Kanter on Making Promises

Rossbeth Moss Kanter offers some sage advice on making promises. Crisis situations often make promises hard to keep. Kanter writes:

"Overly rosy promises are regularly offered by politicians, manufacturers, car salespeople, real estate agents, and nearly anyone trying to influence anyone else. Promises are the stuff of courtship or reassurance, particularly when people would rather deny the downside... This human tendency is exacerbated by systemic complexity. Economists know that forecasting is a dangerous occupation, especially about the future — which is funny but not a joke. In complex systems, inherent uncertainty joins with volatility to increase the likelihood that forecasts fall short."

She suggests:

"But lest we turn into a nation of cynics, promises should be kept realistic from the start. Leaders should be courageous about revealing that they don't control everything and don't know exactly how the future will unfold. The one promise they can reliably keep is to communicate often, with alternative scenarios in mind. In general, under-promising and over-delivering produces much more delight than over-promising and under-delivering. We are so braced for disappointment that a happy surprise stands out."

Bill George on Crisis Leadership

Bill George writes in Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge on crisis leadership and the opportunity it provides to develop one's leadership skills:

"Leaders are neither made nor born. Like great musicians and athletes, they are born with certain gifts that give them the potential to lead, but they have to develop their gifts in order to become effective leaders. There is no better way to do so than leading others through a crisis."

Bill writes about the value of humilty in recognizing the limitations of what a leader can know and can do in a crisis:

"One of the great myths of leadership in recent years is that leaders have to appear strong and invulnerable to mistakes and pressures. All of us without exception make mistakes and will capitulate under enough pressure. The key is being open with others, taking them into your confidence, admitting your mistakes, and looking to them for advice and support. Rarely does anyone turn down a leader who genuinely asks for help.

Yet we're exposed regularly by the media to the stereotype of the flawless leader who always has an answer and is never left questioning a decision. While most leaders know this is a fantasy, they still struggle with admitting their own vulnerability when a situation goes awry and crisis strikes. It's as if doing so is tantamount to admitting failure as a leader.

This tension is not necessarily surprising. Fortune 500 CEOs are some of the most driven, results-oriented people on the planet. Because their jobs compel them to demand a great deal from their employees, their companies, and their products, most demand the same from themselves. In so doing, they are at risk of letting their egos take over and letting their protective shells harden. When things go wrong—which they inevitably do—they assume the fault lies elsewhere. Yet in most cases the leaders bear a high degree of responsibility for the problems, often as a result of the direct or indirect pressures they put on their people.

Authentic leaders find ways to resolve this struggle. Expressing humility is a great skill because it not only brings leaders closer to their management teams and employees, but also encourages similar candidness and humility in others. By taking the first step in revealing their vulnerabilities, leaders encourage an atmosphere where concerns and doubts are voiced. Potentially unforeseen problems can be addressed sooner, and with a team focus. It's difficult to do, but expressing vulnerabilities appropriately will make leaders more effective."

Bill suggests that leaders in a crisis don't need to carry the load alone nor be perfect. As we found in the Crisis Leadership Forum, a leader can be be more effective when they serve as a conductor of collective capabilities and wisdom.

Furthermore, Bill's perspective on crisis situations as a way to hone leadership skills makes sense. As we've found, the kind of skills needed for dealing with a crisis are increasingly in demand in a world that is in constant flux.

Crisis Leadership Advice from GE's Immelt

I recently ran across this piece from GE's CEO on leading in tough times. Immelt speaks to the personal aspects of leadership . Leadership, he says, is "an intense journey into yourself. It's about how much you want to learn. It's about how much you want to give. It's about personal change and just being ready to renew yourself every day."

Immelt offers crisis leaders this advice:

• Be decisive: Make decisions, including some occasions when you don't have perfect information.


• Be accountable: Stand by your decisions, admit when you've made a mistake, and make sure you and your team are accountable.


• Be transparent: Don't just tell the truth, share the intent behind your decisions.


• Be a unifier: Make people feel like they're part of something that will last.


• Be willing to change yourself: Embrace personal growth.

Noer's 10 Myths About Downsizing

David Noer has a new edition of Healing the Wounds, his classic work on dealing with downsizing. David offers these tips, reprinted here from his Web site (http://davidnoer.com/):

1. Myth: There is a direct relationship between reducing “people costs” and organizational productivity. A layoff on a Friday will result in productivity gains on the following Monday.
Reality: People are not “things” to be added or deleted to the production equation with mathematical sterility. Humans are—just that, humans—and are carriers of feelings and emotions. The overwhelming consensus of downsizing research is that layoffs do not achieve their “going in” productivity goals. Survivors of most organizations are angry, depressed, anxious and fearful. They are not able or willing to take risks or focus on increasing customer service. At the very time organizations need them to be the most creative and energetic; they hunker down in the trenches, absorbed in their own toxic survivor symptoms. They may look as though they are working hard, but it is an illusion.

2. Myth: Survivors – people who remain in organizational systems after downsizing – will work hard because they will be grateful that they were lucky enough to keep their jobs.
Reality: Survivor guilt - formulated by the same dynamics that affect survivors of other forms of trauma – is alive and well in post-layoff organizations. Guilt and its relatives – anxiety and depression – are not the stuff of motivation! Organizational leaders need to implement strategies to deal with the disabling consequences of survivor guilt before they will have truly motivated employees.

3. Myth: Organizational leaders should not tolerate any whining and bitching concerning the downsizing process.
Reality: Organizationally sanctioned processes that facilitate the venting of repressed feelings and emotions are a necessary means to the end of moving employees back to productivity. Without the healthy externalization of layoff induced anger, fear, and anxiety, employees will remain crippled by layoff survivor sickness. In fact, research shows their symptoms will get worse.

4. Myth: During downsizing, managerial communication needs to be clear, planned, objective, and structured. Expressing uncertainly, ambiguity, or dealing in feelings and emotions is not useful.
Reality: Feelings and emotions are the currency of the managerial realm. Surviving employees are attempting to deal with a toxic brew of productivity hindering emotions and need to feel authorized to talk about them. Employees would much rather have managers tell them that they don’t know something as opposed to having them not say anything or make something up. Managers who are strong enough to show their own vulnerability and uncertainty not only help their employees, they help themselves.

5. Myth: Time heals all wounds. Layoff survivor symptoms may flare up initially, but quickly disappear a few weeks after the reductions take place.
Reality: Without planned interventions, layoff survivor symptoms not only linger, they intensify. Research conducted in one organization five years after the initial layoff showed survivor symptoms not only intensified, but many employees were demonstrating passive-aggressive behavior – faking it and “going through the motions” in some contexts, and expressing increased anger and hostility in many others. A large number of organizational systems today – public, private, government – are only operating at a small fraction of their potential because they are dragged down by employees with long term survivor symptoms.

6. Myth: In tough times, the most effective managers “suck it up,” are tough minded, brutally honest, and don’t tolerate “touchy-feely” distractions.
Reality: “Sucking it up” is precisely the wrong strategy for dealing with downsizing, change, and transition. It is a defense mechanism - a form of evasion that anchors behavior in the past and prevents productive engagement and personal growth. Leadership in the post-layoff environment is a helping, not a controlling relationship, and requires reaching out, not closing down and hiding behind a facade of toughness and control. Honesty grounded in a helping orientation is an absolute necessity. Honesty grounded in “brutality” may help the manager vent his or her own anger, but it will ultimately harm the manager, the employee, and the organization. Labeling authenticity, empathy, and helping behaviors with the derogatory term “touchy-feely,” or making disparaging comments that one lives in the “real” world, are additional examples of diversionary defense mechanisms. The most effective managers have learned the power of engaging in helping relationships and use that power to re-recruit employees and restore organizational productivity.

7. Myth: Once things get back to normal, the epidemic of downsizings will stop and job security will return.
Reality: We are experiencing a fundamental shift in the psychological contract that connects employee to employer. When the economy becomes more positive, the frequency of mass layoffs will diminish, but long-term, lifetime employment with one organization is a thing of the past. Employees will have to rely on maintaining transferable marketable skills and continually cultivate their professional network. That will provide the only true employment security in the brave new world of the new psychological employment contract.

8. Myth: Downsizing erodes loyalty, motivation, and commitment.
Reality: In the new reality, employees will be loyal to their profession and motivated more by the work itself rather than the organization where they perform that work. We are caught in the confusing and painful cross currents of a paradigm shift. Once employees break their organizational codependency – caused by indexing their self-esteem and relevance on the organization where they work as opposed to the work itself – there will be a quantum increase in motivation. This will occur because employees will be driven by an inner sense of purpose rather than contrived external motivational techniques.

9. Myth: Despite the current epidemic of downsizing, organizations need to find ways to tie in employees over the long term.
Reality: The best strategy for organizational survival in the new reality is to attract employees because of the work. In the new paradigm the best and most talented employees will have options; they will choose their employers because they want to be there, not because they have to be there. Leading these new, “volunteer” employees will require much more creativity and collaboration than managing a work force that is “tied in” and trapped by benefits, services, and social systems that reward fitting in and conformity and motivate by fear of job loss.

10. Myth: Employees who keep their jobs – survivors – are better off than those who must leave - victims.
Reality: Both those who stay and those who leave are, in a sense, “victims” of the paradigm shift to the new psychological employment contract. Despite, often significant, economic issues, some who leave are able to re-frame their job loss, move away from victimhood, and discover a wake-up call. They use the experience to find work that has more personal relevance and remove their self-esteem from the unpredictable vicissitudes of organizational life. Survivors, too have the opportunity to turn away from victimhood. They can shed the symptoms of layoff survivor sickness, and take personal charge of their lives and careers. It is a difficult struggle for both those who stay and those who leave, but the gain is well worth the pain.

Surviving “The Next Catastrophe” by Reducing Vulnerabilities

If the renowned organizational sociologist Charles Perrow had a classic-rock theme song, it just might be “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet,” the 1974 hit song by Bachman Turner Overdrive. Let me explain.

In his classic book, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, Perrow discussed the numerous high-risk technologies that pervade modern life and the dangers they pose for society. First published in 1984 with an updated version released in 1999, Normal Accidents presents an argument for the inevitability of large-scale disasters such as nuclear meltdowns, petrochemical-plant explosions, maritime accidents, and so forth. These accidents are inevitable, or “normal,” because they stem from systems that have specific structural characteristics. Namely, these systems are interactively complex, meaning that different parts of the system are likely to work together in ways that produce unanticipated consequences. Secondly, these systems exhibit tight coupling, meaning that a single change in one part of the system will directly lead to changes in other parts of the system.

This means that over time disasters will become increasingly likely. In other words, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

In his 2007 book The Next Catastrophe: Reducing our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters, Perrow builds upon the themes presented in Normal Accidents while suggesting a few approaches toward limiting the havoc that such normal accidents will inevitably wreak upon society. In so doing, he also points out three more sources of vulnerability beyond interactive complexity and tight coupling. These three sources are all in the form of high concentrations of the following:

1. Energy. In numerous locations around the United States, industrial storage facilities house vast quantities of explosive, toxic, and flammable substances. Because these storage facilities are concentrated in specific locations, an accident in any one of them would be much more disastrous than if storage occurred in smaller quantities at a greater number of separate sites.


2. People. High population densities in risky areas make disasters in those locales catastrophic. For example, New Orleans is a vulnerable city—due to its geography and its proximity to high-risk industry. The fact that it is also high in population density makes it particularly vulnerable.


3. Economic and political power. Perrow has a knack for drawing our attention to the role of power in organizations, and he argues here that mega-corporations and the political entities with which they interact wield so much power over very real aspects of our daily lives that any failure within them could pose serious risk. One example he cites is the pervasive nature of the Microsoft Windows operating system. If Windows failed—due to a massive computer virus, for example—catastrophic damage to business, government, and personal livelihood would likely result. Another example, although not addressed directly in the book, is the danger posed by financial institutions deemed “too big to fail” that we have witnessed in recent years.

