Business As Unusual: Pivoting From Emergency Management To Crisis Leadership

As the reality of major disruption to our daily lives and ways of working takes hold around the world, I’m astonished by how often I read and hear of organizations and companies that are still attempting to operate on a ‘business as usual’ platform. If there was ever a time to throw out your playbook for normal operations, that time is now.

I’m here to offer you the alternative to trying to keep your head above water while your organization is hemorrhaging customers, employees, and revenue. This is business as unusual, and the sooner you educate yourself on how to navigate it, the better chance you have of coming out on the other side.

Welcome to the VUCA world! Sure, it feels like it emerged practically overnight without warning. This unfamiliar environment is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous, and it challenges leadership to emerge in superhero fashion while exposing those who fall short of rising to the occasion. How could anyone be prepared?

We don't rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training. Archilochus

Misguided leadership and poor decision-making are more easily obscured when demand is high, supply chains are running smoothly, and customers are readily available. But if systems begin to fail simultaneously and beyond anyone’s control, what can you even do? As the ancient Greek poet Archilochus reminds us, “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training.”

The guidebook for navigating this rocky terrain requires a critical mindset pivot from emergency management to crisis leadership. These terms probably sound interchangeable to many, but I assure you they are not. 

Emergency management is firefighting. It’s only applicable in order to buy yourself a bit of time to get your bearings so you can devise a new strategy for changing conditions. It’s a short-term framework, and it’s not a fun place to hang out in for very long. It’s also the position many leaders have been stuck in and will continue to operate from even as the COVID-19 crisis expands from a weekly to monthly to quarterly issue.

Imagine, for a moment, that your house is ablaze.

The firefighters arrive and start to spray water over the entire house. This is what layoffs, work from home directives, canceled orders, and temporary shutdowns look like right now. While the water helps to slow down the destruction and might offer your neighbor’s property some protection, there is little to no hope for saving any part of your home if this is all you do.

Crisis leadership, on the other hand, is fire containment with a plan to rebuild. You still spray water over the entire house, but then you need to identify opportunities where your efforts could have the greatest salvaging impact. Can you put out the smaller flames in the garage and save that portion of the structure? Perhaps an addition can be prioritized and defended. From a business perspective, after you’ve sent your employees home or waved your customers goodbye, what can you do to keep people engaged in your enterprise?

There are positive displays of crisis leadership developing all around us right now. One of the more lauded examples where I currently live in Oslo comes from the fitness chain SATS. When the Norwegian government closed all workout facilities on March 12 with immediate effect, SATS laid off 4,000 employees who became eligible for government support. It froze all its memberships instead of waiting for customers to initiate cancellations. SATS then began streaming free online classes (no membership required) including cycling, yoga, and bodyweight exercises, but it also included home office stretching routines and other workouts that are highly specific to this unique time.

Is SATS trying to compete with streaming subscription providers like Peloton, Daily Burn, Aaptiv, or Tonal? Heck no. The goal isn’t to transform overnight from a brick-and-mortar gym to an online platform. The objective is to maintain a dialogue with current and potential future members through this difficult time so that when gyms are permitted to reopen, the customers actually return.

I’ve been following another example of proactive crisis leadership in my former city of Burlington, VT, where a family-owned café, Barrio Bakery, has been quite forward-thinking. Even before restrictions of any kind were placed on businesses in the U.S., Barrio surveyed its customers via email and social media to ask what kind of products (fresh, frozen, bake-at-home, pastries, pizza, etc.) and method of distribution they would prefer and feel comfortable with if restaurants could no longer offer sit-down service.

Now that restrictions are in place and many Americans have a heightened sense of concern that keeps them away from storefronts, Barrio has implemented an online ordering tool for curbside pick-up of coffee, pastries, and frozen offerings. Its social media marketing has also shifted to encourage its patrons to instill a sense of the everyday in their otherwise uprooted lives by baking their favorite Barrio treats at home or picking up a pizza for the family dinner.

Once our daily lives return to some semblance of normalcy, the long-lasting effects of the coronavirus crisis will remain. The opportunities in this VUCA time are to stay relevant, make decisions for long-term positioning, and create plans for increased operation when systems normalize. If you aren’t strategizing for business as unusual right now, then you may very well have no business to return to at all. 

C.J. Feehan is a communications manager and organizational strategist who previously worked as Editor in Chief at a US-based media agency and served on the marketing and comms team at the International Ski Federation where she coordinated the World Cup and Olympic Winter Games. She holds master’s degrees in Creative Writing and Organizational Leadership from Dartmouth College and the University of Colorado.