Leveraging history to improve crisis response.

In the words of George Santayana: 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'. To navigate the future successfully, an understanding of the past is invaluable. This paper focuses on the stories of past disasters and the lessons they teach us. Such simple yet powerful lessons improve the ability to sell the importance of preparation. The paper focuses on trends discovered while teaching global leaders to prepare for disaster events. It is the stories that convince them to own their business continuity programme. These same stories can help management understand the importance of learning from the past.