"Never let a good crisis go to waste"

The Los Angeles Laker great and NBA Hall of Fame basketball player, Earvin "Magic" Johnson once said, "When you face a crisis, you know who your true friends are."  I think I know what he meant (and maybe not exactly what you think).  When I was a junior in high school, my church youth group took a Spring Break trip to Florida.  Somewhere about half way between Indianapolis (my home at the time) and central Florida, our church bus broke down on the side of the road.  Fortunately, the bus had stopped within about a quarter mile of an exit.  Even more fortunate, the exit sign had both a gas station with convenience store (and working bathrooms!) as well as an abandoned restaurant.  I don't remember how many of us were on the trip (maybe twenty or so students?), but we all walked to the gas station and then sat out by the abandoned restaurant to soak up some sun.  Several hours passed and we were back on our way.  I am probably missing a few major details, but I think the bus had trouble the entire week.  But in spite of all the mechanical issues with the bus, the week turned out to be one of the best Spring Break trips that I have ever been on - years later, in fact, our counselor told a group of us that he thought that the bus problems brought us all together.  I think he was right.  There is just something about a crisis that brings people together.  During a crisis, a group of individuals becomes a team, rallying around a common cause with a shared purpose. 

As it turns out, there is some pretty good scientific evidence that the stress of a crisis can bring out the best in a group of people by bringing them closer together.  There are a number of anecdotal examples too.  Think of how many people donated blood after the events of September 11.  So much blood was donated, in fact, that the American Red Cross had too much blood.  A lot of the blood that was donated eventually had to be disposed (blood has a limited shelf-life and goes "bad" if it's not used).  Americans were friendlier to one another after the 9/11 attacks too - complete strangers would talk to each other, pray together, and help each other.  Similar responses have been documented after a number of disasters - think of all the donations of water, food, and other supplies after Hurricane Katrina.  Scientists have documented that the stress of a crisis, rather than eliciting the classic "fight or flight" response, leads to greater levels of cooperation, collaboration, and teamwork. 

A word of caution is appropriate here.  Have you ever heard the phrase, "never let a good crisis go to waste"?  The phrase has been attributed to a number of famous individuals, but I have heard that most people believe it was first said by Winston Churchill.  The key is to leverage the teamwork and mutual collaboration that comes with a crisis, but the more important point is not to artificially create a crisis!  I recently came across an old article entitled, Real leaders never say "burning platform".  The author, Joseph Paris, claims that he has witnessed a number of leaders try to "create a sense of urgency" (from Kotter's change model) at the start of a major change initiative by artificially creating a crisis (using the so-called "burning platform" - we'll talk about this metaphor in another post).  I whole-heartedly agree with Paris here.  People are smarter than we give them credit at times, and they usually see through a leader's veiled attempts to create the conditions of a crisis that bring us together.   There are other, better ways to "create a sense of urgency" without trying to simulate a crisis situation. 

I don't know when exactly Magic Johnson said the quote at the beginning of this post, but I suspect it was around the time that he announced that he had tested positive for HIV.  I suspect that some of his friends abandoned him - but I also suspect that the crisis surrounding his announcement brought many of his supporters together to rally around him.  While he undoubtedly faced a lot of prejudice due to the misconceptions and stigma about and around HIV that were prevalent at the time, I also believe that his very public personal crisis created a sense of togetherness, collaboration, and empathy among many who knew him, and in some cases, complete strangers.