To address these issues, Perrow argues that (a) government should implement wise regulations that limit these concentrations and (b) that leaders should focus on these concentrations as real threats instead of being distracted by other less-likely sources of disaster. In essence, he suggests that the focus should be on “shrinking the targets.” For example, Perrow argues that political interests have overestimated the terrorism threat in the United States while underestimating the threats posed by industrial forces, such as the nuclear power industry.

Overall, Perrow presents a number of examples that suggest the three areas of concentration listed above are indeed sources of vulnerability. His approach toward shrinking those targets, however, appears to focus mostly on policy decisions rather than aspects of human behavior within organizations.

As such, The Next Catastrophe provides an interesting view of disaster and vulnerability at a macro level. Much like “watchdog” groups that illuminate concerns within government agencies and programs, Perrow has been shining a light on the dark side of organizations, business, and government for decades. And his suggestions, when coupled with other viewpoints at the micro level, may provide a way for us to avoid the ominous theme of “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet” that underscores his theories.

The article also appears at Foster Excellence.

Looking Back at the Sichuan Earthquake Through the Lens of Katrina

In 2008, Meg Young was working in Sichuan Province helping develop a microfinance unit within one of the many rural towns that China’s sweeping economic progress had all-but left behind. She had worked with a handful of farmers to distribute the first round of microloans – about $100 each – just weeks prior to the Sichuan earthquake. She compares her experience during the crisis with lessons learned from Katrina.

***

When the earthquake hit, I was on the second story of a China Construction Bank with my friend. We had just handed over our passports and bank cards to the teller when the building lurched beneath us. We joined a mass of fleeing clients and tellers running through a hall, down a free-standing spiral staircase, through the lobby and out the doors. Then we looked around and saw there was nowhere else to run. Skyscrapers surrounded us in the 10 million person city; we simply clung to one another. The trembling and shaking dragged on relentlessly. We watched the buildings, trying to eyeball directions and trajectories of potential collapse. They heaved and cracked, but most withstood the worst of that 3 minute earthquake.　 In the days and weeks that followed, aftershocks punctuated our circadian rhythms and rumors ran rampant, spurring pandemic scares, and fears of chemical explosions and spoiled water supplies. We were terrified – but we were alive. 　

The rural villages closer to the epicenter were not so lucky. Where we faced rumor and conjecture, they saw reality in broken bodies and homes. 90,000 people died and another 6 million were displaced. The areas that were hardest hit – where entire towns were wiped away in an instant - were often the most remote, with access limited both physically and politically. In light of this, the relief efforts that ensued and the leadership they inspired were rendered all the more incredible. 　

Reading recent posts on this crisis blog, I was struck by the way that post-Katrina lessons resonated with experiences we had in Sichuan following the earthquake. I've included a few of these key points and reactions below. 　

"Empower people at the grassroots: Organizations should empower local leaders to make decisions based on the situations they face and then support those decisions."　

When the chance emerged to launch an earthquake relief project, our organization gave us the power to run with it. We had spent over a year and a half researching and developing a microfinance program 50 km outside the city. A week had gone by after the earthquake, and there was still no sign of us being able to reach the village.　 Within reach, however, were dozens of cities devastated by the earthquake that could benefit from potential help. 　

When we approached our organizational leadership half a world away about needing to develop a refugee children's relief effort, they didn't blink.　 Within a week we had developed and launched the beginnings of a children's summer camp relief program. This would eventually grow into a weekly activity base and English-learning program for kids in Luo Shuai, a town where 1/3 of the children had perished during the 3 minutes of the Sichuan earthquake.　
　
"Encourage courage: Lead your organization in a way such that people aren't afraid to "bet their bars" and take personal risks."

We started with one mini-van full of volunteers, soccer balls, paint brushes, and sweat. The following weekend we had two vans, and three the next. By the fourth we needed to hire a local school bus and by the fifth we had reached capacity. It took 4 hours to reach the village that first day and another 4 to get home. The roads were cracked, collapsed, and filled with debris. Police officers at blockades lined the roads leading to the refugee camps. Cameras were banned. Passports required. 　

We played all day in the sweltering summer sun with the children of Luo Shuai. The kids we met and played with were homeless, grief-stricken, and confused on many levels.　 Two of their schools had collapsed when the earthquake hit mid-school day. Local estimates suggested that up to a third of the children in the village had died in the rubble.　 Their town no longer existed as they remembered it.　

On the days that we played with them, however, they were just normal kids. The summer days were hot, school was suspended, and the refugee camps were boring. A gaggle of paint-brush wielding foreigners was a welcome diversion.　

A parent told us that watching the children play with us he saw them laugh and smile for the first time since the earthquake. "You don't understand," he said, "the rest of the week the kids just sit and stare. They are never this happy." On some weeks we saw parents standing off to the side of the playgroup and looking silently on. Some would cry. They had lost their children.　　

"Develop flexibility: Develop a culture of flexibility, adaptation, and discretion while staying action oriented."

During these moments of playtime with Chinese refugee children, leaders emerged amongst the expat community and Chinese friends leading the volunteer movement. Some took on new roles entirely, while others experimented with variations of familiar roles. A retired schoolteacher who loved pristine order gave herself up to the hot lovable mess of the toddlers who would fling themselves onto her lap and never, ever, pronounce the alphabet correctly.　 　

A young British-Australian couple began to learn about one-another's abilities with children as they orchestrated musical games together. When the stereo broke down one day during "dance class," I - the resident Coloradoan of the bunch -　 brought line dance to Sichuan Province.

　 　
I saw the most striking example of a new take on an old role in the Scottish manager of an alcohol production company. This man was used to wielding his command of the English language in a strong brogue as his most powerful tool. However, he spoke little Mandarin and ran out of things to say to the children quickly. He chose to spend his time with the project volunteering quietly off to one side, camera in hand.　 While those of us that knew a bit more Mandarin chatted and played, this alpha male began quietly taking portraits of children at play and their families who watched them. The elders took a shining to him, noting that he possessed gray hair – like theirs – and an unending supply of images of their grandchildren in his camera. He was a hit with the 60 + set.　

A few weeks into the project, he told us sharply that he had asked his alcohol company to have　 posters ordered and printed through "a connection with a bloke he knew."　 He showed up the following week with three tubes stuffed with industrial-quality posters as tall as himself. In place of the usual liquor ads that he might have normally printed were hundreds and hundreds of photos of our kids and their families.　 While we played that week, he went to the spots around the refugee camp where families could gather and quietly hung these life-size memories. For the rest of our remaining weeks, whenever we came or went from the camp, we could see community members – especially those elders - gathered around the photo collages and discussing whose grandchild looked handsome, whose daughter that was, and who got it in his mind to have his face painted into a butterfly pattern by the foreigners.　

*************

Reading this blog, I know that the obstacles we faced following the Sichuan earthquake are common to tragedies worldwide. However, I am also heartened to see that in times of crisis we also share humane strengths. Across the board, it is the personal and organizational moments of empowerment, creativity, and courage that shape relief work and strengthen communities. Creative organizational leadership can make for fertile soil so that out of disaster we grow beauty and strength that we could have never imagined we possessed.

Managing Self in a Crisis

In an insightful blog post, Brian Bacon, CEO of Oxford Leadership Academy, writes of how our self-image shapes how we react in a crisis:

People with an outside-in obsession also have their sense of security linked to situations outside of themselves; hence they often look and feel out of control. This is disastrous for a leader. During times of crisis, the external environment is chaotic and uncontrollable… a person may lose his job, or feel unable to do a good job, or be thrust into a position beyond his ability to succeed. He may feel inadequate to the task. So, if one’s self-image and sense of security is linked to the external environment he will be in turmoil internally to an even greater extent. Why? Because fear is an illuminator and exaggerator of truth.

Intense fear of failure is an inevitable condition of those whose self-image is based on this outside-in illusion. How will I look? What will people think? Can I make it work? Are the conditions right for me to succeed? What if I fail? What is plan B? These are not the right questions for a leader.

The leader who outperforms during times of crisis is the one whose strength and conviction is generated from the inside-out, not the outside-in. The one who will not be swayed by flattery, fear or force, that’s the fellow we will follow, in spite of his flaws.

.

A few good questions to help define your purpose and what generates meaning: What story do I presently tell myself and others about who I am? What drives me? What motivates me to keep going? What is my passion? What are my most valuable assets? What is most valuable to me in life? What can I rely on, even if everything else is taken away? How can I change my story to be more aligned with what I know is true?

Brian Bacon concludes:

The economic crisis is here. You don’t have a choice in it happening or not, but you can choose the attitude you adopt towards it. This year will inevitably mark the beginning of a new chapter. There are outside factors, of course, but whether it will be the best chapter ever, or perhaps the worst, will, to a great extent, depend upon the attitude you choose.

Crisis and Twitter: The Social Media Revolution Fuels a Citizen Revolution in Iran

One of the key challenges in crisis situations is the transfer of information. The Crisis Leadership Forum pointed out the importance of building relationships before a crisis. Social networking media such as Twitter and Facebook have created a web of relationships through which communication can flow globally from person to person in a matter of minutes. The post-election crisis in Iran demonstrates the power of these media that are instantaneous, unfiltered, viral, local, and global. For the Iranian government, it is far easier to restrict access by formal news media representatives than thousand of ordinary citizens now broadcasting (and rebroadcasting) news and views to the world via Twitter, SMS, and Facebook.

TIME magazine writes about the prominent role Twitter is playing:

"Twitter [is] practically ideal for a mass protest movement, both very easy for the average citizen to use and very hard for any central authority to control. The same might be true of e-mail and Facebook, but those media aren't public. They don't broadcast, as Twitter does. On June 13, when protests started to escalate, and the Iranian government moved to suppress dissent both on- and off-line, the Twitterverse exploded with tweets from people who weren't having it, both in English and in Farsi. While the front pages of Iranian newspapers were full of blank space where censors had whited-out news stories, Twitter was delivering information from street level, in real time:

Woman says ppl knocking on her door 2 AM saying they were intelligence agents, took her daughter

Ashora platoons now moving from valiasr toward National Tv staion. mousavi's supporters are already there. my father is out there!

we hear 1dead in shiraz, livefire used in other cities RT

As is so often the case in the media world, Twitter's strengths are also its weaknesses. The vast body of information about current events in Iran that circulates on Twitter is chaotic, subjective and totally unverifiable. It's impossible to authenticate sources."

During Hurricane Katrina, the formal news media itself circulated some horrific stories about events in the Superdome in that were later found to be untrue. With the media restricted in Iran, bottom-up, peer-to-peer networks have become the prime source of information. This factor adds additional complexity and volatility to crisis situations.

.

For more perspective on Twitter and the protests in Iran, read:

The Irony of Iran's Twitter Revolution (http://www.gauravonomics.com/blog/the-irony-of-irans-twitter-revolution/)

Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned (http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3838526354699975507&postID=6971410889733254225)

Looking Beyond Government for Help

"AMERICA seems to have dodged a bullet with the swine flu epidemic" writes Stephen T. Ganyard, a former deputy assistant secretary of state, in an op-ed in The New York Times titled All Disasters Are Local. He notes that a big challenge is coordination:

"In responding to crises, the most persistent problem is that of collaboration — people with information and equipment who are unable to share it with those who need it most. The means to effective collaboration is social networking and exploiting the natural mutual attractions of communities with common interests."

An approach to enhance coordination that Ganyard established is an open and voluntary annual disaster simulation in Los Angeles titled Golden Phoenix that builds relationships and trust:

"The degree of personal trust at the tactical level, not money or machines, is the single most important determinant of how well communities will deal with threats and disasters. But these relationships must be established in training so that first responders are not handing out business cards to one another on the way to the disaster."

