Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #1
Perspective and Patience
If 25 years ago someone would have told me that perspective and patience were two crucial leadership qualities, I would have disagreed – vehemently. I am not sure age has bestowed any increased wisdom, probably more trial and error (with a lot of error). Having the opportunity to see various crisis teams work through disruptive events over the past few years gives one some insight into managing these incidents.
Perspective covers many vital concepts, but the most important might be embracing diversity of thought or expertise. In a crisis, it is essential to bring your own experience and background to bear on the incident; it also helps the group make better decisions and develop more impactful mitigation strategies to be open to different ideas. Operations may want to address an issue that might need an IT or HR lens to create the best solution.
Patience is a characteristic, that on the surface, may seem contrary to crisis management. At its core, crisis management is about making the best decisions, given time and resource constraints at hand. Sometimes, a quick decision is not always the best (of course, safety concerns would be different – fire, active shooter, tornado, among others). The ability to analyze information, evaluate perspectives, and then make the right decision takes practice and patience. Fully understanding the situation is important, it can take time, and that awareness helps a crisis team make those decisions.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #2
When you’re there to decide, decide
If you know me, you know that I consider decision making an integral part of leadership. You also know how much I enjoy watching movies. While not a movie, Band of Brothers is a favorite of mine. There is a quote that continues to resonate with me: “He wasn’t a bad leader because he made bad decisions, he was a bad leader because he made no decisions.” Band of Brothers is not a documentary, so I mean no slight to anyone portrayed in the series; instead, that quote is a concept of leadership that, in my judgment, is worthy of exploration – albeit in this case less than 500 words!
There is a lot to unpack in that quote, but I want to focus on how a leader, or crisis team, not just makes a decision but makes a good decision. Or at least the best decision given the information available. Have you heard of John Boyd? A fascinating story of a fighter pilot who earned a degree in aeronautical engineering and designed planes for the Air Force and subsequently turned those theories into military strategy (the link below is to an excellent biography). I am not an expert on his O-O-D-A Loop, nor is this a detailed paper on employing it. I want to discuss one aspect of Boyd’s theory.
Decision making is a skill, and it can be learned and exercised. A critical component of O-O-D-A is making observations, gathering input, and using observations to craft decisions. How quickly a leader or a team can collect, analyze and then synthesize that data leads to improved decision making. It can be challenging to wait for those inputs while a disruptive event unfolds (remember patience from the previous post). Strong leaders and groups understand that not all decisions are made with 100% certainty but, strong leaders and groups can make impactful decisions if they collect inputs. The skill is how quickly a team understands the impact those inputs have on a situation, in this case, a disruptive event, and how much data they need before making that decision. Circumstances dictate how decisions are made and with how much certainty. A cohesive, highly functioning team will make decisions quicker and quicker with more practice, and they become more comfortable with uncertainty. That ability to quickly process inputs is the first part of the O-O-D-A Loop and, in my experience, the most critical.
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War a book by Robert Coram (bookshop.org)
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #3
“It’s not about you.”
“It’s not about you.” That is some of the best leadership advice I have ever received (more on another tip in a future post). Fred White, the executive officer on my first Coast Guard cutter and the closest person I have to a mentor, said that to me a few years after he retired. It was part of a much larger conversation; he related that short statement to one of his command tours aboard Camp Lejeune, a major U.S. Marine Corp base. He reinforced the concept that good leaders need to focus on their team (or back then crew) and that leaders need to think about how serving their people advances a team’s goals.
You may be asking how this notion applies to crisis team leadership. The basic premise of employee safety is a crisis team’s primary focus. Having “it’s not about you” as a corporate core principle allows an organization to frame its response to any disruptive event, not just the current pandemic. Smart leaders, whether individuals or teams, understand that the single most essential resource is the people that make up an organization, company, or team.
There is another aspect tied to this premise that is vital to team leadership. A highly functional crisis team needs to operate without ego. The individuals need to not focus on themself, but rather on the team. They need to foster an environment where all ideas are considered, but when it is time to decide, they decide (see previous post). Embracing “it’s not about you” allows crisis team leaders to focus on the disruptive event and not about who is presenting ideas or making the final decision. A crucial component of this ability is trust; developing that trust can take time, but some crises do not afford a company any time. A strong crisis team prepares for those incidents through discussions and exercises.
That is a topic for a future post.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #4
The Shipdriver
One of the best questions I heard during my Coast Guard career was at a training session before one of my sea tours: “Does the captain need to be the best shipdriver?” I will let you imagine how that conversation went with a classroom full of some pretty hard over type A personalities. The instructor allowed the group to stew for a few minutes and then gave a great answer. “No. But the captain needs to know who the best shipdriver is.” That response struck a chord then and still does.
That answer gets to the heart of three related concepts vital to leadership; know your team, train your team, and provide for your team. This is true for an individual leader or crisis team – knowing your team is critical to success.
