Quiz: Crisis Management
21 items: 12 multiple choice · 5 true/false · 3 short answer · 1 applied scenario with rubric.
Answers in <details>. Attempt each before opening.
Part 1 — Multiple Choice (12)
Q1. The commonest error in handling a crisis is:
(a) Acting too fast (b) Treating a type-1 crisis as a type-2 — deliberating about something a document already answered (c) Telling the couple too much (d) Failing to write it down
Answer
**(b).** Most crises were answered months ago. **The most *damaging* error is different — treating a type-3 as a type-2**, which is a planner trying to project-manage a grief.Q2. The decision deadline for a rain plan is set by:
(a) The forecast's reliability horizon (b) Three hours before the ceremony, as a convention (c) The physical work, computed backward from when guests arrive (d) When the couple are available to discuss it
Answer
**(c).** 110 minutes of work, complete 45 minutes before a 3:55 arrival, gives 1:20 — **so the deadline is 1:25. It is arithmetic, not preference**, and it will be different at every venue.Q3. The part of a rain plan that is almost always missing:
(a) The specified alternative (b) The evidence standard (c) The named decider (d) The crew
Answer
**(d).** **Four people, named, told in advance, probably not used.** Without them the other four parts are a document rather than a plan, because at 1:25 somebody has to move a hundred chairs.Q4. At the deadline the evidence is genuinely 50/50. You:
(a) Wait for better information (b) Ask the couple to break the tie (c) Take the indoor option (d) Take the outdoor option, since it is what was planned
Answer
**(c).** **The asymmetry is the decision.** Wrong indoors is a wedding in a barn on a dry day. Wrong outdoors is a hundred people in a field in the rain with no time to move.Q5. A substitutability-based playbook is preferred to a scenario-based one because:
(a) It is shorter and covers more (b) It is what insurers require (c) Scenarios are hard to imagine (d) It removes the need for vendor vetting
Answer
**(a).** A scenario-based playbook is infinite. **A substitutability-based one has four rows and every vendor is in one of them** — and it tells you the vetting effort belongs in category D.Q6. Category D contains:
(a) Every vendor over $2,000 (b) The officiant, the caterer, the venue, and power (c) Whatever the couple say matters most (d) Anything without a contract
Answer
**(b).** **Four entries, and it is the only part of the playbook that needs real preparation.** Everything else is a money problem or an accepted downgrade.Q7. An unanswered phone from a vendor at T−90 is treated as:
(a) Late, until you know otherwise (b) Absent, and the response is started (c) A reason to call the couple (d) Normal, since vendors drive
Answer
**(b).** **Because starting is reversible and waiting is not.** Ringing two caterers at 3:58 and standing them down at 4:12 costs an apology; ringing at 4:35 costs the dinner.Q8. The rule for a possible medical emergency:
(a) Find a family member first, then decide (b) Ask the person whether they want an ambulance (c) Call emergency services immediately, before anything else (d) Consult the venue's first-aider before calling
Answer
**(c).** **The cost of being wrong is asymmetric to a degree that removes the judgment.** An unnecessary ambulance is an embarrassment; a necessary one eleven minutes late is not.Q9. In telling a couple that something has happened, the correct order is:
(a) Fact · reassurance · action · request (b) Reassurance · fact · what has been done · what you need from them (c) Apology · fact · reassurance (d) What you need · the fact · reassurance
Answer
**(b).** **Never in reverse.** *"There's been an incident"* takes forty seconds to reach the reassurance, and those are forty seconds of a person imagining the worst thing.Q10. Of the six containment steps in an unsolvable crisis, the one that is the actual service:
(a) Removing the audience (b) Telling the couple (c) Taking the logistics off everybody (d) Expressing sympathy well
Answer
**(c).** Transport, calls, a hotel, the children, somebody's coat. **You cannot help with what happened. You can make sure nobody has to think about a car.**Q11. The "second-order failure" of a crisis is:
(a) The financial cost (b) The vendor relationship damage (c) What the crisis prevented you from doing — and it gets attributed to day-of execution (d) The couple losing confidence
Answer
**(c).** **The sweep that did not happen, the guest who was not met.** It is invisible because nobody can see an absent action. **The fix is to name what you are dropping, out loud, first.**Q12. The weather that produces a genuine safety stop is:
(a) Rain (b) Wind (c) Heat (d) Cold
Answer
**(b).** **A marquee above its wind limit is a structural question**, it is the contractor's call, and it overrides the couple, the planner, and the venue simultaneously.Part 2 — True or False (5)
Q13. The named decider for the weather call should be the couple, since it is their wedding.