In the end, says Ganyard, Americans must look beyond government for help:

"Most of the critical infrastructure of the country is in private hands, and much of humanitarian relief is provided by local churches and relief charities. We need "whole of society" not just "whole of government" responses."

Ganyard's perspective on building community relationships and capacity echoes what was learned at the Crisis Leadership Forum, where nearly two dozen leaders came together to share lessons from hurricane Katrina:

• Forge relationships: Build relationships with a broad base of stakeholders before the crisis.
• Develop flexibility: Develop a culture of flexibility, adaptation, and discretion while staying action oriented.
• Encourage courage: Lead your organization in a way such that people aren't afraid to “bet their bars” and take personal risks.
• Empower people at the grassroots: Organizations should empower local leaders to make decisions based on the situations they face and then support those decisions.
• Engender inclusive leadership: Develop the capacity in individuals, groups, and communities to participate as peers in creating leadership.

Maintaining Competitive Advantage Requires High-Reliability Organizing

A healthy dose of paranoia and an obsession with failure: That’s not typical leadership advice. But that’s part of what management guru Jim Collins discusses as a crucial ingredient for leaders hoping to maintain competitive advantage through crisis and adversity.

What he didn’t say, at least in the teaser to his new book featured in the May 25 issue of BusinessWeek, is how much we can learn about business resilience and leadership from “high-reliability organizations.”

High-reliability organizations (HROs) are those that face so much danger, complexity, and ambiguity on a daily basis that we’d expect them to fail very frequently—but they don’t. Typical examples of HROs include nuclear power plants, naval aircraft carriers, and emergency response agencies. For a variety of reasons, these organizations are able to continually cope with small errors and negotiate the ambiguity around them such that they avoid disaster.

Two of the most prominent thought leaders regarding what makes HROs special, Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe, described five specific principles that HROs embrace:

1. Preoccupation with failure
2. Reluctance to simplify
3. Sensitivity to operations
4. Commitment to resilience
5. Deference to expertise

As I’ve previously written, leadership along these principles is about creating a culture that seeks errors, questions assumptions, and makes sense of circumstances through respectful interpersonal communication. It’s not about always being positive, and it’s certainly not about always saying what other people want to hear.

This notion of leadership differs from much of leadership thought—both in academic and managerial circles—that focuses on leaders as heroic men and women who gallop around organizations on white horses, dream about possibilities, and inspire followers to march along toward greatness. I’m exaggerating for illustrative purposes, of course, but my point is that we can learn from the tough, questioning, interactive model of leadership suggested by HROs.

A common critique of using HROs as a model for leading business organizations through crisis and adversity is that HROs are simply too different from the private, for-profit sector to offer any worthwhile lessons. The research that Collins described, however, suggests otherwise. For example, he suggested that organizations encounter five stages of decline: (a) hubris born of success, (b) undisciplined pursuit of more, (c) denial of risk and peril, (d) grasping for salvation and (e) capitulation to irrelevance or death.

Discussing the dangerous nature of success, Collins wrote, “The best leaders we’ve studied never presume they’ve reached ultimate understanding of all the factors that brought them success. For one thing, they retain a somewhat irrational fear that perhaps their success stems in large part from fortuitous circumstance.” Therefore, it seems that leaders who preoccupy themselves with failure are also those best poised to maintain success.

Additionally, Collins suggests that teams “on the way up” have specific patterns of interaction that allow them to maintain their organizations’ resilience and competitive advantage. These dynamics include:

1. Rewarding those who highlight “grim facts"
2. Leading by asking questions
3. Crediting others for success
4. Arguing and debating to help the organization overall
5. Learning from past mistakes

Therefore, it seems as though Collins is suggesting a way for organizations and their leaders to succeed that has much in common from what we’ve learned from HROs. Or, as I’ve suggested, what we can infer is that maintaining competitive advantage requires high-reliability organizing.

Collins’ new book, How the Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give in, probably offers numerous other ways in which business organizations can become more resilient and ways in which leaders can effectively lead during crises. All I’m saying is that those principles have much in common with what we’ve already learned from HROs. Namely, Collins’ research strongly suggests that we can apply lessons learned in HROs—be they combat teams, nuclear power plants, or flight-deck operators—to the realm of business, providing distinct ways for leaders in organizations to avoid the disastrous consequences of failure.

The article also appears at Foster Excellence.

Helpful Tool or Rumor Mill 2.0: The Role of Social Media in Crisis Communication

It’s commonly assumed that when it comes to communication that more is better. But if we look closely at what that assumption means regarding how people behave within organizations and how leaders function during crises, it’s relatively easy to find evidence suggesting that more isn’t better. In fact, too much information can greatly exacerbate ambiguity within organizations and, during a crisis, incite panic among external stakeholders.

Consider the current buzz surrounding the H1N1 influenza virus, the so-called “swine flu.” It’s getting a great deal of attention—as it should—from major news outlets around the world. For example, a Google News search of the keyword H1N1 at 1:10 p.m. EST on April 30 yielded 77,337 results within the last hour alone. Combine that coverage with millions of people sharing it and discussing it on social-media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and you have an incredible amount of information bouncing around cyberspace. Yet the question remains: During crises, are social media and Internet-based technologies helpful tools? Or do they make the problem worse by functioning like a high-tech rumor mill?

Certainly, arguments exist for both sides. The Internet and social media make information dissemination extraordinarily fast. Tech-savvy leaders during crises could potentially use sites like Twitter to provide stakeholders with useful updates that ensure wide dissemination of information.

It’s also plausible that people may become overloaded with contradictory or erroneous information, and that specific pieces of information may unduly influence people’s perceptions. Additionally, the Internet and social media may encourage users to gauge a crisis’ severity incorrectly and take inappropriate action. For example, it’s a distinct possibility that people may hoard personal stashes of the influenza medication Tamiflu, greatly hindering public-health efforts.

So how should leaders use the Internet and social media during crises? Or should they even use these tools at all? The answers to those questions are complex, but perhaps leaders could start by recognizing the Internet and social media outlets for what they are—tools. And like any tool, they are only as good as the way in which they are used. Maybe leaders should start with understanding the important messages they need to communicate, the audiences that they need to reach, and then wisely employ the most appropriate technologies accordingly.

At the very least, it behooves leaders to understand what tools are available and strategize how best they might use them before crisis strikes—remembering, of course, that (a) more information isn’t always better and (b) anything disseminated via the Web has the propensity to spread like wildfire.

Pirates, Hostages, and Ambiguity on the High Seas: Countering Complex Threats with Complex Solutions

Despite what the office-supply store Staples says in its latest advertising campaign, most of the time there is no “easy button.” This is especially true in crises, which typically involve numerous actors, interdependent action, and high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty. Add to those complications malicious intent by certain actors within the crisis, and you’ve got a real problem. Such is the crisis currently in progress about 300 miles off the coast of Somalia, where a band of pirates are holding hostage Richard Phillips, captain of the U.S.-flagged cargo ship Maersk Alabama.

In the still-developing story, pirates attempted to take control of the cargo ship—an attempt that ran afoul when crewmembers resisted. Now, four pirates are holding the ship’s captain hostage in a lifeboat, spawning a confluence of numerous different actors from the United States bent on resolving the crisis. And the reason why so many different actors are getting involved has something to do with (a) the complexity of the event itself, and (b) something scholars have called “requisite variety.”

First, consider the complexity of dangerous pirates operating in international waters off the coast of the Horn of Africa, holding an American ship captain hostage, and communicating no clear paths toward resolution. National reputations, corporate interests, and general notions about international-shipping safety are at stake. Thus, a number of powerful parties—Maersk Line, (owners of the Maersk Alabama), U.S. President Barack Obama and his White House, the U.S. State Department, and others—have a vested interest in the event and its outcomes.

Second, an event of this level of complexity necessarily requires a complex response. This is the notion of “requisite variety,” which essentially means that successfully dealing with multifaceted circumstances requires a similar amount of diversity within the response. There is simply so much ambiguity and so many interests involved that many different group representatives with different areas of expertise must interact and come to a collective solution. For example, the U.S. Navy’s response includes aerial surveillance and on-site monitoring by the guided missile destroyer USS Bainbridge. Furthermore, the FBI is now involved, and its hostage negotiators have been attempting to establish communications with the hostage takers via a satellite link aboard Bainbridge.

The collaboration between the Navy and the FBI is a good example of escalating requisite variety because Navy leaders recognized that the situation was more complex than their capabilities, and that they needed to collaborate with people who have more extensive hostage-negotiation expertise. For almost three years, I served as an officer aboard a ship identical to the USS Bainbridge. The ship itself is an extraordinary machine. It’s highly maneuverable, technologically advanced, and has a wide range of defensive, offensive, and surveillance capabilities. Its crew of about 300 comprises a highly diversified and well-trained cadre of subject-matter experts and naval-warfare generalists, so the Bainbridge and its crew are an example of a highly complex system designed to counter complex challenges.

But within this current crisis off the coast of Somalia, the decision by Navy leaders to reach out to the FBI for more expertise in the hostage-negotiation realm demonstrates a key competency of crisis leadership. Leaders must be able to recognize that when a situation requires more diversity in expertise, more requisite variety. And if they are successful in matching the complexity of the environment with a complex and well-coordinated response, positive outcomes become more likely.

So it’s an unfortunate fact that there’s no “easy button.” What leaders can do within crises, however, is pay close attention to their environments and ensure a finely grained division of labor among diverse experts in their response. They must counter complex threats with complex, collaborative solutions. It’s not easy, but it’s one key part of good crisis leadership.

Core Values and Human Capital: Keys to Success in an Era of Turbulence

Welcome to the “new normal.” That’s part of what management guru Jim Collins recently said in an interview with Fortune magazine senior writer Jennifer Reingold. And by the “new normal,” Collins, author of business classics “Built to Last” and “Good to Great,” suggested that the current volatility and instability in the marketplace is not an aberration. In fact, he opined that the stability we enjoyed from 1952 to 2000 was an anomaly. Simply put, economic turbulence is here to stay. So get used to it.

If that’s the case, though, what should business organizations do about it? To answer that question, Collins cited practices of some of the past century’s most-enduring companies, specifically, Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, and IBM. For Collins, two particular aspects of those companies’ strategic approach have made them successful in the face of crisis.

1. Strong core values: Because crises naturally challenge an organization’s capabilities, it’s crucial for managers to maintain a consistent focus on the organization’s central ideals. This entails continually reinforcing how you do business, in addition to what your business does. For example, Collins cited Procter & Gamble’s persistent focus on product quality as an enduring feature that has helped it succeed despite adversity.
   
2. A continual focus on human capital: Quite simply, people matter. If managers choose to sacrifice attention to their human capital, their organizations will fail. Retaining—and yes, even hiring—good people during economic downturns should continue to be a top priority. Why? According to Collins, it’s high-performing employees that pull organizations toward success during crises. Additionally, in a labor market flush with talent, the time is ripe for organizations to bolster their human-capital advantage.

Finally, Collins proposed that executives should remember that “turbulence is your friend.” Despite current economic uncertainty, organizations with leaders who seek and exploit new opportunities will emerge from this crisis with a renewed strategic focus enabling them to succeed.

The worst action for executives, Collins contended, is inaction. Referencing his hobby of rock climbing, he said, “You don't just sit on the mountain. You either go up or go down, but don't just sit and wait to get clobbered. If you go down and survive, you can come back another day. You have to ask the question, ‘What can we do not just to survive but to turn this into a defining point in history?’” The place to start, as Collins suggested, just might be (a) reinforcing your core values and (b) focusing on your human capital. Because, after all, values and people do make a difference.

Crisis Leadership Lessons from the "Miracle on the Hudson"

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who brought his planeload of 150 passengers down safely in the Hudson river after losing both engines, has been celebrated for his performance and his character.