A crisis team needs to have a high-level, cross-functional understanding of the entire organization and its strategic goals to make the right decisions during a disruptive event. That fundamental knowledge will form a strong exercise/training program that includes training the crisis team itself. Training may include tabletop discussions of a disruptive event, it could be helping to develop or update resiliency plans, or it could be a full exercise. During a disruptive event, departments will first ensure their people's safety and then determine what recovery strategies apply to the situation. A leader or crisis team can be instrumental in accelerating that response by securing a host of resources:
· helping redeploy people to areas that need assistance
· ensuring teams have the right equipment to accomplish their business capabilities
· removing obstacles for team members impacted by a natural disaster
Even great leaders or leadership teams cannot accomplish that alone, but great leaders know who they can turn to in a crisis – great leaders know who the best shipdriver is before sailing toward shoal water.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #5
What will you do when they fail?
In my pre-CUNA Mutual days, many of my leadership learnings came from people asking questions; I was lucky in that regard. After back-to-back sea tours, I received orders to the Coast Guard’s training center in Petaluma, California, as the assistant school chief for the service’s Leadership and Management School (I got lucky, a lot). Not long after starting my role, the Training Officer, Commander Martin, called me to his office for a chat. CDR Martin knew I wanted to command a patrol boat; toward the end of our conversation, he asked me a difficult question: “What will you do when your crew fails?” I was obviously confused by this query – why would we ever fail? And yet, it was on point and pertinent for any good leader. CDR Martin said a leader would be as defined by their reaction to failure as they would be to success.
That was a hefty introduction for a post on crisis team leadership (promise, it will be less than 500 words). One common theme in crisis leadership is preparation, trying to think of the “black swan” scenario and how to prevent those from impacting the enterprise. Once a team views failure as an event, they can and should prepare for it. Of course, the most critical reaction to failure is to learn from that instance and move forward. That sounds trite and simple, but it is challenging. There are three things a good leader will need to do:
- discover what went wrong
- develop solutions to fix it
- mplement those changes
There are times, however, where a failure might require holding someone accountable. While that is difficult, it is intrinsic to strong leadership. The entire team will be looking at how a leader moves forward from a failure. Experienced leaders are fair, judicious, and transparent and understand that this is crucial to the role. At its core, accountability needs to be couched fairness – there is no need (or place) for that matter for a leader to lose their temper. I think that was the core lesson CDR Martin was driving at, a lesson I wish I had embraced more fully in my career. As I end this note, let me add that I am no stranger to failure, having done so on more than one occasion and at times spectacularly.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #6
Be present
If you peruse any social media (including this one), you will find numerous sites, people, and entities with tips and advice on leadership. In my experience, leadership begins with one basic premise, and everything else flows from there. Be present; 90% of leadership is simply being there for your people. Be present – sounds easy, but it is more nuanced than you might initially expect. The first thing you may ask yourself is: why is this important?
Solid communication is the foundation of any relationship, whether professional or personal. A leader that is around their team will have that opportunity to communicate with their team. That starts with just asking questions and listening. Questions do not have to be limited to work; ask the team about plans for the weekend or how they are doing with school or a home project. Being present allows a leader to build those relationships. It also contributes to a leader being approachable. A good leader encourages a team to talk to them about issues impacting the group – both good and bad. It is a delicate balance in leadership; a leader needs to both be approachable and, at times, might be the one that needs to hold someone accountable. As mentioned, being present is nuanced but does not have to be complicated.
During the COVID response, I would posit that the crisis team leaders I worked with were present. In a worldwide pandemic that precluded face-to-face interaction, being present was a challenge and a challenge the crisis team leaders met. In this case, technology played a crucial role, whether using video conferencing to meet with key stakeholders or a wide array of technology to inform the enterprise, email, the intranet site, and the mass notification tool. These crisis team leaders are among the most approachable leaders I have worked with during my military and civilian career. In any crisis, there is no room or time for ego to impact a team; during COVID, the team’s ability to focus on the crisis was a hallmark of their leadership style. They needed to gather information to make decisions (see the O-O-D-A post), and to do that they quickly assembled a strong team willing to bring issues to the crisis leaders. That is possible when a leader(s) makes an effort to be approachable.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #7
“Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.” ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
I have been fortunate in my career to experience leadership as a trainer, studying for a master’s degree and in practical applications. There are plenty of books, papers, videos, treaties, pamphlets, social media sites that talk about leadership. They have one thing in common – communication connects all aspects of leadership. I keep a list of leadership traits that I value; on that list, communication is last because it builds strong leadership. Fitzgerald captures the absolute essence of being a leader, turning thoughts, plans, or a vision into action. In my career, I have learned most of my lessons through trial and error; here are four hard-earned concepts that I have found to be useful.
