LEADING THROUGH CRISIS - My reflections and learning

“The secret of crisis management is not good vs. bad, it’s preventing the bad from getting worse.” — Andy Gilman, president & CEO of Comm Core Consulting Group

It has been my intention to write this blog for a while - before Covid-19 and the global pandemic. Between my time at Enron and BP, I have witnessed organisations’ responses to tragic and traumatic events.  Covid-19 represents a different form of crisis. Where some might say that Enron and BP found their own crises, Covid-19 has created a globally inclusive crisis that combines a public health tragedy with an economic tsunami. Regardless, as I reflect on what I have learned in helping companies, leadership teams, and employees through these events, I think there are some consistent themes.

Incidentally, should I be clear what I mean by “crisis”? We probably all agree we are experiencing a Covid-19 crisis today. However, what constitutes a crisis? While I acknowledge that personal and localised crises present significant challenges, I am mainly focusing here on an event which triggers an existential threat to an organisation. An unexpected event which endangers the very existence of an organisation. 

A PRAGMATIC IDEALIST PERSPECTIVE

Before I go further, I think I should declare my vantage point. I have always been a pragmatist. I find advice useful if it helps me solve a problem. A great deal of the commentary on crisis response recently has been too abstract for me. The articles that talk about trust, reassurance, and transparency leave me with too many unanswered questions. I’ve always felt that it is too easy to point out generic ‘good things to do’ without explaining how one might deploy them for a practical purpose. My example here would be my time with BP dealing with the Macondo oil spill response; the generic advice to be transparent and open with stakeholders was, to my mind, fully embraced by BP. However, it was certainly not clear to me that this transparency was beneficial to anyone other than those seeking to gain an advantage in attacking BP. 

I am, also, something of an idealist. I recognise that I come to problems and challenges not wholly fulfilled by just navigating the immediate task or problem. Certainly, the immediate task or problem during a crisis takes precedent over everything else, but I find myself looking to link any action to some prevailing meaning or purpose. In this regard, I think of the current Covid-19 response where we are helping organisations preserve their core businesses, while ensuring employees are the last impacted economically, and we try to emerge potentially with a stronger business model.

Consequently, the recent articles which have come closest to my own views and experience have been these from McKinsey: Leadership in a crisis: Responding to the coronavirus outbreak and future challenges, and How to Demonstrate Calm and Optimism in a Crisis.

DISTILLING MY OWN EXPERIENCE

Perhaps it’s obvious, but let me underline that each crisis is unique. Responding is therefore very much a matter of gauging the specific circumstances. My own experiences have stretched from the precipitous fall from ‘Most Innovative Company’ to bankruptcy in six months, from respected major oil company that can be trusted to operate complex deep-water oil production to poster child for environmental destruction and bad actor. Today I am helping a major Indian business  respond to the Covid-19 implications, including the dual challenges of 200k employees living in crowded urban settings and the unprecedented decline in consumer demand for petrochemical products. These events have been very different in terms of the circumstances, businesses, leadership, political, regulatory, and geography. Consequently, distilling my reflections does require some aggregation and generalisation. Nonetheless, I believe the list that follows has relevance to each of my crisis management experiences and honours my pragmatic, idealist outlook.

1. FOCUS - CREATING AN ORGANISATION SINGULARITY

My starting point for a discussion on crisis response is creating a top-down singular focus for the entire organisation.

Over the past 20 years we have countered the complexity and speed of change in our business domains by creating semi-autonomous work teams. With this has come a light touch on direction and objective setting. This is generally a good thing. However, when confronted with a crisis, my experience has underlined the critical importance of collapsing the entire organisation’s focus into the 3-5 things that need to be done immediately. Organisations can be slow to understand the magnitude of a crisis. Individuals can be in denial of the consequences. It is essential that the CEO and senior leadership team acts quickly to:

-       Demonstrate the importance of the threat

-       Collapse timeframes to the immediate needs of the day/week ahead

-       Convene/personally lead a central crisis response team/operations centre.

Equally, the organisation and delegation structure needs to be rebalanced toward immediacy and away from efficiency. Every crisis I have navigated has required an ability to get things done in minutes. This does not mean recklessly. But the pendulum needs to swing rapidly toward speed and impact, and consequently away from quality and due process.

2. CRISIS AND OPERATIONS - BALANCING SHORT AND LONG TERM

The organisations I have worked with have done a good job of separating and maintaining core business operations while responding to a crisis. This is however an important point of emphasis; an organisation facing a major crisis may become distracted and neglect its core customers, manufacturing, or other necessary operations.

It helps, I think, to clearly separate out an organisation’s crisis response to its core operations. It also makes sense to balance a need to enrol key talent in solving a crisis while ensuring you are not exposing your business to creating an incremental crisis.

As an example, BP balanced this during Macondo by leaning on an army of contractors who we onboarded in rapid time. In the six weeks immediately after Macondo, we had over 30,000 contractors helping us with crisis response along the Gulf. We also set up a deployment system to ensure BP people who were ‘seconded’ to crisis response could be backfilled or rotated in and out safely. To achieve this we built an internal recruiting/ deployment team who worked 7 days a week on filling critical needs. 

3. AVOID DISTRACTION - UNCEREMONOUSLY SWEEP AWAY CLUTTER

Where I think many businesses struggle is in making swift decisions to sweep away the clutter which distracts from or even compromises a crisis response. The examples are easy to list: from annual performance management processes, to budgeting and procurement systems. This bureaucracy is annoying in normal times but when you are managing a crisis it is downright infuriating.

In an ideal world, your organisation has the ability to quickly ‘pivot’ its normal systems and policies to adapt to the needs of the moment. However, sadly, this has not been my experience. What I have found is that the enormity and consequences of a crisis do not permeate an organisation at a consistent speed. It is likely that business leaders feel the urgency in a far shorter timeframe than someone in accounts receivable. 

