Reflections on the Softer Sides of Dealing with Crisis

I am dedicating this article to the memory of the late Abraham Mizrahi, with whom I had the honor to work, and who had taught me a lot, specifically on dealing with and coping with crises.

I can still remember the first week on my very first customer-facing role many years back. I had just moved over from Engineering to Product Management, when a major customer of ours identified a critical chip malfunction. We were going to have a call with that customer to discuss the situation, and I didn’t really know how to take on that call. I approached my boss and said: I’m not yet really familiar with the customer or the specifics of the product, we don’t really know what’s causing the problem, and I’m not very familiar with the circuit that’s giving us trouble; how do I manage this call? My boss smiled at me and said nonchalantly – welcome to Product Management.

The next complex and persistent crisis you may need to deal with is most likely to come your way when you least expect it and when you are least prepared, practically or emotionally. It might be building up at this very moment. I hope people around you can help you a bit more than that past boss of mine did for me. Still, the many crises I went through, besides making my colleagues and me a bit more resilient, have also taught me a thing or two. I’d like to share my personal lessons with you as I wish someone would have shared with me before the first time I got to manage a crisis. I hope you find at least some of the following helpful.

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1.??????? Pardon my French, but shit happens. To everyone. This point may look trivial to some, while others may completely deny it. Problems? Not on their watch. This is, in my opinion, a very important point, and one of mindset, hence coming first. In fact, if you asked me to pick just one thought out of this collection, this one would be one of the contenders. I have worked with suppliers, partners and customers, some of which are top-class in their professional and commercial domains, obviously also with ones of lower tiers. I was involved in the execution of projects, at least some of which could serve as textbook examples for careful planning, management and excellent, thorough engineering. I still however haven’t found an organization, team or operation, aka project, immune to or free of problems. I’m not dismissing the severity or the negative impact of problems for even a moment; neither am I dismissing problems as great opportunities for learning, even though I’d obviously rather do without them. What I hope I am helping you with here is getting free of beating yourself, letting others beat you for a problem that happened, or wasting any tiny bit of your priceless energy at a time of crisis on either of these when there’s a fire out there. Once you understand this, you can put your full mind to the resolution of the problem rather than fending off firstly your own, then anyone else’s, complaints on the occurrence of the problem. With this clear and hopefully emotionless mindset, you are much more likely to address the problem effectively and efficiently.

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2.?????? It is therefore how you deal with a crisis, which makes the difference. Having laid out the backdrop, claiming that some problems may just happen no matter how good a job you’ve done, what CAN you still do about that? Well, the best thing you can do now is to excel at managing the situation and at navigating the crisis towards resolution as well as can be. Let us first get one thing off the table. There’s this infamous theme about organizations, where unspoken culture somehow welcomes crises for giving people an opportunity to shine, saving the day or the nation. This is certainly not where I’m coming from. A crisis is indeed a situation where people can outstand and shine. By the way, for some exactly the opposite. However, this is simply an outcome or a side effect of a crisis, certainly not an objective or something for which to drive or aspire. Going back to my point, what I mean to say is that besides the analysis of the problem, the dig for root cause, which some may want to pursue as urgently as possible, or the conception of possible solutions, you have to put attention and effort into managing the situation in the most holistic manner possible. What can you do to limit the impact of the problem or contain it? What can you do to keep your customer’s or partner’s program going and its long term schedule intact despite the problem, as severe as it may be? What alternate or temporary solutions can you put together to keep business running until you have a complete solution in place? The reason I’m making this point is that a tough crisis sucks you into your problem and solving it, while there’s a whole world out there which needs to keep running. It’s not that no one cares about you being heads down with the crisis. Sure they do, but the world out there doesn’t stop. You have to pull your head out of the swirl it is in, take some air, and see what you can do to help those depending on your outcome sustain their plans and move forward. The longer it takes to bring your problem to full resolution, the greater the importance of working to enable those depending on you to keep going, one way or another. To summarize this point, I think that my message here is that aside from excelling at what you do and striving for perfect results, aside from working to prevent problems from happening in the first place, one has to assume that problems may happen anyhow and one should therefore also invest in the organizational muscle of dealing with problems, considering, among other things, the points I mentioned above.

