I: Crisis is awful and it has the potential to advance us at the same time.

CV19 HYPOTHESIS 1: We're gonna make it, Rose."

Sleeping through years of change and adapting very little is a consistent testament to the human spirit… so is doing some miraculously adaptive things during a crisis (when we have to) in order to "get through it alive." During wartime tragedies, weather catastrophes, icebergs, unstoppable pandemics or any event with a titanic coefficient of adversity* (apocalyptic or not)… we see overnight ingenuity, remarkable resilience, elevated collective awareness, understanding and action. 

When we really need to be unstoppable ourselves, we seem to find more than enough capacity for change already inside of us, individually and collectively.  When we really need to up our game to meet a threat (e.g., perform at a higher level, cooperate at scale, martial our focus/energy/resources), we seem to have more than enough willpower and discipline already inside of us to close the previously un-closable, learning-doing gap. 

Crisis is awful AND it has the potential to advance us at the same time.

CRISIS CAN PROVOKE TEMPORARY IMPROVEMENTS

During this CV19 crisis we’re hearing about organizational improvements - even org culture improvements. There seems to be a remarkable spike of innovation, courage, speed, toughness and durability from many companies, all over the world, in ever sector.  Increases in care, compassion and collaboration are reportedly wide-spread, almost overnight.  

WOW! LOOK HOW HUMAN, AGILE AND ADAPTIVE YOUR OPERATING MODEL CAN BE!

You've probably noticed how, during this crisis (and ones before this), that you and your company culture/operating model can really surprise you with behaviors that you said were near impossible "around here" just a few weeks/months ago. 

Even during all of the fear, uncertainty and the additional stress of triage and stabilization - overnight you saw much more adaptive, agile, courageous and CONSTRUCTIVE clusters of behavior norms and expectations happening across your company.

Here are five reports from the field, where leaders are experiencing CONSTRUCTIVE culture shifts like:

1. ...how quickly you and your team CAN adapt to the WORKING REMOTE idea and adopt new technology (in a matter of days vs years)... when leadership lets go of the POWER/control issues re: worrying about whether people will or won't take advantage of being "unwatched" if not at the office.
2. ...how much faster you and your team CAN MAKE DECISIONS (in 20 minutes vs 20 months); how much more RISK-TAKING you are all willing to take on; how quick they are to try things/EXPERIMENT in order to execute faster; how OPEN they are to MAKE MISTAKES and learn new things; they seem more ACHIEVEMENT-oriented and more INNOVATIVE than ever...when they aren't frozen by the aggressive/defensive fear of PERFECTIONISM nor burdened by the passive/defensive compliance that comes with 6 levels of APPROVAL before they can take action
3. ...how much more COLLABORATIVE you and your team CAN be; how quickly everyone came together to SHARE resources, INTEGRATE thinking and FOCUS on the good of the whole - acting as ONE TEAM-everyone seems more WILLING to jump in and help any way they can...when they aren't DEFENSIVE and aren't focused on win-lose unhealthy COMPETITION, protecting their own silos or preserving their image of having all the answers
4. ...how much more impactful and frequent your team's COMMUNICATION CAN be; everyone is being more TRANSPARENT and clear about the essential PRIORITIES and debating the important tradeoffs real time...when we’re not focusing on TOO MANY priorities and not AVOIDING those tough tradeoff conversations with excuses about being too busy to slow down because everything is on the never ending list of must-have priorities
5. ...how much more CONNECTED, CARING, HUMANISTIC-ENCOURAGING your team CAN be; how it seems totally ok to check-in on each other and count on each other personally not just professionally....when they aren't just focused on the task and the petty/self-centered/trivial drama of the day

IS CRISIS A SILVER BULLET/QUICK FIX/FASTER WAY TO MASTER CHANGE?

Maybe for some companies, this compressed learning is part of a traumatic AND transformational silver bullet to help build the momentum for change that they were failing to embrace, previously. Or maybe not Kemosabe.  

Doing adaptive things doesn't necessarily mean that your company is becoming more adaptive. It just reveals to you that your team really did have the capacity to do it all along (but wasn't doing it for some reason, until just now).

Don't mistake the "doing" for "being"; temporary behavior does not indicate mastery. Facing titanic coefficients of adversity, like crisis and war, can reveal things to us.  “War reveals dimensions of human nature both above and below the acceptable standards for humanity.” J.Glenn Gray in The Warriors – Reflections on Men in Battle.

Maybe what we learn about ourselves and our team, during a crisis, can be the “silver bullet” accelerant of a next-level change for our culture - IF AND ONLY IF - we’re exquisitely deliberate about the learning/mastery part.  That is a big IF.

SO, HOW ARE WE DOING THESE THINGS? WHY IS IT POSSIBLE NOW?

I’ve heard the dramatic stories of change, directly from CXOs who’s very own companies have notoriously been struggling mightily to make strategic changes in both the technical side and human/cultural sides of the business. Many of them were struggling for years to implement any combination of new digital transformation/tech, new operating models, necessary supply chain reconfigurations, enterprise-wide culture change initiatives, talent/leadership up-skilling initiatives, etc. Now, they're moving faster than ever.

Their previous struggles, were not without intense pressures from analysts and boards demanding these improvements be made for the last two decades. Plenty of these CXOs have lost or nearly lost their jobs (pre crisis), because of their inability to get the organization to successfully adapt to a fundamentally faster world.

Yet these stories show how in just a matter of days into CV19, we can find our more agile/innovative behaviors without any additional investment, mandate or new DNA infusion. 

1. How are we doing it? How, all of a sudden, is the seemingly impossible possible? How are we integrating these radical changes so quickly and with so little fuss?
2. Why is our culture so much more flexible right now? How can we make sure the norms we want to keep, will be here to stay?
3. Adversity moves us into urgency – urgency moves us to adaptability. How can we build an organizational culture that has a kind of self-generated urgency and mastery retained as a consistent cultural norm? How might we strive to capture and retain the silver bullet learning now, in ways that don't require us to wait for another wave of adversity?

“People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.” Paulo Coelho, 'Veronika Decides to Die'. 

We are certainly finding out “something” for ourselves, right now.  We’re living through the most costly form of action-learning imaginable. The shared, mutual learning experience is happening whether we wanted it to or not– but there is no guarantee that we’re capturing the learning.  

If we could work together to capture the culture learning, that would be great kemosabe. 

CV19 HYPOTHESIS II - "You're going to make it Rose"

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* "Coefficients of Adversity" is a term believed to be first sourced from Gaston Bachelard’s (1884-1962) Waters and Dreams published in 1942 - I think.

---- Raphael Louis Vitón (Raff) is a global transformation lead, culture change specialist, and executive coach with Axialent.com, integral leadership facilitator with Stagen.com, innovation graduate professor @CEDIM design school, former innovation strategy consulting firm owner; corporate strategist/expat and a bilingual, first generation Cuban-American living in the Chicagoland area. He co-wrote the book: "Free the Idea Monkey to Focus on What Matters Most - How the Most Successful People Make Big Ideas Happen"; his articles have been featured online in Bloomberg Businessweek, Wired, Forbes and he has been quoted/mentioned in a variety of books on innovation, performance and change. If you are curious about his work, up for an integral jam session/ treasure hunt or interested in engaging him for an assignment, visit raffviton.com and/or subscribe to his monthly insight email: "We're Always Strengthening Something..."