1. State your opinion clearly and concisely; even if, especially if, your opinion differs from your boss
2. Give feedback, solicit feedback, accept feedback, value feedback
3. Disagreement is not disrespect; learn how to say no to your boss
4. Value different opinions, embrace those differences, use those differences
At the company I work for, the COVID19 response brought together a core group of crisis team leaders, and they needed to conduct frank and open meetings to manage through this pandemic. The entire crisis response centered on that team evaluating different options and doing so respectfully and expeditiously.
An invaluable partner during any crisis is a company’s communication team. That communication could take the form of PowerPoint presentations, emails, FAQs, and new company policies; these were important written communications. Verbal communication will also play a critical role during a response; a communication team may work with senior leaders to produce videos to reinforce the enterprise’s response for all employees. During the COVID response, the crisis team knew that the safest course of action was rapidly moving as many people from the office buildings to their own homes. Turning that vision into action required a well-thought-out communication plan to ensure people understood both why the company was moving in this direction and the actual how to get it done. The crisis team had to enact the plan, and without robust communication, that would have been a far more significant challenge.
My leadership list's initial focus was on feedback, but the first bullet now encompasses a much larger concept. Communicating needs to include both written and verbal skills. You will find plenty of courses about talking to a team, working on non-verbal cues, and the like. I have found that the ability to express oneself in writing might be even more critical. That is an entirely different topic and if you want to see some precise prose, read U.S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #8
Do YOUR job*
A leadership concept that I favor is “Know your environment” (KYE). That tenet is closely linked to O-O-D-A and the need to update observations to inform decisions continually. KYE is more than just situational awareness; KYE is understanding a team, knowing what they need to do their jobs; it is also recognizing changes in morale or realizing when to help refocus a team.
“Do your job” is a primary pillar of KYE. While in the Coast Guard, I served aboard ships that shared a homeport with other cutters of the same class. Invariably, the crew would wonder what the other ships were doing, why they were gone less, how they “always” got out of the difficult missions. These questions arose when I lost focus on the crew’s morale or our job at hand. I can tell you with certainty that all of the cutters in a geographic area were gone the same amount of time, performed the same difficult, challenging, and at times dangerous missions. My job as a leader was to provide that picture to the crew that would allow them to focus on their jobs. For a crew to accept that guidance, it would require leaders to develop trust. Along with solid communication, trust may be the most critical aspect of leadership.
It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking “the others” are not ready for a crisis or not performing during a crisis. A leader's challenge is reassuring people that the response is unfolding according to a plan AND developing trust quickly.
Any COVID response relied upon different parts of a company to do their jobs. Each disruptive event is different, bringing new obstacles and various parts of a company together to respond. The crisis team leadership brings a level of trust already established within a given enterprise, which would help move a group forward. The COVID response quickly eclipsed normal disruptive events that were usually measured in days, if not hours. As mentioned above, communication and trust are components that make up strong leadership. Crisis team leaders need to work with an extended team, the executive team, and the corporate communications group to keep a steady communication flow. Even with the COVID response continuing well into the summer, crisis teams' mitigation strategies allowed companies to do their jobs.
*I grew up 30 miles north of Boston and 70 miles north of Foxboro, and I am a lifelong Boston/New England sports fan BUT have been using “KYE” and “DYJ” for quite some time. Bill might have gotten that from me.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #9
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” ~Maya Angelou
Merriam Webster defines thrive: “to progress toward or realize a goal despite or because of circumstances” and uses flourish and prosper as prominent synonyms.
A colleague of mine, Amy Timmins, and I chatted about this, and she mentioned this notion of thriving (and neither of us was aware of Maya Angelou’s memorable quote). For the past year, we have individually been trying to survive; make it one more month, and then we will be back to normal. Amy said that it is draining to live like that, and it is debilitating when there is no defined end. Most people can manage through any situation when there are some guardrails or parameters in place: I am in a cast for six weeks, I have three months left in school, this project will end on September 27. Going into COVID, the notion was this would be a couple, a few weeks long, and we will see each other again. There are probably many examples where companies even set a date set to reassess conditions and discuss returning to the office. It is now more than a year later – we are all still managing through this crisis. Even with new treatments, strong non-pharmaceutical interventions, and an ever-increasing number of vaccinations, there is still no sense of “when” we ultimately will return to normal.
The question Amy and I pondered was how to transition from surviving the day-to-day of COVID to shifting the focus to thriving in the world, COVID or otherwise. I wish we came up with an answer. We did not. And that is ok. That discussion started and led to this short essay, and that is what is essential. Maybe the person reading this will have an idea of how they will thrive in 2021 and what they plan to do in 2022 and beyond. To thrive is to have purpose, or better yet, to create purpose; to thrive is to make progress. Having a purpose implies letting events shape you; creating a purpose requires action and determining the outcome. What are you doing to thrive? Have you refocused at work? at home? at church or in your community? Started a business or writing a book or painting plein-air in the Midwest? The choices are only limited to what you want to accomplish.