A blog post, How to Pilot Through a Financial Crisis Like Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, distills some of the characteristics Captain Sully displayed:

Stay Calm: Sully didn’t panic. Think about that. He was the Captain of a large commercial airliner with more than 150 lives depending on his every move. If there was ever a time to panic, it was when both engines lost thrust over New York City.

Be prepared: January 15, 2009 was not Captain Sullenberger’s first day on the job. He had spent a lifetime preparing for that very moment. In addition to his experience as an Air Force pilot and hang-glider (some say sailplane) enthusiast, he undoubtedly spent countless hours in flight simulator training.

Get help: Captain Sullenberger didn’t save that plane and its passengers all by himself. He had a co-pilot and crew there to help. (We might add that many passengers also rose to the occassion to help others to safety.)

Stay focused:The tapes of Captain Sullenberger’s communications with ground control are quite telling. Sully was focused, as you might imagine, on what was important. His communications with ground control were very brief and to the point. He communicated what he needed to, and then stayed focused on the problem at hand.

Be hopeful: Emergency landings, like life, do not always have a happy ending. That’s just reality, and no matter how much we may wish it weren’t so, sometimes bad things happen to good people. But hope, above all else, gives us the desire and drive to keep trying.

The Captain's exemplary performance has undoubtedly gained much greater attention as we seek role models in a time of crisis. In an essay in Newsweek, Sully reflects on this:

It's been a month since the airplane I piloted, US Airways Flight 1549, made an emergency landing in the Hudson River.

Since then, the attention given to me and my crew—I'm trying to resist, somewhat unsuccessfully, everyone's attempt to make this about fewer than five people—has obviously been immense. But I still don't think of myself as a celebrity. It's been a difficult adjustment, initially because of the "hero" mantle that was pushed in my direction. I felt for a long time that that wasn't an appropriate word. As my wife, Lorrie, pointed out on "60 Minutes," a hero is someone who decides to run into a burning building. This was different—this was a situation that was thrust upon us. I didn't choose to do what I did. That was why initially I decided that if someone offered me the gift of their thankfulness, I should accept it gratefully—but then not take it on as my own.

As time went by, though, I was better able to put everything in perspective and realize how this event had touched people's lives, how ready they were for good news, how much they wanted to feel hopeful again. Partly it's because this occurred as the U.S. presidency was changing hands. We've had a worldwide economic downturn, and people were confused, fearful and just so ready for good news. They wanted to feel reassured, I think, that all the things we value, all our ideals, still exist—that they're still there, even if they're not always evident.

The Captain offers his own lessons on crisis:

We valued every life on that airplane and knew it was our responsibility to try to save each one, in spite of the sudden and complete failure of our aircraft. We never gave up. Having a plan enabled us to keep our hope alive. Perhaps in a similar fashion, people who are in their own personal crises—a pink slip, a foreclosure—can be reminded that no matter how dire the circumstance, or how little time you have to deal with it, further action is always possible. There's always a way out of even the tightest spot. You can survive.

Managing Expectations to Manage the Unexpected

Crises inherently involve people dealing with unanticipated events. And one way that leaders often shape how people around them think about crises is by talking about expectations. For example, much of the recent talk initiated and perpetuated by leaders within the U.S. government incorporates aspects of expectation management.

Take, for instance, President Barack Obama’s Feb. 24 address before a joint session of Congress. In his speech, which dealt largely with his plans to bolster the economy, Mr. Obama incorporated several elements of expectation management. Specifically, after discussing his immediate plans for economic recovery, Mr. Obama’s rhetoric shifted to describe plans with a decidedly futuristic orientation. To illustrate with a simple example, let’s consider the president’s use of two phrases: “short term” and “long term.”

For starters, Mr. Obama used the phrase “short term” twice while mentioning “long term” six times. But what is compelling from an expectation-management perspective is that both times that he said “short term,” he immediately juxtaposed “short term” with “long term.” Early in the speech, Mr. Obama compared the two, saying, “Short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity.” Later, he said, “The recovery plan and the financial stability plan are the immediate steps we’re taking to revive our economy in the short-term. But the only way to fully restore America’s economic strength is to make the long-term investments that will lead to new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete with the rest of the world.”

In his recent column on Forbes.com, Shaun Rein describes Mr. Obama’s expectation-management strategy as one that business leaders should adopt in difficult times. Rein wrote, “President Obama has continually lowered expectations about his ability to right the economy quickly. This has given him time to maneuver and allowed for more upside potential … Managing the expectations of investors and employees is critical now. One of the biggest mistakes senior executives make is trying to put too positive a spin on a situation.” Indeed, business bloggers are also picking up on the importance of expectation management in the face of crises.

Bloomberg News columnist Caroline Baum focused instead on Mr. Obama’s optimism. In her Feb. 26 column, she wrote, “Chicago is home to, among other things, rational expectations theory, the idea that outcomes depend to some extent on what people expect to happen. It would have been hard to spend that much time in Hyde Park without some of Chicago rubbing off on Obama … If we expect the future to be better, rational expectations dictate that it will be.”

Taking a scholarly perspective, organizational theorists argue that people’s expectations regarding what constitutes the ordinary shape how they make sense of and ascribe meaning to the world around them. So in terms of leadership, it behooves leaders to manage expectations carefully, keeping in mind the power of suggestion and using talk to frame how others regard their environments. At the same time, however, it’s crucial to manage expectations in such a way that people are more likely—not less—to notice and publicize the weak signals and small deviations from normality that are all too often beacons warning of impending disaster.

One of three ‘inevitables’. Crisis leadership in practice

By Kinga A Komorowska
MBA Student at the University of Strathclyde

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Common wisdom and many research studies have proved there are three inevitable things in life: death, taxes and crises. Having no capacity to deliberate death & tax issues, I would like to share a few reflections on leading under storms. These are based on the survey (N=141) I have conducted for my MBA project (Strathclyde Business School) in January 2009.

To the point: on the basis of the extensive literature review, I identified six hypotheses to be tested by the survey:

Hypothesis 1. Transformational leadership is the highly correlated with company performance during the crisis. I expected the transformational leaders to be the kind of leaders described by Klann (2003): being ready for anything, being keen on crisis to test their effectiveness and, finally, being able to ‘turn the chaos of a crisis into the promise of opportunity’. The finding that transformational leaders are able to influence only their performance and, practically, have no impact on company performance under crisis was highly disappointing.

As ‘charismatic attributes are at the heart of the transformational leader’ (Merolla et al. 2007), I expected by charismatic leaders to have even stronger impact on company performance than transformational leaders. Therefore, my Hypothesis 4 was that the charismatic leaders can increase company performance during a crisis. I found the only charisma that is important in crisis is the one presented during through time. If the leader was charismatic on a day-to-day basis but for some reasons, for example due to high stress level and inability to cope with it, changed his leadership style, the benefit of his charm would disperse.

Hypothesis 2. Leadership style does not change during crisis – it just become more expressive. I would say this was confirmed by my research although the results of validity tests were mixed. The direction of the shift was the biggest astonishment for me. I expected the number of transformational leaders to increase. Yet, the move towards more firm and less partnering style of leadership is visible during crisis.

Hypothesis 3. Leaders who perceived themselves charismatic would prefer ‘mental toughness’ as a major stress copying mechanism. I classified the following behaviours as the mental toughness: self-confidence, being optimistic, never-give-up approach, ‘take one day at time’, you-can-do-it approach, determination to succeed and ‘I always win’ strategy. This hypothesis was confirmed in my survey but work-related solutions (working even harder than during non-crisis time, crisis plan preparation, motivation from previous crisis-experience) were just slightly less popular among respondents.

Hypothesis 5. Performance depends on the stress level: the higher crisis level, the lower assessment of participants’ performance, as well as their company performance. My research proved the usefulness of the Yerkes Dodson model of arousal tension (Halverson et al. 2004): low levels of arousal stress can be beneficial for personal performance. As far as company performance is concerned, the relation is more linear: the stronger the stress, the lesser the performance.

Hypothesis 6. Stress coping mechanisms are not related to the leadership style expressed by leaders in crisis. Overall, there are no correlations with the mental toughness being the only exception. On the more detail (stress-mitigating behaviour) level, seeking external (but not professional) support was by far the most popular activity if under stress.

To sum up, the most general observation I have is the literature is so diverse and the opinions are so wide-ranging and at variance with each other that anyone can find both supporting and contradicting citations for any single issues related to crisis leadership. Any new research can bring evidences to defend some earlier findings but also to oppose them.

On the other hand, my MBA project has clarified my point of view on the debate on leaders being born or made: the crisis leaders are made! No doubts you have to have certain traits but this research proved the more experience in crisis, the better performance. You have to go through this hell to become a crisis leader!

Wisdom of the Ages for Timless Challenges

Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten in Learning from the Heroes in Harvard Business Review observe that the core challenges we struggle with are the perennial ones echoed in Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey:"

"Like Hercules, Luke Skywalker, and Jack Welch, we all struggle with five recurring challenges as we journey through work and life: We wander without knowing where we’re going. Data and circumstances confuse us. Fear blocks us from acting. Change paralyzes us. And despite our best intentions, we talk more than we listen."

They find that these challenges surface repeatedly in the business literature:

"An examination of business writing from the past 30 years shows that these challenges emerge again and again—and the best books offer simple yet profound lessons for overcoming them: Find a clear purpose. Be aware that past experience and a mass of information can interfere with wise decisions. Maintain a bias toward action. Be open to change. Seek feedback."

These nuggets of wisdom -- to take swift action but be open to feedback and frequent course corrections -- make much sense in crisis situations where desired outcomes are clear ... but the path there may be anything but obvious.

Creativity or Destruction: Choices in the Storm of 2009

The economic downturn ripping through the business world is tearing down some organizations and gutting others. David Hurst, in a column in The Globe and Mail, draws on lessons learned from the 1982 recession to offer some sage counsel on what's at stake and what can be gained:

"The sudden change in economic fortunes has given organizations an unexpected opportunity to show their true colours. And their people are watching. It is a challenge that will test the boilerplate on corporate values in countless annual reports and set every organization's tone for years to come. Will the stories to be told of the Crash of '08 and the ensuing recession reaffirm your organization's values or will they tell of cold actions that contradicted the warm words crafted in happier times?"

He indicates that there is need to balance managing costs with managing the toll on people. Leaders must engage at human level:

"Don't underestimate the power of face-to-face communication: Trust is at a premium and nothing reaffirms and creates it like sitting down with people, especially over a meal. Get in front of your clients, suppliers and resource providers. Talk to your people in town halls and other venues."

He also states that it is a time to be flexible and open to change:

"Address the key issues with cross-functional, cross-organizational teams comprising people from all over the organization and who are capable of handling a variety of challenges. De-emphasize the formal organization. Line managers are often best left off the teams to run their operations. Include “young Turks” and perennial malcontents from the fringes of the organization to send a powerful message of change."

This advice – to open up the lines of communication and create open space for new growth – runs counter to the path that many organizations opt for in a crisis. David's perspective – expressed in books such as Crisis & Renewal – is that a crisis is an opportunity for organizations to get back to their innovative roots and reconnect with the processes of creativity, learning, and experimentation that brought them to life.

The Financial Crisis: A Corporate Leadership Game-Changer?

Crises necessarily challenge assumptions. And certainly the recent turmoil on Wall Street has shaken many assumptions about economic and financial stability. Looking back on 2008, however, what can we learn about corporate leadership and management? In the Jan. 19 BusinessWeek cover story, titled “Managing Through a Crisis: The New Rules,” senior writer Emily Thornton suggests that current economic conditions have fundamentally changed how business leaders should make decisions, and that within economic turbulence resides new opportunities.

