A crisis by definition is something which happens unexpectedly and thus an event which cannot often be handled by a normal organizational process. This article relates to a sudden and tragic incident in an academic institution and the manner in which the organization addressed the various fall out issues. The management learning emanating from the post event analysis forms the crux of the article. An attempt has also been made to understand the impact on the different players in the crisis, including the author himself. The Kubler-Ross model of coming to terms with a bereavement has been taken as a framework to analyze the reactions of different people who bore the impact of the crisis.

A crisis, by definition, is an event which is not planned for, it happens suddenly, and requires immediate attention. It stretches the resources of the organization and its people almost to a breaking point. The old cliché puts it well: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going".

This paper relates to a tragic event that occurred a few months ago and the way in which crisis was dealt with. This article examines the experiences of those three days with the impact it had on the functioning and emotions of those who dealt with it to try to distill some general principles of management crises.

It was on Saturday, June 30, 2007 when it all happened. At about 5:15 p.m., there was a telephone call. a lot of people were immediately affected, but the lives of two families in two small towns of Uttar Pradesh changed irrevocably.The call was from one of the then recently joined first year students saying that a group of them had gone to Pondicherry—around 170 km from Chennai—on an excursion. As part of fun and frolic, a handful of them had ventured into the sea and tragically two boys, both from Uttar Pradesh, had been washed away. Worse, only one body had been recovered. It was remarkable how the message was conveyed tersely and succinctly by the student. The information had to be assimilated rapidly and a plan of action evolved.

Crisis Management, Real Time Learning, Organizational process, Management crises, Quick brainstorming, Rapid developments, Organization culture, Bureaucratic processes, Kubler-Ross model, Leadership traits, Public sectors.