If you have read this far, you are probably wondering, again, what this has to do with crisis team leadership. There is a direct link to what a crisis team does and ensuring the company’s survival: getting an enterprise to quickly work from home, redeploying resources, developing policies to address working through a pandemic, implementing new access controls. Crisis teams made those decisions rapidly and ensured their companies could maintain core business areas. To thrive, however, a company had to survive some critical months. A year ago, where were you? Where are you now? Where do you want to be? We’d welcome your thoughts.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #10
In defense of The Manager
After commenting on a post earlier this week, I thought more about this.
When you think of a manager versus a leader, what comes to mind? If you do a quick internet search about the two, typically managers are defined by boundaries, rules, discipline, and the bottom line, while leaders are inspirational, visionaries, and motivators. Leaders mold history and change the course of events (ok, I added that part); but in general, people deride managers and laud leaders, reducing managers to caricatures ripped from a Dilbert cartoon.
Peter Drucker says: “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” That succinctly encapsulates the relationship between the two roles and why they are both important. Management is a skill that can be learned; it can be exercised, practiced, and refined. Good leaders, outstanding leaders, recognize this skill in their teams and reinforce those positive behaviors. Leaders understand that without fundamental management skills, a vision will go nowhere. Someone needs to understand the vision at the mechanical level; define and implement the action steps required to enact the overarching goal. Strong managers employ similar skills that leaders do when working with teams, giving team members context, providing them with the proper resources. A good manager is not just someone beholden to a budget's constraints, but they understand how to maximize finances and find efficiencies. Those are not anathema to a leader but are tools used to execute the vision. Another point, leadership and management are not mutually exclusive skills with a wide range of complementary talents. The roles, however, should be delineated. During my military career, typically, the commanding officer would fill the leader role, and aboard larger cutters/units, the executive officer acted as a manager; importantly, both roles are critical to success.
Any type of crisis response highlights this relationship between these disciplines. The crisis response leaders make decisions based on the information presented at a given point during the disruptive event. It would not be practical (or possible) for those same leaders to then implement the myriad decisions needed during a crisis. They have to rely on people to work with teams, understand the implications of those decisions, and then turn those decisions into actions. In this example, the leaders are making the decisions, and managers turn those decisions into activities. These two specialties, working together, are how enterprises successfully respond to crises.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #11
“The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.” ~Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
While I was in graduate school, we read Ronald Heifetz’s Leadership Without Easy Answers. This is one of the best leadership books I have read, and he covers quite a bit of ground. A concept that had a significant impact was his discussions around authority and leadership. Heifetz noted that often people equate authority with leadership, such as an elected official, a business owner, or a military member. Those professions do produce laudable leaders, but leaders granted large swaths of authority. A question to consider, how does authority affect leadership? As a society, we see people with titles and position power, and by default, refer to them as leaders. I believe that is what Remarque alluded to in his quote.
When I was a junior officer, I thought I was a good leader; I had been an executive officer, taught at leadership school, and then a commanding officer. It was after the C.O. tour that I went back to school and studied leadership. After reading Leadership Without Easy Answers, I wondered if I possessed strong leadership attributes or if I just exercised authority with circumspection (or maybe neither). One of the class discussions centered around authority inhibiting good leadership – another concept that struck home. Is your team accomplishing their goals because you motivate them or because you are the leader, and they are required to follow your directions? It is a good topic and one to ponder when you get the chance, and if you do, please leave a comment.
Authority and leadership are linked; one can be a strong leader and still wield considerable authority. A person can also be an outstanding leader with little or no authority (I bet you can think of those people in your life). I see this as another component of crisis leadership. An executive team needs to grant a level of authority to the crisis response leaders to allow them to act quickly and decisively during a disruptive event. At the same time, however, the crisis team leaders will be working in a fast-paced environment under stress. They will need the larger response to manage a disruptive event successfully. The team will need to exercise strong leadership to help the enterprise through the incident. The line between relying on authority and exercising leadership is hard to delineate. The benefit of a high-functioning team is they can help watch each other.
During my program, we had to take a course in non-profit leadership and, as part of that course, volunteer at a non-profit organization for the semester. Working with volunteers is a dynamic way to observe leading without authority. The executive director I worked for was a phenomenal leader.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #12
“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today, the United States honors nurses and what they do. And what they do is far more worthy than anything written here. Full disclosure: my mom, three of my aunts, and two of my cousins are nurses. I am biased – and I am ok with that. More people should be biased toward thanking nurses for their service. I would say almost every nurse, everywhere can lay claim to Emerson’s quote. I have seen, up close, what nurses do when you need them most – and admirable is not a strong enough word. If you need to start an IV – get a nurse; if you need help to get up – get a nurse; if the NICU is full and babies need help – get a nurse; if you need someone to be there when you are alone – yes, again, get a nurse; when it’s 2 AM and you are in pain, you struggle to breathe, you are alone – again, again, and again, call a nurse. Only a nurse will know all of the things they do every day.