In the article, Thornton mentions several ways in which the decision-making milieu for managers has shifted, including reduced consumer confidence, tighter credit, the prospect of stricter regulations, and general ambiguity about both current conditions and future prospects. Furthermore, she discusses five specific sets of productive actions taken by chief executives in 2008, specifically:

• Change your mindset. Recognize that market conditions have changed, and that those changes should call into question many aspects of how you’ve traditionally done business.


• Get your financial house in order. Make tough choices, possibly including eliminating lines of business and issuing more stock, to strengthen your balance sheet and to secure your firm’s fundamental financial health.


• Make a move for market share. Focus on your core business and be on the lookout for newly available resources, both human and asset-related.


• Rethink your reward system. Avoid cutting compensation across the board; instead, find non-monetary ways to reward employees and improve morale.


• Dare to innovate. Taking the time and effort to innovate during the downturn could open new doors in the future. It’s risky, but may result in high returns.

The past year has forced us to think differently about what it means to undertake risk. Additionally, it seems that obtaining actionable information about potential risks is becoming increasingly difficult. It may not be a lack of information that fuels this difficulty; rather, it may be that managers today have such an abundance of information to process—via numerous financial reporting services, for example—that they cannot reasonably evaluate competing courses of action. Much of 2009 will be about figuring out what exactly happened to markets during 2008, but whether managers can use that information to guide their firms successfully remains to be seen.

This entry also appears at Organizing for High Reliability.

Leadership Failures During Hurricane Katrina

As the author James Joyce once said, “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” And although the leadership failures during and after hurricanes Katrina and Rita pummeled the United States’ Gulf Coast resulted in widespread tragedy, it’s useful to examine what went wrong and to learn what those events can tell us about leadership. In fact, failing to glean lessons from disasters may result in future tragedies that we could have otherwise mitigated. As another author, George Santayana, once wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

In their recent research article titled “Making Matters Worse: An Anatomy of Leadership Failures in Managing Catastrophic Events,” scholars Naim Kapucu and Montgomery Van Wart analyzed the catastrophic events in the city of New Orleans during and after hurricanes Katrina and Rita made landfall in 2005. Kapucu, an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida, and Van Wart, a professor and chair of the Department of Public Administration at California State University, San Bernardino, propose that 12 specific leadership competencies are particularly important in the management of catastrophic disasters and provide evidence of how those competencies were lacking during the Katrina emergency response.

Specifically, the authors argue that leadership during catastrophes especially requires leaders to demonstrate the competencies of decisiveness, flexibility, informing, problem solving, managing change and creativity, planning and organizing personnel, motivating, managing and building teams, scanning the environment, strategic planning, networking and partnering, and decision making. Using these competencies as a conceptual framework, Kapucu and Van Wart then discuss how their analysis of government reports and national media coverage demonstrates that in many ways the emergency-management efforts related to hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is a “case study of what not to do” (p. 719, emphasis added).

Kapucu and Van Wart suggest that the leadership failures regarding hurricane Katrina in New Orleans fall into five categories:

1. Failures in prevention and planning. Relevant leadership competencies that were lacking include environmental scanning (defined as “gathering and critically evaluating data related to external trends, opportunities, and threats on an on-going and relatively informal basis” p. 718), strategic planning, networking, and personnel planning. Leaders failed to appropriately demonstrate these capabilities both prior to the hurricane reaching land and during the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
   


2. Failure to adapt and expand capacity. Relevant leadership competencies that were lacking include environmental scanning, strategic planning, team building, flexibility, and decision making. In particular, leaders failed to shift their plans as dictated by the unfolding disaster and took a more reactive than proactive approach toward requesting assistance.
   


3. Failure to restore communications rapidly. Relevant leadership competencies that were lacking include strategic planning, problem solving, creativity, and providing motivation. With these competencies, the authors suggest that community and government leaders could have restored communications more rapidly.
   


4. Inflexible decision making. Relevant leadership competences that were lacking, as implied by the category title, include flexibility and decision making. For example, the authors discuss how the decision to use the New Orleans Superdome as an emergency shelter was flawed because it “encouraged nonevacuation, was unprepared for the 20,000 who were housed there, and was unequipped with the supplies necessary” (p.732). Thus, this decision failed in terms of both preparation and implementation.
   


5. Weak coordination and lack of goodwill. Relevant leadership competencies that were lacking include networking and partnering, team building, and decision making. Specifically, the authors mention a number of organizations that failed to adequately coordinate their emergency-response efforts. Furthermore, although some local communities responded admirably during the disaster, others did not, and in so doing stymied evacuation and appropriate disaster relief.

Therefore, Kapucu and Van Wart’s research suggests that leaders during disasters must enact specific competencies in addition to those required by leaders in stable operating conditions. Proactive contingency planning is vital, but leaders must be prepared to adjust their plans as necessary when unfolding events challenge the assumptions upon which the plans were built. Finally, the massive level of inter-organizational coordination that facilitates effective emergency response necessitates direct attention to networking and partnering before disaster strikes.

Kapucu and Van Wart’s article appeared in the journal Administration & Society. The full reference is as follows:

Kapucu, N., & Van Wart, M. (2008). Making matters worse: An anatomy of leadership failures in managing catastrophic events. Administration & Society, 40, 711-740.

The Bottom-Up Response in the Mumbai Attacks

I’ve just returned from India. The country is still grappling with the terrorist attacks in Mumbai that claimed nearly 200 lives. In India, where mass casualties are not unusual – in train accidents, stampedes, or floods – the shock revolves around the inability of India’s institutions to protect even its most elite populations at an iconic hotel in its central commercial center.

There were many failures that enabled the scale of the attacks. Quite telling was that the elite commando force took 10 hours to arrive at the scene of the attacks, ferried the last miles to the scene of the attacks on borrowed public buses. Clearly the Indian government was completely unprepared for this kind of attack.

Also telling was the role that ordinary people played in rescues. The heroes were hotel waitstaff and cooks who put their lives at risk to hide hundreds of guests instead of bailing out through the back door with their own lives – many staff perished (watch a segment on Charlie Rose). A tea vendor at the train station that was attacked saved dozens of lives by repeatedly rushing in to get paralyzed commuters out. The one AK-47 toting terrorist who was captured alive was taken down by constables wielding bamboo sticks.

In the national soul searching that has followed the attacks there is much blame being levied against the government for the lack of intelligence, the lack of preparation, and the tardy response. Nevertheless there is appreciation too that guarding this vast country from terrorism is going to take the vigilance of all people. It is a lesson India can learn from Israel where ordinary citizens foil the majority of attacks by taking swift action. In the Mumbai attacks the 10 terrorists came ashore at a fishing village and walked past the dock official who passively watched them go despite all the signals that something was amiss.

Can you plan for uncertainty?

These are uncertain times – recession, terrorism, war, climate change.... All this uncertainty upsets the planners among us (people who like to know what’s going to happen and when). When I was reflecting on my childbirth experience and preparation for it, I compiled this advice for “planning the un-plannable”. I'd love to see your comments if any of this resonates with you.

1. Know all the possibilities and parameters.
2. Learn how others have dealt with the challenges.
3. Know yourself.
4. Know your support system.
5. Fill in gaps in your support system.
6. Prepare for stress (for example, by being healthy).
7. Think through scenarios and decisions ahead of time; postpone actual decision 'til the necessary time.
8. Find small ways to feel confident and in control.
9. Be kind to yourself.
10. Sleep.

Sarah L. Glover

The Highest Order of Crisis Preparedness

CCL President John Ryan's October 28, 2008 column on BusinessWeek.com offers insights for leaders in dealing with a crisis. The column draws on the Crisis Leadership Forum and makes an important point about the counterproductive tendency to centralize control in a crisis:

"When leaders feel suddenly overwhelmed in crisis, they often try to do everything themselves. Strong individual leadership is of course imperative during a crisis. But it is not sufficient. A collective response is essential. Leaders trying to fix a crisis with a top-down approach many times find they're not close enough to the ground to know what's really happening. And even if they are, there's still no way for them to absorb and make sense of the massive volumes of information flying at them. "

In considering how to effectively marshall collective leadership capacity, there is much to be learned from the US Coast Guard. The USCG's dual strategy of encouraging "on-the-scene initiative" from frontline responders coupled with "commander's intent" from above enables an effective blend of top and bottom leadership. The USCG's ability to align across levels and commands is a product of its continual investment in building individual skills and organizational culture. This focus on building leadership capacity may well be the highest order of crisis preparedness.

Coming to Grips with the Panic of ’08

David Hurst, author of Crisis & Renewal and management speaker, consultant and writer, wrote this essay on the financial crisis and the cycle of creative destruction.

Creative Destruction:
Coming to Grips with the Panic of ’08
By David Hurst

Sir Isaac Newton knew a thing or two about up and down, but not even he could understand the gyrations of stock markets. “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people,” remarked the famous English physicist, after he reportedly lost twenty thousand pounds (over $5 million in present day value) in the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720. His puzzlement must be shared by many contemporary experts, especially the “rocket scientists” who developed the arcane financial instruments and valuation techniques that have contributed so heavily to the collapse of Wall Street in 2008. Indeed, one of the more complex such instruments, Credit Default Swaps, have been described as the “dark matter of the financial universe.”

After the March meltdown of Bear, Stearns, one of America’s most admired companies, the markets seemed to stabilize for a bit and the scientists might have retained their equanimity. But then, after 158 years of successful operation, Lehman Brothers evaporated over a weekend and that icon of American business, Merrill Lynch, a.k.a. the thundering herd, nearly went off the precipice, disappearing instead into the arms of the Bank of America. AIG, the world’s largest insurance company, needed an $85 Billion bailout. Staunch Republicans have supported government intervention to which they were unalterably opposed and markets around the world have swooned. While stunned economists and mathematicians wrangle about what went wrong, perhaps it would be helpful to reframe our understanding of what is happening. In addition to science, it’s useful to use some history; it also helps to enhance economics with some ecology.

History

While many talk of a global recession, some are even using the “D” word as they recall events from 1929. Historians have suggested, however, that analogies to 1929 are misguided and that the current financial turmoil is more similar to that of the Bankers’ Panic of 1907. In that year the stock market fell nearly 50% as the economy went into recession and there were numerous runs on banks and trust companies. By strange coincidence, that crisis had also begun in March of that year, with the collapse of Union Pacific stock, which was widely used as collateral for raising finance. The stock market survived that, more or less, but it was done in by the collapse of The Knickerbocker Trust, the third largest in America, in October 1907. It turned out that the trust had been funding speculation in the copper market, which had slumped a few months earlier. A fierce contraction in liquidity followed, with depositors trying to withdraw their holdings from banks across the country. The United States did not have a central bank at that time, so there was no lender of the last resort to throw out a lifeline. The economy was saved by the efforts of J.P. Morgan and his banking associates, who acted together as a financial backstop. Charles Barney, the President of Knickerbocker, shot himself on November 14, 1907. However the trust company opened again after a few weeks of closure and paid out all its depositors plus interest. The panic was over.

References to economic crises in history remind us that, although they are infrequent, financial panics are by no means rare. Professor Charles Kindleberger in his classic, Manias, Panics, and Crises, has identified nearly forty of them since the beginning of the 17th Century i.e. about one every ten years, although eighteen of them were in the 19th Century. So we have been here before. What makes the Panic of 2008 so frightening is its global scope and the suddenness with which it came upon us, contrary to all expert opinion. Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan observed in 2005 that “increasingly complex financial instruments have contributed to the development of a far more flexible, efficient, and hence resilient financial system than the one that existed just a quarter-century ago.” These remarks now seem destined to go down with economist Irving Fisher’s observation on the eve of the market crash of 1929 that "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” Famous, last words indeed.