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3.?????? Prevent nonproductive energy draw; focus all your energy on solving the problem. Crises by their nature tend to get things to heat up between the people involved. Pressure from all sorts of directions – top management, customers, and people waiting for tasks, decisions or assignments – puts the people managing the crisis in stress. Being disappointed from failure to resolve the problem or reaching a dead end on an investigation path doesn’t help either. Stress gets counterproductive behaviors out of people. For example, some may start finger pointing, while those pointed to get into defensive positions or just walk away, whether practically or mentally. You have to regard any such counterproductive behaviors as drawing energy and team spirit, which you would otherwise have at your disposal for solving the problem. Make sure no energy is wasted on anything that doesn’t support making progress towards the resolution of the crisis.

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4.????? Break the problem into small, well-defined, workable pieces. I suppose this is a basic general technique for problem solving. However, besides serving for solving the problem and bringing practical operational value such as enabling parallel execution of certain tasks, breaking the problem into small pieces also serves in making it possible to mark small successes, i.e. small steps forward. As such, it also creates opportunities for recognition of the effort and contribution of the people involved. Tough problems are frustrating and may take a long time to resolve, just like long projects. Most people would find it very difficult to put all their energy into something without seeing at least some good news or a bit of recognition of success occasionally. Make sure you have this on your list if the crisis lingers on unresolved.

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5.????? Show managerial presence – this topic applies in case you are a manager with a leadership span related to the domain in which the crisis broke. Depending on your professional background and your experience, you may or may not practically contribute to whatever technical or managerial aspects of the case. Either way, and whether you are actively involved in managing or dealing with the crisis, your presence is significant. People at the heart of a crisis feel alone, exposed and vulnerable, carrying the responsibility for a matter which may critically hurt business, customer relations and possibly even their own reputation. Being there, even if not with active involvement, signals that you are in that situation, in the same boat, together. It signals that you are sharing the responsibility for the outcome whatever it may be. Surely it has merits on your end just as well, but it is much more important for the people who deal with the situation to see you are not hiding, or staying away, presumably to prevent any dirt from sticking to you, leaving any consequences for others to carry.

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6.?????? Find good partners and subject matter experts. Professionals, and general problem solving pros, those MacGyver’s in your organization, may not be part of the direct group of people currently dealing with the crisis. They may reside outside the immediate circle of people related to the subject of the crisis. However, people who have “been there, done that”, but in a good way, are in most cases, by my experience, indispensable assets for a crisis management team. Moreover, they may be exactly the ones to bring in ideas and suggestions from other domains of knowledge and experience which may result in innovative breakthroughs. On the emotional side, people who are emotionally detached from the subject of the crisis also have the benefit of bringing in some emotional balance into a hectic-by-definition crisis management team.

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7.?????? Communicate, communicate, communicate – severe crises tend to get you drowned in work, follow-ups and various other details. Don’t let this get you overly entrenched in the battle. Remember there are many parties out there that hungry for information. Your status is critical for on-going adjustments of plans, development of plans B and C and more. Primarily your customer, but also within your firm: your management for example. Working hard and even making progress is not enough by itself because it just won’t trigger any respective possibly necessary action outside the circle dealing with the issue. Parties depending on the resolution of the problem also tend to develop anger and frustration if not updated regularly. Some may even want to be involved or giving their inputs. So, broadcast where you are, what you do, what you’ve accomplished so far, your next steps and why they make sense, and your expectations for how long things may take. Experience shows this is at times even more important than defusing the problem.