Nurses plan during shifts, and then (probably far more often than any of us realize) they have to adjust their plans to meet the needs of their patients best. To be a nurse, they are ready to respond to every crisis on their floor (Semper Paratus – a million bonus points to know how that Latin phrase applies). They are trained in a wide array of medical functions – nurses are the Swiss Army knives of healthcare. Even more, once a critical situation is over, who is it that stays to make sure the patient is taken care of, the medications continue on time, and the families know their loved ones have someone watching over them. Nurses. That’s who.
If you have read this far, you are finally saying, “there is no way this applies to crisis teams.” Prepare, Respond, Recover – those are three watchwords for any business resiliency program. Nurses have always done that: Prepare, Respond, Recover. A crisis team follows the same basic steps: conduct exercises and develop departmental recovery plans; initiate crisis teams and react to disruptive events; ensure team members and the enterprise can resume operations.
“Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.” – Albert Einstein; he must have been thinking about nurses.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #13
“The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling.” ~ADM Ernest King
Lewis, M. (2021). The Premonition: A pandemic story. W. W. Norton.
This is not an essay on shiphandling (though I wish it were). We will not discuss the finer points of mooring alongside another cutter, the cross the “T” approach to towing, or a destroyer turn in recovering a person overboard. ADM King’s quote, however, is an excellent lead-in to this blog’s first book review, The Premonition by Michael Lewis. Lewis’s latest topic is the COVID19 pandemic, but he goes back much further than 2019 to explain how this virus impacted the United States. It is a fascinating look at how the public health system is less a system and more a patchwork of regions, each with its own authorities. A key takeaway: there seem to be no national guidelines or public health structure. That is just one of the eventual systemic weaknesses that COVID19 exploits as it made its way across the country.
Training and exercises are critical: the lessons gleaned from training are vital to improving a business continuity system. Lessons learned from actual events are just as valuable, if not more. Lewis goes into depth about the United States’ response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. In short, H1N1 was not as lethal as expected, but even before understanding that, the government took only limited actions and felt justified based on the eventual outcome of this event. Lewis (2021) states succinctly, “the fact the decision worked out does not mean it was the right decision” (p. 122). It is the role of the business continuity practitioner to look for these traps. Business continuity is thinking of worst-case scenarios (or at least bad case) and then building responses. In 2009 the United States did not follow its own existing pandemic response guidance and then “succeeded” against this virus. That success rippled out to 2019.
Lewis (2021) provides a brief biographical summary on Carter Mecher (worth reading the book to learn about Mr. Mecher). Lewis also drew parallels from COVID19 to the Mann Gulch fire of August 5, 1949, killing 12 of 15 elite smokejumpers. The smokejumpers did not have situational awareness of their environment, and that mistake was fatal. Mecher used that event to lay out four observations for combating a pandemic:
You cannot wait for the smoke to clear: once you can see things clearly it is already too late
You can’t outrun an epidemic: by the time you start to run it is already upon you
Identify what is important and drop everything that is not
Figure out the equivalent of an escape fire (pp. 171 – 172)
Those four points apply directly to crisis team leadership. There might not be time to decide and wait for all the information – the team needs to react and possibly pivot quickly. Planning, training, and exercises are how a company prepares to stay ahead of any disruptive scenario. Knowing what is essential to that situation and then resolving that event is crucial for a crisis team. Finally, understanding the problem is fluid, and what you think you know one day maybe (quite) different the next, or the next hour, or next minute.
We were lucky with COVID19. What if a disease had the same infectious rate as measles but the mortality of SARS? To stay ahead of a pandemic, severe weather, or cyber-attacks, organizations must remain vigilant and continually evolve their ability to respond.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #14
If you know when to say “no”, you’ve got what it takes.” Sissy Gavrilaki
The power of NO. Two letters: “n” followed by “o”; perhaps the two most potent letters available to a leader. I learned early in my career that you have to be able to tell your leader “no” on occasion, especially leaders that are “on scene” and have the clearest picture of a confusing situation. Those leaders close to what is happening are in the best position to evaluate guidance and direction from a layer removed from the event. The ability to say “no” uses many of the concepts discussed previously: specifically communication, and decision making and there is always the element of failure.
Saying no – the right way – engenders more respect; saying no does not need to be confrontational nor contrarian. In any structure, a work unit, a military ship, and a crisis team, it reflects a strong relationship and leadership climate when people are comfortable having the uncomfortable conversation. In this version of saying no, the object is not disagreement; instead, a good leader uses this to mine new and times better ideas.