Ecologics

None of the dynamics of the Panic of ’08 are surprising to anyone who looks at the world through an ecological rather than an economic lens. For this is the way nature works. Long slow processes of growth are followed by swift bouts of destruction that prepare the environment for renewal. Take a lodge-pole pine forest for example, like those that flourish in the Rockies. Lodge-pole pines are self-pruners. As they grow, they drop their lower branches on the ground, building up highly flammable debris. After forty years or so they get attacked by bugs like the mountain pine beetle and the weaker trees die, creating standing firewood. When lightning then strikes, fires devour the dead trees and tinder-dry underbrush in brief but violent infernos. Efforts to put them out are in vain – the best that fire-fighters can do is to try to control the boundaries and hope for assistance from nature in the form of rain. In the aftermath of fire, however, the scorched ground is ready for renewal. The fire removes the large trees that had hogged resources and prevented any variety from growing in their shade. It recycles their resources, supplying nutrients in their ashes that can nourish small scale organisms. The fallen trees supply innumerable refuges for armies of insects to assist with the recycling. The lodge-pole pines themselves have special heat-resistant cones that burst only when the temperature rises above 140º F and release their seeds into the warm ash. Within a year the ecology is bursting with renewal, as the weeds and seedlings and migrant animals and birds, the entrepreneurs of the natural world, flourish in the open patches.

Such natural systems work well, provided they are left alone. But we know that human intervention often makes the cycles more violent. Until recently forest managers made forest fires much more destructive by mistakenly suppressing natural fire in national parks like Yellowstone. The strategy works for a while, often confirming the wisdom of the strategists. But after a while so much fuel builds up that nothing can stop it from burning. Indeed, the effective exploitation of nature to make it more “efficient” mandates that we turn systems with variety into mono-cultures. The forests that supply the paper on which we blow our noses and clean our counters are such mono-cultures: all the trees are evenly spaced and are of the same age and same type. Without variety or fire-breaks, they are vulnerable to being wiped out by sudden catastrophes, ranging from wind and fire to disease and insect attack. The pan-caking floors of the Twin Towers after the attacks of 9/11 and the toxic NINA (no income, no assets) mortgages have this dynamic in common. Once one went, they all went. In crises economists call the process “financial contagion”. From an ecological perspective Alan Greenspan was quite wrong. Resilience does not follow from efficiency: it requires variety, which is the opposite of efficiency. And the restoration of resilience to a complex system often demands destruction first.

After the Panic of 1907 the Federal Reserve System was formed to act as lender of last resort. I am glad we have them this time around, as they try to avoid the mistakes they made in 1929. More generally, meaningful social, political and institutional change happens only in the aftermath of crisis. To a considerable and unacknowledged extent society and its component organizations advance strategically by accident, economically by windfall and politically by disaster. Armies are reformed only after defeats. Safety regulations are usually introduced after accidents. Certainly a comprehensive overhaul of the financial system is needed to ensure that the unregulated growth of mono-cultures is checked and monitored. We will have to avoid, however, the excesses of regulatory zeal such as the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, enacted in the aftermath of the Enron collapse. In his prescient book, A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation, investment expert Richard Bookstaber describes how, at times like these, markets can suddenly change their character. They flip from a well-understood game like probability-based roulette to a high-stakes one like psychology-based poker, offering huge rewards for those brave enough to seize the opportunities and disaster for others. He suggests that, among other things, we need to reduce the complexity of financial instruments, even if this means slowing down the rate of financial innovation. If the risks of complex derivatives are not understood, he argues, their risk cannot be mitigated.

Socially and intellectually these are humbling times, when many who thought they understood the system have found that they did not. The world’s politicians have not been helpful. President George W. Bush, to quote The New York Times, “had nothing to offer but fear itself.” Apart from dealing with the economy to restore confidence, our leaders need to get back to our ideas about values and community: the soil in which economies are nurtured. In our proclamation of the triumphs of markets we have forgotten their origins in and continued dependence upon human relationships and mutual trust. Trust, like the lubricant in an engine, is noticed only when it is gone and the motor has seized. Many of us live such fragmented lives and some say our values of hard work, thrift and support for each other have been eroded by decades of easy money, consumerism and a cult of selfish individualism. Changing that will not be easy. Rulers throughout the ages have known that nothing is more destructive of social order than a fall in the standard of living from a higher level, real or imagined, to a lower one. It will help immensely if we know that everyone is in it together and that the pain is being shared. Disasters, whether physical of financial, often have the effect of bringing the human community back together again in a common fate and a shared survival.

In the meantime it couldn’t hurt to pray for rain.

David Hurst is the author of Crisis & Renewal: Meeting the Challenge of Organizational Change (Harvard Business School Press, 1995/2002). He is a speaker, consultant and writer on management. He is a also Contributing Editor to Strategy+Business and his writing has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times and other leading business publications.

From Hurricane Winds to Vanishing Credit: The Many Faces of Crisis

Fear and pain. Ad hoc rescue. Panicked days. Collapse. Turmoil. Meltdown. We typically reserve these types of phrases for natural disasters and other emergencies that pose an immediate threat to life, limb, and property. Recently, however, news outlets such as the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, and Reuters have used these words and other similar language to describe what pundits around the world are simply calling the “financial crisis.” Indeed, during the past few weeks, the world has turned its attention to the United States’ financial markets, which are in the midst of a rapidly changing landscape of tightening credit, bankruptcy, and volatile share prices.

So what do we really mean by the word “crisis?” Given the diversity of circumstances that we may call crises, it appears that some definition of crisis is necessary if we are to understand crisis leadership. Scholars differ on some of the nuances of what a crisis is and what it is not, but most agree that crises are unexpected, high-impact events characterized by high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity. They are situations in which we question the stability of what we previously thought stable and the assumptions upon which we previously acted with confidence.

Given this rough definition of a crisis, one way we may think of crisis leadership is as a process of positive influence toward safety, security, and stability. Metaphorically, crisis leadership encompasses the means through which we emerge from the fog of chaos into the clarity of familiar surroundings.

With these concepts in mind, the status of the United States’ financial system is certainly one of crisis. Most experts didn’t expect the sub-prime mortgage market to collapse, leading to a worldwide tightening of credit and failure of stalwart organizations such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. And it’s even more unlikely that anyone could have predicted that today the federal government would enact a $700-billion plan intended to bolster the nation’s financial system. In terms of crisis leadership, who are some of the key players? Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson? Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke? Thousands of American constituents voicing their opinions?

If anything, the financial crisis is an example of how crisis leadership affects many vital aspects of life we often take for granted, be it the ability of a levee to hold, the rapid arrival of first responders, or the stability of business, labor, and our financial future. Further inquiry into successful crisis leadership, then, is not just an interesting matter of scholarly pursuit—it’s a crucial matter of survival.

Crisis Leadership Podcasts from CCL on iTunes

Four podcasts based on learning from the Crisis Leadership Forum are now available on iTunes:

These are part of a Center for Creative Leadership series on iTunes that includes dozens of downloads on topics such as ethics, strategic leadership, and conflict management.

iTunes also features some 150 documentaries, podcasts, audiobooks, radio shows, and songs related to Hurricane Katrina.

Jindal’s Emergency Response

As previously discussed, leaders’ communication during crises may make a significant difference in how they enable or hinder emergency response. According to a Sept. 7 article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal responded effectively to the threat of Hurricane Gustav by focusing on continually measuring preparation progress while reducing barriers to response efforts. He did this, at least in part, through communication with the public and other constituents.

The true test of emergency readiness in Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast, however, may come in the weeks and months ahead. The official Atlantic hurricane season lasts until Nov. 30, leaving the potential for future evacuations and many other demands upon leaders. Furthermore, what impact does the fact that Gustav was less severe than anticipated have on future evacuation efforts and responses?

One possibility may be that people will be less likely to act with as much of a sense of urgency during future crises. Many heeded leaders’ warnings regarding Gustav, but will that followership continue? Interestingly, the Times-Picayune reported today that Gov. Jindal does not foresee an evacuation order regarding incoming Hurricane Ike.

This highlights an important dilemma for leaders considering to order evacuations and carry out other disaster preparations. Leaders want to prepare their communities, but they also need to maintain their followers’ trust that they will only sound the alarm when it is really needed. Only then will people follow and respond when disaster strikes. This, too, emphasizes the delicate yet vital nature of communication in crisis leadership.

Retired General Russel Honoré Talks about Gustav and Katrina

CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed Retired General Honoré as he headed from his Georgia home to New Orleans. General Honoré, who was responsible for heading military relief effort during Hurricane Katrina, is also an alumnus of CCL’s Leadership at the Peak program.

General Honoré spoke to Cooper about cites (Miami, Houston, and Biloxi) that are at risk of becoming the next “New Orleans”; shared three rules for family preparedness before hurricane; and talked of the work that still needs to be done in NOLA. Click here to read full interview.

Leaders, Communities Brace for Gustav’s Landfall

To many along the United States’ Gulf Coast, it must seem like déjà vu. Almost three years ago to the day, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the coastlines of Louisiana and Mississippi, resulting in the loss of more than 1,800 lives and $80 billion in property damage. Now, Hurricane Gustav is set to make landfall near New Orleans tomorrow afternoon. And thousands of that city’s residents are evacuating, heeding a mandatory order to do so.

We all hope, of course, that Gustav’s impact will be less severe than expected and that preparedness efforts will reflect lessons learned painfully during and after Katrina. That remains to be seen, but it’s certain that people will critically compare crisis leadership efforts during the next few days with actions taken three years ago.

One theory of leadership, complexity leadership theory, seems particularly appropriate for discussing leadership during crises. The theory builds upon the idea that organizations are complex adaptive systems in which change is continual and organizational members continuously affect structures within the system through interaction and the process of sensemaking. This is an overly simplistic explanation, but the most relevant point here is that leaders within this theoretical framework act as enablers rather than controllers, and they manage words more so than they manage people.

With that in mind, it will be interesting to see how leaders respond to Hurricane Gustav—how they enable or hinder preparation and response efforts, and how they communicate with their many constituents. In the meantime, we hope for the best while bracing for the worst.

Leading Toward Preparedness

According to a recent report by New York University’s Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response and The Public Entity Risk Institute, crisis preparedness remains low within many organizations throughout the United States.

As the report mentions, future crises will most likely only increase in frequency and complexity. Technological advances, globalization, and continually greater inter-organizational dependence result in a society where what affects one organization will most likely affect others. So when disaster strikes, leaders will need to become ever cognizant of how rapidly changing environments may affect them. For example, hurricanes could disrupt a corporation’s supply chain, which in turn could adversely affect its workers and customers.

It is surprising—and alarming—that organizations continue to operate without enough attention to how their leaders should address crises. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that some organizations may treat crisis leadership as a segmented organizational function, for example, making it the sole responsibility of the business continuity planning department. But history and research are beginning to show that crisis preparation may be most effective when addressed in a holistic, systemic, and ongoing fashion—not when it is relegated to another set of checklists and conference-room meetings.

Access the full report here.

Resilient Organizations Know How to Improvise

Why do some organizations bounce back after hard times and others don’t? According to a recent Harvard Business Review article written by Diane Coutu, there are three important characteristics that underpin resiliency in an individual or organization. Resilient people and organizations have a clear view of reality, find meaning in hardship, and they know how to improvise.

“Inventive tinkerers, resilient organizations use whatever’s handy to overcome hardship. They improvise solutions without obvious tools and imagine possibilities where others are confounded,” writes Diane Coutu.

Coutu uses the example of how USP was able to deliver packages to residents just one day after Hurricane Andrew devastated southeastern Florida in 1992. UPS’s ability to effectively respond under extraordinary circumstance can be attributed to their commitment to empower employees to improvise and do whatever it takes to deliver packages on time.

The ability to improvise was one of the resounding themes during the discussion at the Crisis Leadership Forum in 2007.