The challenge therefore is not to rely on the nimbleness and agility of functional support in quickly adapting their systems (while of course hoping that many do), but instead to simply absolve the crisis response team from any unnecessary process.

This is a dangerous but necessary step. At its best it frees the crisis response team to get things done quickly and bypass unhelpful systems. At its worst it creates a cavalier attitude to important decisions. Fundamentally, therefore, transparency is the non-negotiable golden rule. Whatever decisions and actions are undertaken, whatever systems are temporarily paused, need to be declared and reviewed by the senior management team.

4. PURPOSELY COMMUNICATE

Crisis communication is almost impossible to get right. What I mean by this is that the platitude about embracing transparency and constant real time communication is false. There are components of this that I fully embrace. There are others I have not ever seen go perfectly.

Where I agree with the constantly communicate mantra is in the context of what General McChrystal talks about in his book Team Of Teams. Providing the organisation with context. Giving the right people all the information they need to make wise decisions. I have had the good fortune to work with some extraordinary leaders who have role modelled this beautifully - Bob Dudley during the BP Macondo response, and Steve Cooper in the post Enron bankruptcy mess. They both did an exceptional job in keeping everyone up to date with what they knew, what they feared, and what they saw as the critical next task. 

Where I believe communication is a thorny issue is with the outside world. I see many commentators promoting transparency as a near panacea. Frankly, this is hogwash. The world in my view, wishes to paint any crisis as a battle between dark and light forces. I have not seen any organisation managing a crisis while also being portrayed by media as a bad actor benefiting from more ‘transparency.’

I am not a fan of what I have seen particularly in the US. Any semblance of objective journalism seems long ago to have become subsumed by a greater desire for revenue created by mass consumption.  The truth is that companies in crisis provide the perfect ingredients to sell a good story while pretending to serve a social purpose. Indeed, never let the much more nuanced facts get in the way of a good story.

I do think understanding this dynamic is a key ingredient if you are managing a crisis. Communications should be viewed through the likely Machiavellian lens. What is important is to aggressively balance this with facts and, critically, help employees feel reassured about what their employer is doing.

5. RECOGNISE AND ENCOURAGE

In my nearly 40 years of working professionally, there are two stand out moments of recognition that I will cherish long after I’ve forgotten the promotions and project go-lives. Each was a simple expression of thanks from a chief executive during the heat of a crisis response. The first was a voicemail left in Dec 2001. The second was a handwritten card received in late 2010. 

Crisis response is the most intense and exhausting work I have ever done. When crises occur the human response transcends a typical employee/employer contract. In each moment I have thought only of a need to serve others. Of being unexpectedly in a position to potentially help an organisation mitigate a calamitous event. It is this sense of duty which has always been my deepest motivation when navigating crises. It is one of the most powerful motivating forces I have experienced.  In some ways I do think it gives you extra strength and resilience.

It does not, however, insulate you from exhaustion and fatigue. Recognising that the power of serving an organisation in crisis is so powerful for some people that they will put their own interests, their own health, their own welfare on hold is essential. The two lessons for me here are:

-       Monitor and intervene when people push themselves too far in response to this deep sense of saving or rescuing something they care deeply about

-       Recognise people in thoughtful ways focusing on specifics of what they have done and who they are as individuals.

6. REMEMBER YOU ARE NOT ALONE

Some of my loneliest times have been during crisis response. While you are surrounded by people and often constantly running from one critical meeting to another, there is a strange inability or reluctance to talk about your own fears and insecurities. Equally, crisis response takes you away from your family. 

This is where the supportive note from a friend, an encouraging word from a colleague, an unexpected visit from a family member can be amazingly reinvigorating. What is strange about crisis response episodes is that sometimes people think “He is too busy so we won’t bother him”. The reality is something different. Yes, there are never enough hours in the day, but those hours take a heavy toll. Little notes and messages which say nothing more than “Hey, my friend, I know it’s tough but trust yourself and remember…this too shall pass,” can be a tonic.

7. STAY ANCHORED AND CENTERED

“Get yourself grounded and you can navigate even the stormiest roads in peace.” – Steve Goodier

My final word of advice based on my own experience is perhaps the most important for any individual navigating a crisis. Don’t lose sight of who you are, what you stand for, and what is important to you. In the frenzied days and weeks of dealing with a crisis there are dangers you lose your own identity. More importantly, the stresses, speed, and consequential outcomes will test your own beliefs and values.

I have at times found this very difficult. Over the years I have become much better at keeping centred and not getting swept away. I have done this by ensuring I spend time every week reflecting on what I am doing and asking people I respect to give me their views. A wise man once told me: “David, you should spend 30 mins every weekend asking yourself whether you would be willing to share with the world and defend every decision you made last week.” I have taken his advice to heart and, when I’m at my most frenetic, I add the confidential confessional to help me be objective.

EPITAPH - MAKING THINGS LESS BAD

I started this blog with a great quote from Andy Gilman. This in some ways sums up my sentiment. One very difficult component of helping businesses who face a crisis is that you inevitably have some who want to debate and parcel blame for how the crisis occurred. I’ve always felt that wasting too much time on this subject during the crisis itself was a distraction. Moreover, I think this sums up my personal attraction and interest in help companies manage crises. My interest and purpose has been to help mitigate the effects of a calamitous event. It does seem to me that there are plenty of people who enjoy and have an appetite to apportion blame. There are far fewer who are willing to put aside their personal feelings (and interests sometimes) and just focus on making the consequence a little bit less ‘bad.’

I wonder therefore whether that would be a terrible epitaph? David, may not have been perfect, but when things went wrong, he helped make them just a little less bad.

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