How does saying “no” apply to crisis team leadership? Crisis team leaders are in the best position to provide executive recommendations on how to proceed during a disruptive event. A crisis team must provide executives a clear picture of what is happening. At times that picture may be difficult to hear – that is the essence of saying no. It is also the essence of great leadership. As a leader, what things do you do to encourage your teams to say “no.” I believe that this is a valuable learned skill.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #15
“The future is largely unknowable. We can see patterns and assess likelihoods, but time travels in only one direction. We cannot know which of the earth’s many cities will experience their Big One in our lifetimes. But we can say with confidence that it will happen.” ~ Dr. Lucy Jones
The second book review for this blog is Dr. Lucy Jones’ The Big Ones. Dr. Jones is a former seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and is currently a research associate at Caltech. This book focuses on natural disasters, the regional consequences, and how each community responded, so it is more concerned with urban planning and emergency management. However, lessons gleaned from The Big Ones reveal foundational concepts that apply to business continuity and benefit a wide array of industries (including insurance and finance).
Dr. Jones writes about 11 disasters throughout history and how those events impacted their specific regions. Her chapters are replete with outstanding insights. Highlights include:
The massive 1862 Sacramento floods gutted the city. As a result, citizens developed a plan to raise the city by up to 9 feet above that flood. Dr. Jones talks about how disaster responses cannot be constrained – all ideas need to be evaluated. Like moving an entire workforce from onsite buildings to remote locations in a week. Another part of that disaster that she talks about is the importance of maintaining historical records, which is part of a business continuity department’s job to ensure a company can look back at disruptive events and learn.
She has chapters on the Indian Ocean tsunami and Katrina. The December 2004 tsunami was one of the most widely felt natural disasters in human history (COVID19 may have surpassed that.) In her discussion, Dr. Jones mentions the importance of a robust disaster infrastructure system such as sensors to detect tsunamis and a method to communicate quickly to impacted areas. Most business continuity departments conduct emergency communication exercises to ensure an alternative method to reach out to all team members during, and even before, a crisis hits. One of the more revelatory insights of Katrina was the exercise they did before that hurricane. A regional test of the emergency management system for a mock hurricane “Pam” predicted many of the events that unfolded after Katrina. It is not only important to conduct tests, but there needs to be a mechanism to apply lessons learned.
This concise book clocks in at 224 pages and is a brisk read, and I would encourage everyone to find it. Her final chapter, Resilience By Design, has six observations that she delves into as key actions to take before, during, and after a disaster (pp. 220 – 223):
1. Educate yourself
2. Don’t assume the government has you covered
3. Engage with local leaders
4. Work with your community
5. Remember that disasters are more than the moment at which they happen
6. Think for yourself
Business continuity practitioners can easily apply these six concepts to ensure a company prepares for, responds to, and recovers from a disruptive event.
Jones, L. M. (2019). The big ones: how natural disasters have shaped us (and what we can do about them). Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #16
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.” ~A. Lincoln
The two most important facets of leadership are "Be present with your team/crew" and "Communicate, communicate, communicate." Be present sets the framework for all other interactions, and reliable communication is strong leadership's foundation. Lincoln is widely considered the best chief executive the United States produces in its 245-year history. His quote illustrates the importance of communications. Truth and facts allow people to make decisions and build trust with leadership; decision making and trust are two pillars of crisis management.
Clear and concise communications drive crisis response. Tufekci (2021) opens her recent article with: “‘Be first, be right, be credible,’ are among the most important principles for health authorities to follow in a crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shared in a pamphlet on crisis communication in 2018.” The CDC defines crisis communication as “process of providing facts to the public about an unexpected emergency, beyond an organization’s control, that involves the organization and requires an immediate response. The crisis may cause harm to an organization’s reputation or viability” (Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication, 2018, p. 4). That definition works across industries and covers a wide array of disruptive incidents.
CUNA Mutual enacted its crisis communication plan during the COVID19 response, and it closely mirrored the CDC’s first three principles with a slight change. Instead of “Be First,” “Be Timely” fits CUNA Mutual’s communication strategy. Throughout the pandemic, the Crisis Team and then the Re-Entry team focused on providing timely, the most accurate information to the enterprise. Due to the fluid nature of COVID19, the communication team continually worked with leaders to update material coming from federal, state, and local authorities. Those changes required frequent messages, and at times those updates happened while the teams actively reviewed drafts. The organization being timely and accurate drives creditability. Crisis communication strongly links to business continuity, and it is crucial for sound leadership.
Tufekci, Z. (2021, August 4). The C.D.C. Needs to Stop Confusing the Public. New York Times.
Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CS 290397-A). (2018). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://emergency.cdc.gov/cerc/ppt/CERC_Introduction.pdf
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #17
Shoal Water
“I consider it to be the duty of anyone who sees a flaw in the plan NOT to hesitate to say so,” Eisenhower said. “I have no sympathy with anyone, whatever his station, who will not brook criticism. We are here to get the best possible results.” ~ General Dwight Eisenhower
Shoal – noun: shoal; plural noun: shoals
1. an area of shallow water, especially as a navigational hazard.
2. a hidden or difficult danger
In crisis management, everyone is responsible for voicing concerns – everyone. Regardless of role, leaders must create an environment that allows team members to speak when they see a flaw or have a unique idea not considered. In the weeks leading up to the invasion of France, General Eisenhower articulated his vision: “I consider it the duty of anyone who sees a flaw in this plan not to hesitate to say so. I have no sympathy with anyone, whatever his station, who will not brook criticism. We are here to get the best possible results. That is specific guidance to his staff.
Creating an environment that fosters this type of communication requires the leader to build trust, encourage risk, and using errors as learning opportunities. Early in my command tour aboard a patrol boat, we had to reposition the cutter within our homeport. Contrary to what most people believe, the CO rarely drives, but in this case, I had been ashore for three years and wanted a chance to practice ship handling. I was lining up to run the ship into shoal water due to my unfamiliarity with the harbor. The team on the foc’sle (at the bow) included a young gunner’s mate who immediately understood my intention. He called on the ship's communication system to forcibly warn me of my impending error. He prevented a significant mishap by calling out the new CO. I couldn’t have asked for more. The culture my predecessor created allowed that to happen. My job would be to reinforce those behaviors with this crew and encourage them to continue to sing out if I (or anyone) headed toward shoal water.
That is sound advice and extends to professions far afield from ship driving. I have tried to foster and heed that in my teams, both in and out of the Coast Guard. To varying degrees of success, I might add.
Crisis Team Leadership - Quick Observation #18
When I am wrong…
"If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one's own self-deception and ignorance."
~Marcus Aurelius, Meditation 6.21
If you've read my previous leadership musings, you'll notice a connective thread running throughout.
- Know when and how to decide (#2).
- Know the best shipdriver (#4).
- Know how to manage and use failure (#5).
- Know when to say "no" (#14).
Those concepts only work if a leader sets the right tone and creates a culture that fosters feedback, input, and corrections; you can call it whatever you like – a leader needs to be willing to get called out when they make a mistake. It happens. Nothing wrong with making a mistake; how someone reacts to that is what separates a person just in a leadership role and an actual leader. This requires work and observable behaviors; a leader can't just say it.
A leader needs to show what it is like to acknowledge a mistake and then, most importantly, rectify it. It can be a difficult balancing act, and there are no easy ways to instill this. It takes work, hard work. And if I can be so bold as to quote Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, "It supposed to be hard, if it were easy, everyone would do it." What is left unsaid is: "it's worth it." Leaders who do the hard work of learning, demonstrating, and passing along their craft, create future leaders.
How is this germane to crisis leadership? Crucial. Vital. Significant. Leadership teams that never make mistakes don't exist; mistakes may happen as new information unfolds, or the team may get wrong information and base a decision on that. A good leadership team acknowledges the error, develops a remediation strategy, implements that strategy, learns from the mistake, and – moves forward. A strong leadership team will address the situation with everyone responding to the crisis, especially the person (or persons) that discovered the error. That is how teams learn and improve before the next disruptive event.
And there will be a next disruptive event.
Crisis Leadership - Quick Observation #19
James, E. H., & Wooten, L. P. (2022). The prepared leader the prepared leader: Emerge from any crisis more resilient than before. Wharton School Press.
During the grand opening for company’s new meeting and events center, I bumped into a good friend and colleague, Tammie Harvey (for the first time in THREE years!), and we chatted briefly and then got to continue our conversation over lunch the next day. First, it was great to connect in person – a long time coming! I forgot how dynamic a face-to-face conversation could be, and how discussions would wander and range over different topics. A couple of weeks later, Tammie sent a link to The Prepared Leader: Emerge From Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before. This is one of the best leadership books I’ve read; the authors walk through the pandemic as a case study on crisis leadership, but the lessons apply to all types of leadership.
Early in their book, James & Wooten (2022) state clearly that “the next crisis is heading your way” (p. 8) – a sobering declaration considering the planet is almost three years into the worst pandemic in over a century. Their warning is not intended as a scare tactic, but that new disruptive events will always impact a business or community. The premise of their slim volume is to put leaders in a preparedness mindset and to build an organized and robust crisis team. The authors present a wealth of information, but I think the four main components are their thoughts on:
1. Making decisions
2. Building and working in teams
3. Developing trust
4. Encouraging risk and tolerating and learning from failure
The authors value organizational agility and how that impacts decision making. They ask how much autonomy teams have to make decisions during a crisis (James & Wooten, 2022, pp. 34 – 35). This is intricately tied into functional teams. They posit that “teams usually outperform individuals (James & Wooten, 2022, p. 57) for two main reasons: having a shared purpose and holding each other mutually accountable. Teams can “generate more information, stimulate creativity, and expedite decision making” (James & Wooten, 2022, p. 57). Our company’s crisis team leaders used their meetings to make decisions and support the teams that had to execute.