"The day after the storm, we realized that 98 percent of our plans weren't any good," said Joe Spraggins, director of emergency management for Harrison County, Mississippi, whose first official day on the job was the day Katrina hit. It was as if "an atomic bomb hit the Gulf of Mexico," said Spraggins. "This was something that had to be dealt with in a different manner."

Leaders and experts at the forum agreed that crisis response, regardless of size or scope, requires both planning and improvising. Planning and preparation helps enable rapid coordinated action; at the same time plans are always insufficient. A plan is a starting point, but every situation will involve something unexpected. Logic and imagination cannot factor in every contingency. People need the capacity to read and understand a situation and improvise their approach as the reality unfolds. To learn more about improvising when plans fail, click here.

The Megacommunity: Harnessing the Tri-Sector to Prepare and Respond

As the saying goes, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Likewise, it just might take a “megacommunity” to effectively manage crises in today’s ever-evolving, increasingly complex and uncertain world. In their book, Megacommunities: How Leaders of Government, Business and Non-Profits Can Tackle Today’s Global Challenges Together, four executives from the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton—Mark Gerencser, Reginald Van Lee, Fernando Napolitano, and Christopher Kelly—propose that the best way to address macro threats is through engaging organizations and leaders in three sectors: government, business, and the public/non-profit realm.

A megacommunity, as the authors describe it, is a community of organizations, not of individuals. Specifically, a megacommunity is “a public sphere in which organizations from three sectors—business, government, and civil society—deliberately join together around compelling issues of mutual importance, following a set of practices and principles that make it easier for them to achieve results without sacrificing their individual goals” (p.53). The book’s main theme is that continually advancing globalization and technology have created a world in which communities are highly interdependent. When disaster strikes, therefore, the most successful responses draw upon numerous organizations for resources and leadership. A working relationship among these otherwise disparate entities is imperative. Hence, the megacommunity is the vehicle through which organizations can unite toward common goals without forcing them to abandon their own identities and goals.

For example, the authors discuss how leaders in Florida, after suffering Hurricane Andrew’s devastating impact, recognized that no single organization could effectively meet the demands of hurricane preparedness and subsequent response. Afterward, officials in Florida engaged a wide range of non-profit groups and businesses in its contingency planning and response preparedness. This new approach was largely successful in responding to subsequent hurricanes, and the authors contrast it sharply with the widely criticized response to Hurricane Katrina in southern Louisiana and Mississippi.

Megacommunities goes on to describe how the megacommunity idea requires a shift in thinking to include building relationships across organizational boundaries while engaging vital stakeholders, sensing common goals among organizations, and initiating a megacommunity after analyzing conditions internal and external to one’s organization. The megacommunity concept has numerous implications for leaders who want to successfully prepare for crises. Leadership in this sense includes a wide range of abilities and actions such as recognizing common values among organizations in other sectors, building the requisite relationships and reputation capital to engage leaders in other organizations, and continually assessing who might be important stakeholders.

As a whole, Megacommunities is more about steps organizations can take to better address large problems facing themselves and their communities than it is about what organizations should actually do during crises. That being said, however, the notion of the megacommunity is compelling because it stresses the importance of leaders looking beyond their own organizations for mutually beneficial support in addressing large-scale challenges. Each of the three sectors that megacommunities should engage—business, government, and civil society—have unique abilities and perspectives necessary to find the best solutions. And as technology continues to advance, so will global interdependence. What affects one organization, may very well affect many others—making the megacommunity approach viable and necessary.

Megacommunities proposes that we think about our organizations in a more holistic manner, considering them within the broader context of a society with common threats. What types of risks face your organization and organizations in other sectors? A few possibilities come to mind: expansion into new markets, financial crises, natural disasters, pandemic outbreaks, terrorist attacks, cultural conflicts, and information-technology advancement, to name a few.

No longer are our villages, regions, organizations, and countries sustainable without a mindful approach toward mitigating the risks we all face. Building inter-organizational ties within a megacommunity, or simply recognizing and strengthening latent megacommunities around us, appears to be an important step. And at the very least, leaders seeking to successfully manage crises should take heed of the megacommunity concept and consider its implications.

Reference: Gerencser, M., Van Lee, R., Napolitano, F., & Kelly, C. 2008. Megacommunities: How leaders of government, business and non-profits can tackle today’s global challenges together. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lessons Learned from the Fire

Just over a month after a massive lightening storm ignited more than 2,000 fires throughout northern California fire officials recently announced that 98% of the fires have been contained. Still fire officials warned that fire danger remains high throughout the state.

David Balwin, an adjunct at the San Diego campus of the Center for Creative Leadership, knows first hand what some of the residents of northern California have been facing this past month as fires threatened their homes. He and his wife were among the residents endangered by the 2007 Southern California wild fires that destroyed 1,500 homes and over 500,000 acres.

“As my wife and I hunkered down in our home with windows shut tight, we tuned in to the television for ongoing live footage of houses being burned to the ground. But, every few hours the mayor of San Diego would have a communication press conference and facilitated key leaders from the police, fire, national forest service, helicopter pilots, etc. This communication proved essential especially for my wife who has only been in the San Diego area for a couple years,” said Baldwin.

Fortunately their home survived the fires and one of the key lessons David and his wife learned from their experience was the importance of relying on others is times of crisis.

The Baldwin’s insights echoes much of what the General Honoré who was lauded for shaking New Orleans out of a daze after hurricane Katrina struck observed during the height of the Katrina crisis--- the need to have a “culture of preparedness” where people have a natural civic response to helping others in times of crisis.

According to Honoré, the greatest and largely unlearned lesson of Katrina, Honoré was that despite investments and improvements in federal and state disaster response, civic response remained weak.

"I'm sure you and your wife have a plan to meet at Uncle Joe's house, but does your plan include asking Mrs. Smith next door if she needs a ride?" he says. "We saw a lot of Mrs. Smiths in New Orleans," said Honoré.

Another lesson the Baldwins learned from their experience was to have a plan in place in the event of future disasters. “The crisis made us reflect on what are the key personal items we need to have prepared and ready to evacuate with in our hands. Additionally, we purchased a fire safe as our perspective changed from living in a sense of stability to having an evacuation plan in place,” stated Baldwin.

The need to think ahead is articulated in the book “The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — and Why” and reviewed in The New York Times. The Time's piece states:

"There are ways to prepare for more common threats like fires, floods and other emergencies. Take part in evacuation drills at work and at home. Make a habit of changing batteries in your smoke detector on a schedule, like the first of the month or every time you change the nearest light bulb. And get to know your neighbors, who can be a valuable resource in emergencies."

The Times and the author offer a "disaster IQ" quiz online:

How Prepared Are You if Disaster Strikes?

Stories from Katrina from StoryCorps

The magnitude of massive disasters makes it possible to lose sight of the thousands of individual tragedies that form a heartbreaking quilt of loss and enduring grief.

The StoryCorps oral history project has captured some 35,000 life stories from everyday people since 2003, including many from Katrina. These accounts, often deeply personal remembrances told to a loved one, are archived at the Library of Congress and occasionally featured on National Public Radio.

The stories about Hurricane Katrina are moving. In one story, Douglas deSilvey talks about losing his family -- wife, daughter, mother-in-law, and father-in-law -- in the flood. In another, a news reporter talks about the painful scenes he encountered in the wake of Katrina and shares the burden of having to walk away from a mother who pleaded for help for her two-year old child.

Managing the Unexpected: Implications for Crisis Leadership

Effective leaders should focus on success, make critical decisions, and simplify complex problems, right? Not according to organizational scholars Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe in their book, Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty. In fact, leadership as described above might be precisely the wrong approach in preparing and guiding organizations prior to, during, and after crises.

By definition, crises are unexpected events. And the degree to which organizations successfully deal with the unexpected varies. So to better understand how some organizations continually deal with high levels of risk and uncertainty, Weick and Sutcliffe studied occupations in which catastrophes are rare despite widespread occupational hazards. These “high-reliability organizations” include nuclear power plants, naval aircraft carriers, firefighting units, and emergency medical units. These seemingly disparate organizations, Weick and Sutcliffe argue, have much to teach us about reducing errors at work, bolstering occupational safety, and managing crises.

Although Managing the Unexpected is not necessarily a book about leadership—for example, the authors seldom mention the words “leader” or “leadership”—its practical implications for any organization seeking the ability to rapidly adjust within a high-stakes, continually changing environment are numerous. From a leadership perspective, the principles Weick and Sutcliffe claim high-reliability organizations espouse provide direct insight into the critical role of leaders during crises. This brief review of Managing the Unexpected examines those principles and a few ways in which they may relate to crisis leadership.

High-reliability organizations (HROs), according to Weick and Sutcliffe, effectively manage small crises on a regular basis because they cling to five guiding standards. These “HRO principles” are as follows:

1. Preoccupation with failure
2. Reluctance to simplify
3. Sensitivity to operations
4. Commitment to resilience
5. Deference to expertise

Together, these principles describe an organizational culture in which people know what types of errors are unacceptable, understand the complexity of organizational issues, listen to people at the “front line,” fight to bounce back from mistakes, and rely on subject-matter experts when appropriate.

Leaders who wish to succeed in crises, then, should perhaps direct their efforts toward the intentional implementation of these principles into their organization’s culture. Implementing a “preoccupation with failure” could include actions such as talking about what types of failures the organization should regard as detrimental in terms of safety or the organization’s performance. It could include expecting, supporting, and rewarding employee behavior such as reporting errors and mistakes, as these “weak signals,” or subtle cues, could be signs of impending disaster. Weaving a “reluctance to simplify” value into the organization’s culture would most likely involve leaders pushing for more information about causes of small failures, as these small failures could signal bigger organizational problems.

Applying “sensitivity to operations” within organizations assumes that leaders will listen to workers closest to hazards, as those workers are most likely the first ones to notice if aspects of their work are amiss. For example, engine technicians would most likely be the first to notice if a piece of machinery sounded differently or vibrated more than usual. Leaders who are sensitive to those in operations prepare themselves for crises because they will be more likely to quickly learn about potential problems and react accordingly; furthermore, by supporting their front-line employees they empower them to act in the best interest of the organization.

The final two HRO principles, “commitment to resilience” and “deference to expertise,” apply more directly to how leaders should act during crises than the other three principles. A “commitment to resilience” implies that leaders should build into their organizational culture ways of continuing operations under extreme circumstances. This could mean building redundancy into the organization’s structure through cross-training. Because crises involve massive amounts of information exchanged within rapidly changing circumstances, leaders should encourage widespread freedom of speech within their organizations to facilitate information exchange and situational awareness. Finally, “deference to expertise” refers to the notion that during crises, leadership is most effective when shared, such that those with the most amount of expert knowledge have the authority and resources to act.

Weick and Sutcliffe expand upon these ideas in far greater detail in Managing the Unexpected. The concepts addressed here, however, will perhaps spark further discussion about crisis leadership. Given their somewhat counter-intuitive nature, the HRO principles challenge many notions of traditional, hierarchical leadership while promoting a more systems type of approach to how leaders can succeed in crises.

Reference: Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2007). Managing the unexpected: Resilient performance in an age of uncertainty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lessons Learned: FEMA Response to Midwest Floods

Nearly three years after their highly criticized response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster FEMA is receiving positive feedback on their relief efforts for the victims of the Midwest Floods. Democratic senators in Missouri and Illinois are giving favorable reviews of FEMA’s early response to the crisis along with other government officials, disaster response personnel and citizens.

The highly-charged public criticism of FEMA during and after Katrina provided an impetus for FEMA leaders to scrutinize their response and apply lessons learned to future crises. A USA Today article indicates that FEMA has learned from Katrina. Glenn Cannon, FEMA assistant administrator for disaster operations states:

"The lessons we learned from Katrina we've taken very seriously. We've changed the way we do business. We don't wait to react."

