Learning & Leading Through COVID19, Part One

I don’t know about you, but when a crisis hits, it’s all consuming for me. The unpredictability, paired with the overwhelmingly visceral drive toward the other side of the emergency, keeps me all-in on the here and now. And no matter how much I practice for emergencies, or for crises, ultimately I end up working with limited information, often in compromised and rapidly changing conditions. I guess that is the very nature of an emergency. At Global Citizen Year we practice leading out loud. This is my effort to do just that. I will document some of my thoughts, decisions, and insights connected to the unfolding impact of COVID-19. My hope is that this is helpful for anyone in a position of leadership as they navigate COVID-19 and any future crisis. I hope to make this piece the first of a series of insights into leading during this unprecedented moment.

Global Citizen Year In a Normal Year:

I realize some of you may not know what a normal year looks like for our global fellowship, but it’s important context for understanding the impact of the pandemic. When COVID-19 appeared we were in the midst of our eight-month global fellowship. There were 150 Fellows (age 17-19 hailing from over 30 states and 30 countries) living across Ecuador, Brazil, Senegal and India with 55 total staff members. While our Fellows spend the bulk of their eight months in-country, living with a host family and working in an apprenticeship, the immersion is bookended by two full cohort gatherings in California. When the outbreak picked up speed in March, our Fellows were fully navigating their daily lives in their host country - speaking the local language, thriving in their apprenticeships and building deep connections.  The culmination of our in-person portion of the Fellowship — Re-Entry Training (RET) — was a month away, scheduled to begin April 5th. RET is one of the most impactful aspects of our program -- a  training where we guide Fellows through some of the core elements of reverse culture shock to help them find a sense of accomplishment, agency, and gratitude. This is what Global Citizen Year looks like if everything goes according to plan. Alas, as you well know, 2020 did not unfold as anticipated. 

OUTBREAK STARTS >>> CREATE A RESPONSE TEAM & A GUIDING PHILOSOPHY

Our first step to manage Global Citizen Year within this new context was to assemble a COVID-19 Task Force that met daily. The team was built to include a small core of experts — involving health and safety, programmatic, operational and communications specialists  — in order to remain nimble and decisive. 

We developed a set of guiding principles appropriate to the moment — a brainchild of Abby Falik, our CEO and Founder — that proved incredibly useful: 

? Decisive and generous

? Clear and concise

? Empathetic and warm

? Balanced with regard to confidence and humility 

These principles served as our guide in making decisions, communicating with our stakeholders, consulting the right experts and operating well as a team. Leading from a clear framework adapted for the moment, was a core lesson for me as a leader. 

U.S. CASES START INCREASING >>> CANCEL IN-PERSON RE-ENTRY TRAINING 

As cases of COVID-19 started increasing rapidly in the U.S., our programs team compiled a briefing on the risks associated with hosting our Re-Entry Training (RET). 

We spent the next 48 hours weighing the opportunity costs for the Fellows of cancelling in-person RET and deliberating the potential health and safety risks of keeping it. Here are some of the questions we considered: By hosting RET, would we endanger our Fellows? Our staff? If young people are potentially unknowing carriers, would they pose a danger to those around them upon their return from such a large group gathering? If we couldn’t do RET in this intimate, high-touch way, how would this impact the cohort, and our relationship to them? 

We have a long-term relationship with risk management expert Steve Smith, from Experiential Consulting. He gave a piece of advice that will stay with me forever (and I hope will be useful to many of you): “As you make decisions to protect the health and safety of your Fellows, staff and communities, people will be disappointed, but they will understand. There will be a 90/10 rule in effect: 90% will understand and remain quietly supportive, and 10% will become angry and loud.” Our job was to keep the ratio in mind, to trust our decisions, and to remember that we did not cause COVID-19.

In hindsight, cancelling RET was a no-brainer, and maybe the easiest decision we’ve made so far (at least, as of this writing!).  At the moment, however, it was agonizing. We knew what we were taking away from our Fellows, and that the uniqueness of the RET experience would not exist for this cohort. We were devastated. But we also knew that we were making the best decision for the health, safety, and well-being of our entire community.  

GLOBAL PANDEMIC & TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS >>> EVACUATION

On March 11th, everything changed. Within 24 hours, the WHO officially declared COVID-19 a “pandemic” and travel restrictions around the world were put into place. We went from close monitoring and small programmatic changes, to all-in crisis management. 

Our first order decision became clear quickly. Evacuation. We set dates in each country for all Fellows to return home with time to say good-bye to their host communities. 