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8.?????? Keep all parties working the problem in tight sync. This is basically a sub-topic to the previous one. So you’ve followed my 3rd point, broke the problem down into pieces and let a few different people or teams deal with each part. Following up on the progress of the separate efforts you may often find one or more of the teams doing work, which is not relevant anymore in light of very recent findings made by another team. What you should do to prevent this is to make sure every new piece of information produced or obtained in one place if quickly broadcasted to everyone dealing with the problem. This will assure there are no islands that are out of sync. You should also continuously rethink and revisit any activity launched in light of the very latest information you have at any point, as activities may turn irrelevant. You do want to focus all the effort available for solving to problem on productive and effective directions.

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9.?????? Keep your framework and boundaries in mind. When investigating a problem, it’s probably always good to apply some scientific curiosity beyond the immediate need for hard data. It encourages you to see through data and get to the bottom of things. As such, do try to dig, or encourage digging into matters which seem unclear or unexplained. Do not upfront filter out what look like crazy ideas for exploration or investigation. Having said that however, always keep your context in mind and remember your framework and boundaries. I know it’s difficult to contain investigations in time, but if you really need come up with a solution within, say, 3 months, then think hard before you embark on a 12-month long experiment, drawing resources, attention and energy, which may barely satisfy someone’s scientific curiosity. Try to ask yourself upfront: what is the likelihood of such experiment to yield deterministic or conclusive results? And if it does, what are we going to do next with the results we obtain? If it comes to answer a binary question, e.g. whether the cause of A is either B or C, will you then act differently whether it is B or C? If the answer is no, you may want to reconsider pursuing that direction. Still, you may anyhow want to keep ideas for such experiments in your virtual parking lot, as your problem might not converge to resolution within the required timeframe no matter how hard you try, in which case you may want to revert to some of those crazy ideas you parked aside.

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10.??? New findings and failures or roadblocks shouldn’t shake you up or discourage you. Bringing a big problem to resolution usually has quite a few ups and downs. It could be something you tried which crashed, or some experiment which yielded unexpected results, or a hypothesis you had so much confidence in collapsing in a big boom. This is yet again just the nature of reality in complex crisis management. Don’t let that discourage you. Remember that the collapse of a great theory you were willing to bet your life on is not as good as positively proving a theory, but still an event of value. Knowing that something is NOT the cause of a problem prunes from your scope quite some investigation which has just become completely redundant. OK, so you’ve invested some effort in going in a direction later found wrong. That’s perfectly fine. To make the most of it, analyze it well to draw a many conclusion as possible and keep moving forward as the cause and resolution you’re looking for are still surely out there somewhere.

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11.???? Keep the Big Picture in mind. Remember where you’re going and keep your head above the water. To wrap up my recommendations, last but not least, here’s another wide over-arching point. Untangling a crisis is like a walk in a dark forest, or sailing in the open sea, or walking a desert from one end to the other, or…you got the point. There will be many times where you do not clearly see the horizon, or don’t even see clearly a hundred feet ahead. Someone, probably you if you are leading the team addressing the crisis, needs to hold a compass and pull it out of their pocket once in a while, to see that you are still moving in the right direction. Sure, the “right” direction may change as you go. It might not be perfectly clear at times, and that’s something you need to be able to cope with. Most of the time you need to know where you’re heading and to see that this is where your efforts are directed at. This will require some mental effort to keep your head above the water, as investigations sometimes tend to be swamping efforts – you’ll be surrounded by people, data, opinions, management directives, customer push and many other things. Again, remember this is part of your reality and make the effort to not let that get you to drown.

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Wow. This list now looks quite overwhelming also to me. I do however solemnly swear this is really what it takes and these are all really needed under your belt to effectively cross tough situations of crisis. Having second thoughts now on that good old past boss of mine who sent me to battle, I can only thank him for giving me the space for acquiring my experience and building all these insights.

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Lastly, lots of good luck managing your next crisis. I’m sure you’ll need it.

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Truly yours,

Ilan