Today marks the four year anniversary at my current organization. As I reflect on my time here, I can't help but think about everything that our organization has been through and what we continue to go through. Starting at a new organization and moving to a new city right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic wasn't easy, but I can't think of a better or faster way of learning about an organization than during a time of crisis. John F. Kennedy gave a speech at the Convocation of the United Negro College Fund in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 12, 1959. Just a few minutes into his speech, he famously said, "When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters – one represents danger and one represents opportunity." Even if what JFK said wasn't technically true, I do see his point. Crises often present organizations with opportunities to change - hopefully for the better. As Winston Churchill said (many times apparently), "Never let a good crisis go to waste."
If I were to be completely honest though, COVID-19 was a different kind of crisis. Most crises are time-limited. It is true that they come on suddenly and unexpectedly. I have previously talked about the different stages of a disaster, as proposed by Barry Turner in his book Man-made Disasters (see "The Failure of Foresight"). The last stage, after "Rescue and Salvage" is "Full Cultural Readjustment," which marks the time in which organizations conduct a thorough analysis of the what's, why's, and how's of the crisis and implement changes to prevent or better respond to the next one. Unfortunately, there really hasn't been a "Full Cultural Readjustment" period, at least for health care organizations, following COVID-19. Our recovery has been slow, and many would argue that we are not even close to fully recovering. With this in mind, I've found two articles to be extremely interesting and timely. Amy Edmondson, who is perhaps best known for her groundbreaking work on psychological safety, and Michaela Kerrissey wrote an excellent article in Harvard Business Review called "Leading Through A Sustained Crisis Requires a Different Approach". Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky (also in Harvard Business Review) wrote the second article (which is an older, pre-COVID era but equally inciteful article), "Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis". Both articles emphasize that leading during a sustained crisis (as opposed to the typical crisis that is relatively short-lived that Turner describes in his book).
Edmondson and Kerrissey emphasize that "In a sustained crisis, problems are more ambiguous and tradeoffs less clear. The galvanizing moment is gone. Reserves have been depleted." They go on to say, "What works for a sudden crisis won't work for a sustained crisis. In the latter, instead of fast reactivity, leaders must practice intentional proactivity...In a sustained crisis, what's needed is wide-scale experimentation and local decision-making to engage people in a broad range of priorities, to find new solutions in a decentralized way that energizes. There is a greater emphasis on pausing to learn, explore, and experiment rather than simply act and act fast."
Heifetz and colleagues also talk about what they call "adaptive leadership" and write, "The organizational adaptability required to meet a relentless succession of challenges is beyond anyone's current expertise. No one in a position of authority - none of us, in fact - has been here before. An organization that depends solely on its senior managers to deal with the challenges risks failure." They suggest that adaptive leadership really requires a change in mindset and new leadership practices:
1. Foster adaptation
Leaders must "develop next practices while excelling at today's best practices." Unfortunately, adaptation requires members within the organization to "confront loyalty to legacy practices" and move past the mindset that what got us to here, won't get us to there (my words, not theirs). Similar to Edmondson and Kerrissey, they emphasize the need for experimentation anf agility.
2. Embrace disequilibrium
Heifetz and colleagues write that "the art of leadership in today's world involves orchestrating the inevitable conflict, chaos, and confusion of change so taht the disturbance is productive rather than destructive." I've mentioned in previous posts (see, for example, "Connecting the dots...") that complex adaptive systems thrive at the edge of chaos! Innovation and change involve discomfort and courage.
3. Generate leadership
Leadership at the edge of chaos requires what Heifetz and colleagues call "distributed leadership responsibility" (and what I have referred to in previous posts as networked leadership - see, for example "Today's color is Teal" and "Tame the Chaos"). Edmondson and Kerrissey call this "widening the aperture" and recommend flattening the organization and rejected the top-down command that is better suited to a short-term crisis.
Someone once said, "May you live in interesting times." Legend has it that this was actually an ancient Chinese curse, which is probably not entirely true. However, Robert F. Kennedy used the phrase in his "Day of Affirmation Address" in Cape Town, South Africa on June 6, 1966 (an incredible read by the way!):
There is a Chinese curse which says, “May he live in interesting times.” Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind.
I think that when Kennedy used the word interesting, he really meant challenging. If that is indeed the case, we certainly do live in interesting times. I've been saying for a while that these are the times when we need leadership the most. When I think about the difficult times that we've all been through these past couple of years, I can't help but think of Vice Admiral James Stockdale who wrote about his time for almost 8 years as a prisoner-of-war (POW) during the Vietnam War. Stockdale was tortured over 20 times during his imprisonment and was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. When asked to reflect on that time and how he was able to keep going, Stockdale responded, "I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade." He would call his time as a POW the defining event in his life - a moment that he would not trade! Those eight years were when Stockdale's leadership was challenged the most, but if you read his Congressional Medal of Honor citation you will see that time was when his leadership was at its best.
Finally, I can't talk about crisis leadership without mentioning the concentration camp survivor, psychologist, and author Viktor Frankl, who reflected on his years at a concentration camp in his superb book Man's Search for Meaning. Frankl said, "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose." With meaning and purpose, we can do great things. And leaders were born for times such as this one. Rather than a curse, I see a blessing: May we all live and lead in interesting times.
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