Then, air traffic slowed. Borders closed. Highways in our host countries were closing. Quick evacuation became immediate evacuation. Immediate evacuation became impossible. As-fast-as-humanly-possible became the appropriate measurement of urgency. Our decision to evacuate proved to be made right before it was too late. We managed to evacuate Fellows before flights became unobtainable, mere days before restrictions became severe and crossing borders became impossible. I am so proud of our team for this effort. Many young folks studying abroad with their colleges were not as fortunate. 

HINDSIGHT IS 20/20

You know just as well as I do that hindsight is 20/20. Sometimes it’s painful to look back at how you performed in a moment of crisis, but learning from experience and leading out loud is part of our mantra at Global Citizen Year. I know it’s helpful for me personally to take a moment, after the craziness, and reflect on what worked and where we can improve. 

Control what you can control and make the best of the rest

We controlled everything we could feasibly control. If a flight felt expensive, we could control the decision to book it -- so we booked it. If public transportation in-country stopped running, we could book private buses, so we did. It wasn’t smooth. We were booking flights that were being canceled within minutes of confirmation numbers being issued. There were global dynamics: travel bans and borders closing. There were Fellow-specific dynamics: lost passports, no possible route from Ecuador to Northern Macedonia, parents angry that we weren’t moving fast enough, parents angry that we abruptly interrupted their child’s experience. We took every opportunity to maximize our own agency amidst chaos, and doing so positioned us to drive our process in every instance where it was possible.

Strong organizational culture produces best in class global operation

As a team, we performed as a 24-hour operation. Right before bedtime, the U.S. team would hand off to the India and Senegal teams who were just beginning their days. This type of 24-hour schedule is only possible when organizational culture is strong, trust exists, goals are clear, and communication channels are open. It requires that everyone involved ensures these values remain true. I was in awe of our nimbleness, our ability to make decisions in the moment, and support one another. We had built this capability together, day by day, by showing up for one another, well before the crisis. 

Give your team the authority to make decisions

Critical to our crisis management was decentralizing our decision-making to allow for quicker action and problem-solving. There were so many examples where not requiring approval chains proved pivotal. One was for a group flight from Ecuador to the U.S.. Ecuador had declared its borders were officially closing in 72 hours and we were in a scramble. After a complicated journey to a distant airport to catch one of the only flights out, the flight was canceled minutes before boarding. At that moment, the Ecuador team went from counter to counter to find a new option. They booked it immediately and the Fellows were in-flight within hours (albeit to a different city). That was an expensive decision. It forced a rebooking of all ongoing flights once they touched down. It was the right call. We had a clear mandate: evacuate as fast as humanly possible. With clear goals, strong communication and trust, we were able to move faster with our on-the-ground teams, without hamstringing the decisions through an arduous approval process. 

Generosity makes a difference

As a non-profit organization, we are relentlessly focused on impact and equity in our decision making. Our supporters are generous, and we steward our resources responsibly. While we charge tuition for our experience, 80% of our Fellows receive financial aid and upwards of 50% are on full scholarship. During evacuation, all decisions had financial implications. Not only were we booking and rebooking tickets -- but parents were doing so as we had to change ports of entry to get Fellows to their hometowns. As the person responsible for our fiscal health, I was stressed. This is where our guiding philosophy played its role brilliantly. We were going to be decisive and generous. If anyone experienced a financial hardship during this time, we would reimburse them for incurred costs -- no questions asked, just a form to fill out for accounting purposes. I had to trust that we would find ways to recoup those resources and I am happy to report that generosity begets generosity -- our supporters stepped up in incredible ways. 

There will always be critics

And of course, we were judged. Too hasty. Not fast enough. Evacuating 150 Fellows from four countries to over 30 different countries and 30 different states in the U.S., all at the pace of “as-fast-as-humanly-possible” was an enormous undertaking. As a team, we had practiced for many crises, including mass evacuation. But that exercise was always to evacuate one country. The world hadn’t seen a pandemic that would close down operations everywhere; this wasn’t in our crisis management protocols. The 90/10 rule cannot be overstated. It became my mantra. But even with that ringing loud in my head, the 10% certainly stung. With hindsight I can see that the 10% required careful monitoring, but didn’t deserve or require my complete emotional investment.

When our Fellows touched down at their homes across the globe, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. We were tired from our round-the-clock efforts but grateful for the outcome. As we at Global Citizen Year now know all too well, this was not the end of the crisis, nor impact of  COVID-19.  What followed would be even more daunting. Stay tuned for Part Two.