Shifting Gears in Sudan: Decision-Making in Humanitarian Emergencies.
Updated: Aug 11
Emergency situations often require a shift in decision-making frameworks that organisations are rarely ready for. These situations force organisations to make decisions with limited or ambiguous information. As organisations become more bureaucratic, moving outside regular systematic decision-making processes becomes difficult. In emergencies, a paradox emerges: the decisions carrying the greatest risk are often those made with the least information. The instinct is therefore to seek greater control, slowing the decisions that need to move fastest and undermining operational momentum.
At Gyroscope Strategic Advisory, we use a decision-making framework for maintaining momentum in conditions of uncertainty. It helps organisations recognise when to move beyond routine decision-making. This framework consists of three decision-making modes:
Routine Decisions
Strategic Incrementalism
Emergency Delegation
Which approach is appropriate depends on uncertainty and time pressure.
Routine and Emergency Situations
By emergency, I mean a situation that cannot be dealt with following standard procedures and/or exceeds the capacity of standard activities. Routine situations are those for which our programs, their structures and systems were designed.
Two synergistic issues emerge in emergency contexts: uncertainty and time pressure.
Though these factors are inherent to emergencies, the extent to which they are present can vary. This is generally due to the rapid and unexpected nature of many emergencies, often occurring outside regular intervention areas concerning novel or unknown actors. When faced with limited information and a call to act quickly, it is often difficult to see a clear pathway forward, confusion builds and perspectives clash.
These factors prevent effective emergency decision-making. Rapidly emerging emergencies or crises where lives are on the line require us to review the nature of delegation and often introduce exceptions.
While many organisations have emergency decision-making frameworks, differentiated authorisation structures do not help navigate uncertainty.
This requires a different decision-making modes. Below are two real-world examples of emergency decision-making frameworks providing emergency healthcare in Sudan.
Case Study 1 – Hospital Building Under Uncertainty:
As a result of the Ethiopian Civil War in 2020, a medical organisation was seeking to provide healthcare for refugees in Sudan. During this assignment, the objective was to build a hospital in a refugee camp. This was an emergency as we needed to create new programming to deal with the incipient influx of people. However, the exact number of refugees was unclear, as were the final camp location and the specific needs of the community. Uncertainty was therefore high.
Decision Challenge
As the refugees had not yet moved from the reception point at the border, time pressure was low, but the risk of making the wrong commitment was high. Trying to follow the regular strategic process would require committing a large yearly budget to a program that was not clear. Every time we received more information, the whole proposal would have to be renewed. What was possible, however, was breaking up the program into more manageable pieces; the next immediate decision that would bring greater clarity and deliver tangible results.
Result
First, we could ensure that refugees crossing the border were received and were provided with food, water, shelter and healthcare. Here we received more information about numbers and intentions. At the same time, a second team could work on establishing a temporary secondary healthcare hospital at the proposed refugee camp site while we worked on design options for a permanent hospital. Doing this allowed us to be better prepared for any eventuality, gather more data for results-oriented decision-making, provide critical services as conditions changed, and reduce overall decision-making time and the accompanying stresses.
Principle
I call this approach Strategic Incrementalism, which is possible when experiencing comparatively low time pressure.
Strategic Incrementalism is the use of smaller, lower-risk decisions to generate information while preserving future options when time pressure allows.
This approach maintains momentum, creates agility, reduces pressure on individual decisions, and reduces the risks of all-or-nothing decisions by preserving optionality. However, this approach is not fit for all situations. If the magnitude and speed of an emergency are such that big moves need to be taken quickly, then another framework is more useful.
Case Study 2 – Cholera Crisis:
This example follows a cholera outbreak in Khartoum in 2025 during the civil war. In this situation, High-consequence decisions had to be delegated to the field. Without doing so, the response would not have been possible at the required speed.
Decision Challenge
Time pressure was extremely high as all cholera treatment facilities in the city were being overrun. As cholera can have a 50% mortality rate if untreated the time pressure was evident. Stressors were added as a large-scale response carried financial and reputational risks, not to mention that it was happening in a war zone. However, communicating the seriousness of the situation proved challenging as the scale and speed of the outbreak were difficult to imagine from a distance.
The field team needed authority to operate outside normal decision-making processes.
Result
By delegating high levels of decision-making authority to the field leader, the organisation was able to open several cholera treatment centres within days. The decisions on the how and where of the intervention, taken rapidly by the field team, allowed the team to treat thousands of cholera cases in little over one week. In addition, innovative approaches to the core issues of staffing and supplies were found. The office was turned into a training space for healthcare workers and the office street was closed to become a cholera bed factory with several welders setting up shop.
Principle
I call this approach Emergency Delegation.
Emergency Delegation is the deliberate transfer of decision-making authority toward the point of action when time pressure makes normal organisational decision-making too slow.
This can be uncomfortable for senior management, whose role shifts from decision-maker to mentor. The point is not to abandon governance but to establish, in advance, the guardrails within which authority will be delegated when normal decision-making becomes too slow. Extraordinary events require extraordinary practices, and the more ready we are for that eventuality, the less momentum we will lose throughout the process.
Integrating the Framework
As the emergency element triggers the shift away from systematic decision-making, it is time pressure that determines whether Strategic Incrementalism or Emergency Delegation is appropriate. How your organisation chooses to define emergencies and time pressure will vary. However, it is important that these definitions are clear before the crisis breaks out.
No one goes back to the RACI during a crisis.
One way to prepare is to stress-test the system. Fabricate an emergency scenario with team members from the head office, capital coordination and the field team playing roles other than they normally fill. Key to this scenario is setting time pressure and information levels and communicating these to a facilitator before running it through. Roles and decision-making authority need to be clear, so we see in real time how operational effectiveness and momentum are affected by our systems and processes. Your organisation can work on common understandings and definitions by working through the following points.
Your Organisation and Emergencies:
What are your emergency thresholds?
What is your workable conception of time pressure?
What are your communication mechanisms?
Strategic Incrementalism:
How do we communicate that uncertainty is high and a definitive strategy is difficult to grasp?
What is the meaning of optionality for your organisation?
Who should be responsible for identifying a situation requiring strategic incrementalism?
Emergency Delegation:
When is Emergency Delegation activated?
What authority can be delegated?
What are the guardrails?
When does Emergency Delegation end?
Understanding when and how to move between decision-making modes is critical to maintaining operational momentum and ultimately achieving program success in humanitarian crises. Organisations that distinguish between routine and emergency decision-making will not eliminate uncertainty, but they will preserve momentum, generate clarity and exploit opportunities as they emerge.
Is your organisation prepared for the next emergency?
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in articles published on this website are those of the author and are provided for general information and discussion. They do not necessarily reflect the views of any current or former employer, client, partner organisation, or affiliated institution.
