On Leading In A Crisis

I don’t know how I learned this, or when I learned it exactly but at some point I came to the realization that in every crisis there is actually opportunity. This isn’t so much true of crisis in your personal life. Those are just crisis and you have to keep a level head and get through them. But in the workplace especially, when a crisis arrises it affords you an opportunity. I say that it is an opportunity in the sense that you are given the opportunity to show how you as a professional behave in a crisis situation. You are being given an opportunity to lead and show leadership. It’s not something to jump up and down about in excitement but it’s not something to shy away from either.

I guess some people figure this out and then like to manufacture crisis so that they can then resolve them. Kind of like a firefighter who is also an arsonist. This is obviously phony and a waste of everyone’s time so this is not the kind of thing I am talking about. Generally people like this don’t last long in an organization, but if they do well then you’ve got a larger systemic organizational problem that should be addressed.

Naturally crisis situations are uncomfortable for everyone and should be avoided at all cost. However they do arise and when they do they provide the backdrop for a display of true leadership. There are a couple of simple guidelines you can use to show leadership and guide your organization through a crisis situation.

1. Remain calm. Don’t panic. Many people will be running around with their hair on fire. I don’t have any hair so I don’t have to worry about this in particular. But in general you know what I mean. Tensions rise, voices rise, tempers flare, fingers start pointing, people turn on each other etc… Don’t give in to this wave of emotions. Stay centered and grounded. There will be plenty of time to figure out what went wrong when the crisis is over (blame, finger pointing, throwing people under the bus) these all fall into that category and should be left to the crisis post-mortem, during the crisis they only serve to deepen the sense of impending doom so they should be avoided at all cost.
2. Ultimately a crisis is just another problem that needs to be solved. There is obviously a sense of urgency around solving this particular problem but as a problem, basic problem solving techniques can be used here as well.
3. Break the problem down. What needs to be done in the short term, medium term and long term to resolve the problem.
4. Short term things are like, “well, the break room is on fire so we should probably put that out” Good idea, where is the fire extinguisher? Let’s do that. You don’t need to break the whole problem down before you start working on the short term items. Identify them up front and start addressing them immediately.
5. Mid term issues are the meat of the problem. Get a team of people together, identify the meat of the problem and assign tasks. Circle back frequently to make sure people are working on their assigned tasks. Communication is super important in this situation. Find a way that you can communicate with the entire team working the problem. If this is email or chat, make sure you have one thread which includes everyone. I’ll cover communication in another podcast but one thing I’ll point out here is that, in a crisis situation, nobody has time to read some long diatribe on the situation. Keep your communication simple, short and sweet. Bulleted lists of tasks and assignments that kind of thing.
6. Long term issues are the things that ensure that the problem and crisis doesn’t happen again. In this you’ll have to figure out the root of the problem that resulted in the crisis to begin with. Identify ways in which you can make changes in the organization or your processes that will help avoid this in the future. Nobody enjoyed the crisis of course so they should all help work on doing the hard work of digging into root cause and figuring out how to avoid a recurrence.

Communication:

People involved on your team will have a tendency to mix and match items from this breakdown in their communication. This is also not helpful but mostly unavoidable. Just keep everyone on task and remember the breakdown of tasks. When someone starts finger pointing gently remind them that that can be addressed in the post-mortem. When someone starts ranting about some systemic problem that causes this remind them that this fits into the long term issue category and can be addressed once the short and mid term issues are out of the way. Your entire goal here is to lead the organization through the crisis, things like finger pointing and ranting only feed the fire. Remaining calm and centered at all times this will help guide you and your organization to a successful resolution.

Post-Mortem

Once the crisis is out of the way there should be some sort of post-mortem. To be honest this is my least favorite part of the task. I think it is this way for most people so often times the post-mortem falls on the floor completely. It’s pretty important though because that is how you truly figure out what the hell happened. How did a possibly systemic problem turn into a crisis? I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that post-mortem are easy, they are not. This is where the fingers come out and people start getting thrown under the bus. In general finger pointing and bus throwing are not helpful they just deflect or throw up a smoke screen around the real issues at hand. Guide the team over the whole problem and how it grew into a crisis. There will be plenty of blame to go around, make sure you take some of the blame yourself as this will put the team at ease with the knowledge that you’re not going to just start lopping heads off willy nilly. It might even set an example that other people will emulate. In the best situation everyone naturally takes responsibility for their part in the problem that turned into a crisis. You identify what went wrong and some ways in which it can be avoided in the future. Finger pointing, head lopping, bus throwing, these are all the signs of typical bad leadership. If this is the way your post-mortem always go and you can’t guide the organization in a more positive and collaborative direction then you might think about whether this is a work culture you want to be involved in long term.

I started off by saying that a crisis is actually an opportunity and I would like to come back to that in summary. The crisis itself provides a backdrop for a display of true leadership. True crisis should be avoided, and, if you are at the helm of an organization or team I would hope that you gradually put processes in place that lead towards fewer and fewer crisis situations. This will be your overall goal. If you’re working for an organization that is always in crisis then you have another problem on your hands and if you can’t change the work culture towards one of stability again you might reconsider if you want that to be your work life over the long term.