Answer
**False.** **It should be the planner**, agreed in month six. Almost every couple agrees with relief — and the ones who do not are telling you something useful, in which case the protocol names them and the deadline is explained twice.Q14. The fourth clause of the decision protocol — do not tell them about things they cannot fix — means a guest taken to hospital is not reported until the debrief.
Answer
**False, and this is the clause's hardest limit.** **The clause is about problems, not people.** Alicia's own amendment said it: *"unless it's about a person."* **Working rule: anything that has happened to a person is told, briefly, at the first sensible moment.**Q15. A planner has no authority to stop an event they are running.
Answer
**False in practice.** **Nothing in a planning agreement grants it and you have it anyway** — and in a safety matter, using it is never the wrong call. **The corollary: it is only usable if you decided in advance that you would use it.**Q16. Writing a "floor" version of every element — the cheapest thing that still works — is planning to fail.
Answer
**False, and it is the opposite.** A planner who has never thought about the floor will spend forty minutes at 4:05 trying to reconstruct the middle of the ladder. **A phone through the battery PA takes ninety seconds and the dancing happens.**Q17. A crisis should be documented in writing the same night.
Answer
**True.** Factual, unemotional, complete, no blame. **Three reasons: an insurance claim may follow · a conversation with the couple certainly will · and you will misremember.**Part 3 — Short Answer (3)
Q18. State the ten-minute response to a caterer who has not arrived, and then state the move that actually resolves it.
Answer
**0–2:** call, second number, office — **establish late versus absent, which are different problems.** **2–4:** tell the venue. **4–6:** two other caterers, for whatever they can send. **6–8:** secure the bar and any canapés. **8–10:** tell the couple. **And then reduce the problem.** You are not replacing a three-course dinner — **you are feeding a hundred and fifty people something, tonight.** Pizza, a restaurant's whole evening service bought outright, or a supermarket run through the venue's kitchen. **A wedding where dinner became forty pizzas is a story. A wedding where nobody ate is a failure.**Q19. What can a planner not do about family conflict? Name four, and say why the list matters.
Answer
**Resolve anything · make somebody behave · take a side · deliver a message · be a therapist · fix a family.** **It matters because the boundary is the service.** Almost none of it is about the wedding and almost all of it predates you by decades. **Believing you might fix it is how planners end up in the middle of something** — and the time it costs is paid by the two people at the centre of the day, who are the only people you can actually help.Q20. Explain why a crisis is described as "a decision made under worse conditions than usual," and what follows from it.
Answer
**It is not a different activity from Chapter 27** — same triage, same sixty seconds, with less information, more noise, and somebody standing in front of you. **What follows is that the preparation is the same preparation.** Almost everything in a crisis was either answered by a document in month six or was never going to be. **Which reframes crisis management as a documentation discipline rather than a temperamental one** — with the honest exception of §28.8, where no document helps.Part 4 — Applied Scenario (1)
Q21. A 130-guest wedding. Outdoor ceremony 4:00; alternative is a function room that seats 95 and is set for dinner. Reset from ceremony to dinner is 50 minutes. Guests arrive 3:30. Forecast at 11 a.m. moves to 65% rain from 3 p.m.
Produce: the decision deadline with arithmetic · what the 95-vs-130 shortfall obliges · the message to the couple · and the three things you drop.