use AI as a tool for crisis management, not as a substitute for sound judgment.

Chapter 10: Balance Old Ways and New Ways

Understand how legacy organizations can be blindsided. Recognize when to preserve established practices and when to innovate.

Chapter 11: Save Today and Tomorrow

Manage crisis response and long-term transformation at the same time. Apply the 90-Day Sprint framework when experiencing crisis.

Part IV: Executing With Excellence

Chapter 12: Shift to Execution—at the Right Time

Transitioning from planning to execution: how to determine when planning is sufficient, and it's time to get to work.

Chapter 13: Stick to the Plan—or Don't

Recognize when discipline becomes stubbornness. Learn how to pivot without losing team alignment.

Chapter 14: Get Your Communications Straight

Lead crisis communications by delivering concise, clear, and frequent updates to your team, board, media, and customers.

Conclusion

You are the hero, and you'll come away from this book knowing how to handle your next crisis—at work or at home.

Three Crises. One Crisis Leadership System.

BOMBS – A Terrorism Crisis

At the peak of the war on terror, roadside bombs caused more American casualties than bullets, despite advanced resources. Evans, a college dropout from Brooklyn with no formal counterterrorism training, was among 8,000 people recruited to address the crisis.

Evans joined a classified counterterrorism alliance focused on IED detection and deterrence in Afghanistan and Iraq. IEDs were inexpensive, easy to deploy, difficult to detect, and highly lethal. The mission spanned over seven years and introduced revolutionary tactics, including a classified radar system capable of imaging the ground in darkness from 30,000 feet, fingerprint analysis matched to covert licensing databases, and emotionally intelligent interrogations that yielded reliable intelligence where coercion or torture could not.

Outcome

IEDs declined from the leading cause of casualties among allied troops to an almost nonexistent threat. Due to the classified nature of the work, the public remained unaware.

Leadership lesson

Crisis leadership is more important than subject matter expertise. Setting aside ego and leveraging collective intelligence is more valuable than individual expertise.

BACON – A Pandemic Crisis

In March 2020, store shelves were empty, the union threatened a strike if any warehouse worker tested positive for COVID, and the supply chain had collapsed. Henry Evans was on site during this crisis.

A major supermarket chain engaged Dynamic Results in late 2019, signing a force majeure clause to maintain its commitment regardless of circumstances. When COVID struck, and the supermarket's president considered pausing the project, Evans responded, "We can be your partners in managing through this pandemic." The company continued the engagement. Over two years, Evans helped the chain address worker shortages, union ultimatums, panic buying, supply chain disruptions, and a comprehensive operational overhaul, all while executing the original transformation strategy. The company achieved $105 million in cost savings.

Outcome

This supermarket chain survived without alienating customers, mistreating employees, triggering a strike, or facing bankruptcy, and emerged more competitive than before.

Leadership lesson

It is possible to address immediate crises while planning for the future. Leaders who halt transformation efforts during a crisis often find themselves outpaced by competitors once normal operations resume.

BANKRUPTCY – A Succession Crisis

In this case, Evans was unable to prevent the failure of a multimillion-dollar family business, observing its decline firsthand. This chapter explores the reasons for the outcome and what could be done differently.

"Patty" inherited her husband's company after his passing. Despite Evans's advice, she declined all recommendations and remained loyal to her husband's legacy, which led to bankruptcy and total job loss.

Outcome

Failure, presented honestly and without embellishment.

Leadership lesson

Extended grief can produce an amygdala hijack that lasts months, overriding all rational decision-making. Heroism isn't always the right response to a crisis. Sometimes the bravest thing a leader can do is step aside and let an expert lead.