Leading in a Crisis

“Radical times don’t need knee jerk reactions, they call for a clear and focused response. You will be successful if you stay calm, use time wisely to respond and recover, focus on abundance and embrace new ways of working…”

Leading in a crisis is tough and not everyone’s cup of tea but when done right it can be a fulfilling experience and a defining moment in a person’s career. There is no coaching manual for leading in a crisis and I feel it is futile to have one anyway as crisis response varies based on the type and magnitude of a crisis. What makes more sense for a leader especially in a small to medium size organization is to be aware of and practice 5 key principles that I learnt while overcoming the various crises I have been involved in.

Communicate Frequently

Send out a daily communication – email, 2 minute video, voice message, WhatsApp, anything – to all of your employees. You must over communicate during a crisis. Keep it brief and don’t over think – a few sentences or 2 minutes is all that’s needed.

In addition to sending daily communication, meet with your team daily in person or virtually even if it is for 5-10 minutes to reinforce the message and answer any burning questions. Ask leaders on your team to do the same for their teams.

Remember your team wants to know you are in charge and doing everything to ensure a robust response and recovery. The key is to stick to the facts - no time for rants, theories, or using phrases like “I bet you’re feeling...” - this isn’t a time for guessing. Present what is happening, don’t sugarcoat, but balance one negative with several positives over the next several days and weeks. When you have a negative to share, mention it first in the communication - then note what is being done to address it.

Customer and Community Support

There are crises that primarily impact the organization and while the customers/community might not be impacted directly or immediately, it is important you let them know the facts, what actions you are taking and enlist their support. This builds connections and trust that will serve you well, well beyond when the crisis is over.

Then there are crises that impact everyone like the one we are going through with COVID-19. Everyone is anxious and hurting and it becomes doubly important you actively consider how you might support your customers and community. Gather teams of employees to brainstorm, then act fast. The key is giving, giving, giving with no expectation of return. Your customers will remember this when all of this clears up – and it will clear up! Another positive that comes out of this is your employees feel valued and shift their focus from the negativity to making a contribution.

Clean Up and Catch Up

There is a cliche - it is difficult to change tyres while driving and it is true to a large extent in an organizational context. To this I say never miss a good crisis. While parts of your workforce might be on hyperdrive trying to recover from the crisis, there will inevitably be many in your organization who have more time. Rather than laying off these people, redeploy as many of them to clean and catch up on processes that drive the customer and employee experience. Give these people the autonomy to act without unnecessary overhead. When the dust settles you will very likely have eliminated unnecessary activities and costs, making the organization leaner, fitter and more customer centric.

Cash, Cash, Cash

Related to clean up is a specific focus on safeguarding cash during and beyond the crisis. Review all expenses, cancel no/low benefit expenses, renegotiate terms with debt and required recurring/one-time expenses, consolidate and refinance debt, seek new terms/extensions from vendors, eliminate duplicate expenses. These are just some of the many ways you can save money. Involve your entire workforce in finding ways to save money as collective wisdom always yields nuggets that have not been thought off previously and builds buy-in as some of these ways might not be popular in the short-term.

Also pursue government loans and support programs for small and medium sized organizations immediately to get the much needed breathing room to ride the crisis.

Create

While there are many definitions of innovation, one I like especially in the context of a crisis is ‘rapid repurposing of existing systems and capabilities’. If you maintain an abundance mindset, if you look hard enough and embrace new ways of working you can create new growth opportunities. You might acquire an unprepared competitor, amplify marketing to target high margin customers, refocus product/service mix to something that is higher margin and crisis resistant, acquire talent that has been laid off amongst other things. As with everything else, involve your employees especially the ones that are known to think differently to enact bold moves. Recently I worked with a restaurant chain to refocus their menu to what families want when they are tightening their belt and double down on their cloud kitchen strategy and transformed their mindset from how will we survive the COVID-19 lockdown to how can we go national in the next year.

I Don’t Know how long the COVID-19 crisis will last or when another crisis will hit, what I know is we need to safeguard small and medium sized organizations which are our economic engine to sustain humanity. I am happy to help small and medium sized organizations thrive in a crisis and be successful in the long run.