One of the quickest ways to develop trust is by allowing team members to be part of the decision process. James and Wooten (2022) say that “leaders should be open to all input and perspectives that can help create a solution and improve outcomes” (p. 59). Three concepts further burnish that trust:
1. Communicate with transparency and integrity
2. Follow through on promises
3. Ensure people have the right skills to execute plans (James & Wooten, 2022, pp. 72 – 73)
A part of building trust is tolerating failure (James & Wooten, 2022, pp. 60 – 61). A team that understands that the response in a crisis may require teams to take risks, and some of those risks may not result in a desired outcome. Strong crisis leadership understands that failures are not always setbacks but opportunities to try new solutions. The authors delve into other incredibly salient topics that all deserve deeper exploration. The Prepared Leader makes a valuable addition to every leader’s bookshelf, and I highly recommend it.
Crisis Leadership - Quick Observation #20
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. ~Theodore Roosevelt (attributed)
Stavridis, J. (2022). To risk it all: Nine conflicts and the crucible of decision. Penguin Publishing Group.
Admiral Stavridis has published numerous books on how to be a naval officer, how to be a leader, and dipped into speculative fiction. This is the third book written by the Admiral that I have read (The Leader's Bookshelf and The Sailor's Bookshelf – both highly recommended), and it deals with decision-making. If you have read any of my previous posts, you know that I feel making decisions is a core leadership skill. What makes this books stand out is the Admiral's choice of decisions by some of the best-known navy leaders – a few you may not know. In three of the last four chapters, he details poor decisions, or at least those that have not yielded the best results. Among these is Stavridis' examination of Halsey's conduct during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. I have said to my friends and colleagues that I have used "Ready, Fire, Aim" far too often in my professional life, and sometimes, it turned out….poorly. (Mind you, I am NOT comparing myself to a five-star admiral). This book is well worth the read if you are interested in leadership – highly recommended.
Crisis Leadership - Quick Observation #21
“Check small things.” ~Colin Powell Rule #8
I graduated from the Coast Guard Academy (CGA) in the lower half of my class. I didn’t light it up academically, I am not much of an athlete, but I had decent military scores. Bottom line, I was an unexceptional CGA cadet. I struck lightning (long story) for my first tour, serving in USCGC LAUREL, a buoy tender homeported in Mayport, Florida. It was a great ship, a phenomenal crew, an incredible operations area, and what a place to live as a 22-year-old Coast Guard ensign.
Much like CGA, my first tour was unremarkable. I was, at best, an average shipdriver (even that may be a stretch) and performed administrative functions at an acceptable level. I was headed toward a banal Coast Guard career until about a year into my assignment. Within six months of reporting aboard LAUREL, we had a new commanding officer (CO) and executive officer (XO) who would each positively impact me for the rest of my career. Junior officers received an evaluation twice a year, and it was my first full review with the new command structure. In the CO’s summary section, he wrote, “Personable and outgoing, I believe his strongest talents to be his emerging leadership qualities.” That may not seem like much, but I needed the spark. It was the shot of confidence I needed to start to lean into the Coast Guard.
My CO, LCDR Lee Romasco, had previously been the school chief at the Coast Guard’s Leadership and Management School (LAMS), I think his comment carried some weight. I didn’t become a 4.0 sailor immediately, but I am convinced that comment pushed me forward. That push was enough, so I got selected to serve as XO of a patrol boat for my second tour. For my third tour, I was an instructor at LAMS, and after that, I commanded my own patrol boat. Finally, despite a poor academic record at CGA, I was selected to attend graduate school to get a master’s degree in Leadership Studies.
My career would have unfolded differently if not for that short sentence. Leadership is a wide-ranging discipline; sometimes, it can take 30-plus years to understand those lessons. Small things matter, and sometimes (most of the time), you may not even realize the impact you have. A small course correction by a couple of degrees can alter your final destination by hundreds of miles. I owe a debt of gratitude to LCDR Romasco and LT Fred White for helping me navigate some difficult times later in life. Those opportunities I had the ten years after LAUREL, imparted invaluable lessons that helped to move my life forward through that challenging chapter.
Crisis Leadership - Quick Observation #22
“Those that handle the quickest rate of change survive.” ~ John Boyd
“To not prepare is the greatest of crimes; to be prepared beforehand for any contingency is the greatest of virtues.” ~ Sun Tzu
No man was ever wise by chance. ~ Seneca
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