As we heard at the Crisis Leadership Forum on Hurricane Katrina, there is a need for greater decentralization of relief efforts. This was articulated by Colonel Tom Kolditz at the Forum who stated “Disasters push the operational focus [down to the grassroots level]. It is the same in military operations—the faster the tempo and the higher the danger, the more decentralization is necessary.”

This shift occurred in FEMA’s response to the floods as noted by Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill:

"I think they've made a world of improvement both in terms of their preparedness and in terms of their attitude. My sense is they are no longer thinking they can deliver disaster relief from a cubicle in Virginia and are fully engaged on the ground."

New Leadership Emerges From the Rubble

If there is a silver lining in the tremendous tragedy of last month’s earthquake in the southwestern province of Sichuan, China it is not only the unprecedented openness of the Chinese government to outside aid but the upsurge of volunteerism and philanthropy within the country's borders. Now, less than a month since the earthquake, soldiers are beginning to control sensitive areas and local media restrictions are increasing, however, the extraordinary response by China’s citizens and NGOs will not likely be suspended any time soon. This surge of volunteerism and philanthropy which is considered atypical for China is not uncharacteristic in times of great disaster.

Much like the Hurricane Katrina crisis in 2005, the earthquake in China overwhelmed the capacity of formal systems and structures, opening the door for emergent leaders to step into the void, and play critical and improvised roles in rescue and rebuilding efforts. Grassroots leaders stepped up and plunge into the fray to assist others.

This unusual grassroots spirit of volunteerism and philanthropy can be summed up by Li Tong, a 28-year-old nightclub manager in Beijing who organized a series of benefit concerts for the quake relief.

"I think the reason (for the widespread response) was simple. The earthquake was just too big and devastating for anyone to ignore. So we all felt we had to get involved.”

"I'm not sure about the long-term impact. For now, there's this sense of joint participation -- and that could continue. Before, I think, people felt more isolated and selfish and they thought the same about strangers. But the relief work has broken through that. So I hope we don't go back to how it was."

Just as individuals affected most by Hurricane Katrina refer to life after the storm as the “new normal”, the people of the Republic of China’s “new normal” may be a rise in grassroots leadership, volunteerism and philanthropy.

Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned

Partnership for Public Service has created a website devoted to improving government performance by sharing information about Hurricane Katrina and highlighting Katrina’s lessons to drive forward-looking solutions. It features events, research, news summaries, related legislation and related links.

One report, The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned, offers that Katrina is an opportunity to learn for the future:

"Katrina creates an opportunity—indeed an imperative—for a national dialogue about true national preparedness, especially as it pertains to catastrophic events. We are not as prepared as we need to be at all levels within the country: Federal, State, local, and individual. Hurricane Katrina obligates us to re-examine how we are organized and resourced to address the full range of catastrophic events—both natural and man-made. The storm and its aftermath provide us with the mandate to design and build such a system."

... We must expect more catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina—and possibly even worse. In fact, we will have compounded the tragedy if we fail to learn the lessons—good and bad—it has taught us and strengthen our system of preparedness and response. We cannot undo the mistakes of the past, but there is much we can do to learn from them and to be better prepared for the future. This is our duty."

At the Crisis Leadership Forum Donna Dinkin noted that the word crisis in Chinese is composed of two separate symbols: one that symbolizes danger, and the other, opportunity. A crisis she observed is an opportunity to learn for the next time. Dinkin also warned that learning must transcend the diagnostics of a particular crisis. “How do we help organizations learn from one type of crisis event to make them more prepared? Not more prepared for the ‘same’ type of crisis—but a totally different kind of crisis?”

More from Donna Dinkin in a previous post to this blog: http://crisisleadership.blogspot.com/2008/01/reflections-on-crisis-leadership-forum.html

The frailty of Crisis Leadership… or better “Why doesn’t somebody do something”

By Pete Hammett

Pete Hammett was one of the discussants in the Crisis Leadership Forum. He's the author of Unbalanced Influence.

“The practice of leadership is not the same as the exercise of power” -- James Macgregor Burns

“History proves out time and again that a leader mistaken in their thinking and ill-conceived in their decisions will have little trouble finding those ready to agree and wholeheartedly willing to follow.” -- Unknown

The mission of Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is to promote the understanding, practice and development of leadership for the betterment of society worldwide. And yet, on August 29, 2005, when the Katrina crisis unfolded, those of us at CCL, like many others around the world, struggled to find a meaningful way to show our support. It wasn’t simply the images we saw or the stories we heard that pulled at our hearts. We had friends, business partners and customers who were directly impacted by the storm. Then, in October 2007, when the fires raged in Southern California, events hit much closer to home. The Center has family in San Diego - a campus of nearly 50 people plus adjunct faculty and coaches. And then the long, dry summer of ’07 brought many of us in the Southeastern states the real possibility that sever drought would require some communities to truck in water.

As we observe crisis like Katrina and experience firsthand events like the California fires, we come face to face with the promise and shortcomings of leadership during times of stress, uncertainty and personal tragedy. In this we’ve come to believe that in light of what we’ve come to characterized as crisis leadership, certainly there is expertise CCL could lend and knowledge we might gain by committing our time and energy to this topic. While few events will match the scope and scale of the devastation wrought by Katrina, there are principles and practices we could learn about the nature of a crisis and the kind of leadership needed. So then, if leadership potential can be defined as the ability to learn from lessons-of-experience, the leadership lessons embedded in experiences from Katrina or the California fires or the next crisis on the horizon, offer perhaps the most fertile learning opportunity imaginable.

Our first step in developing a body-of-knowledge in crisis leadership occurred in March 2007 with a two-day forum drawing on lessons from leaders actually engaged in the rescue and recovery efforts from Katrina. In planning for the forum we were sensitive to what had already become an endless series of bureaucratic exercises designed to either assess blame and / or defend positions for the inadequate response to Katrina crisis. To ensure the Crisis Leadership Forum avoided this pitfall we designed the session to be a “conversation” conducted in a safe space, rather than a public forum for an audience. From this we were able to focus on what we could learn from what went right, from what went wrong and what we would carry forward for “the next time”.

As I read through the forum report (Stepping into the Void) my mind raced back to ‘lessons-of-experience’ I heard from those who participated in this exchange. With the benefit of hindsight from Katrina as well as reflection on responding to subsequent crisis events – a few thoughts continue to race through my mind – most haunting are the echoes of “Why doesn’t somebody do something”. I share this with you below.

The Frailty of Crisis Leadership – Self-reliance & Disconnected Communities

The framework of the Crisis Leadership research suggests that in many regards, leadership in times of crisis is not that different from every day leadership, in that we set direction, define strategic objectives, prioritize activities, provide support and foster creativity and innovative. However, during times of crisis, when traditional paradigms fall to the wayside, when a group, community, city or nation is faced with responding to life & death - questions of sustainability or survival greatly influence the manner and method people chose to lead as well as chose to follow.

When the order to evacuate New Orleans came, we saw a great number of people stay in city even with the threat of Katrina looming. Arguments have been made that many stayed because they didn’t believe the storm would be that bad (storms had come and gone in the past, and this one would be the same). But we now know that some residents stayed in New Orleans because they had no option for leaving. While they lived in communities that appeared to be tightly connected – beneath the surface those bonds were very thin and many residents were left to fend for themselves. We observed a similar situation during the ’07 California fires as some homeowners defied orders to leave, even when they saw the danger approaching and had the means to escape.

In these examples are perhaps the greatest barriers to Crisis Leadership, the frailty if you would to leading during times of crisis…our natural instinct for self-reliance coupled with the very thin bonds of connection communities. Perhaps the predisposition to be self-reliant is an American idiosyncrasy. It is part of our nature as Americans to look adversity in the eye and stare it down. But this self-reliance may be the very thing that creates a barrier to building tight-knit bonds within our communities. We may know our neighbor’s name, perhaps what they do and their children. But how tightly connected are our communities?

A post-Katrina analysis looked to compare the impact in New Orleans to that of South Florida in the wake of hurricane Andrew. A Florida resident who survived Andrew offered this word of advice to Katrina victims; “The only thing the residents of New Orleans can honestly count on is themselves. The government isn’t going the help and the city and state won’t be much good. And your neighbors have their own problems. So you’re on your own”.

Leadership is useless unless a leader has those who will follow. During times of crisis, real crisis, a significant barrier to leadership may be followers who lean on self-reliance and communities that are disconnected.

We don’t need another hero

Along with the stories of destruction and lost the media inevitability finds inspiring accounts of compassion, courage and heroics. Sometimes the story involves a single individual – other times it’s an entire community. Yet in these stories there is always a common theme. First, the longer the story is played in the press; the difficult it is to separate myth from fact. This isn’t surprising because in times of distress we need inspiration and hope and over time the stories of heroics take on a life of their own.

However in hindsight we learn a valuable lesson for the role of heroics during times of crisis. While heroics may save the day, heroics will not sustain the future. Heroics are helpful for an isolated event but cannot scale to address a larger community. We can’t replicate heroics nor can we embed heroic events into our crisis plans. Heroics make for great headlines, and we should acknowledge and praise these events. But we seldom offer the same accolades to impactful leadership during a crisis.

The best of times, the worst of times

A lesson-of-experience we heard in the Crisis Leadership Forum is that during a crisis your strengths shine bright and your weakness shine brighter. One organization made this point as they shared how the strength and weakness in their organizational decision making played out in their response to Katrina.

In this organization the mode-of-operation was to enable its leaders to make decisions quickly. In fact, leaders were more likely to be criticized for taking too long to make a decision than for making a poor decision. A by-product of this culture was that decisions often produced less than efficient results. However, in an aggressive growth market a less-than-perfect decision could be make, results analyzed, inefficiencies determine, and fine-tuning applied – generally before the competition analyzed and make their initial decision.

The value and drawbacks in the organization’s rapid yet inefficient decision making culture became crystal clear during the height of Katrina. When several workers became stranded in the city when the levees broke the only evacuation option was a helicopter. With key leaders scattered across several cites and communications difficult, a decision was made and an air evaluation engaged. The decision was quick, but inefficient as not one, but three helicopters brought placed into service because three separate leaders make the same decision.

What truck am I in?

One image that has burned in my mind from the Crisis Leadership forum is the image of two trucks.

When Katrina hit some people put whatever ‘extra’ things they had in a truck – drove to an impacted area and said to the survivors standing around “this is for you – I had this sitting in my closet – I hope it helps”. They pushed their ‘stuff’ out of the truck and drove home. They didn’t ask ‘Where do you need this’ or better yet, ‘Where can I help’. This was often referred to as “drive-bys”.

But there were others, who likewise gathered what they had available, put it in a truck and drove to an impacted area. But rather than dumping and running home – they stayed. Some for a few days, others are still there. They found out where the need was the greatest and went there. They gave what they had and when the need was more than what was available they reached out to their networks to get more. But most of all – they gave of themselves, spent real time with those they were serving and in return learned and grew more than they could have imagined.

When I reflect on this story I ask myself…what truck am I in? To be certain there are two types of ‘helpers’ in a crisis:

1. Drive-bys…people who put ‘stuff’ in their truck, pull up to people hurting, kick the stuff out of the back, and take off
2. Stay-bys…people who put their heart and soul in a truck, pull up to people hurting and stay until the need is met

We need both!!! We’ll remember one.

Why doesn’t somebody do something?

With the TV playing the scenes from the Superdome in New Orleans a single thought constantly echoed in room – “why doesn’t somebody do something?” In truth a lot of people were doing something. However the enormity of the crisis overwhelmed every response system imagined. Ironic that the very definition of a crisis is that we are overwhelmed and the systems (people, plans, capacity) to respond are inadequate.

Another irony is that we don’t think about what we could do to help in a crisis until the crisis is upon us. Our friends from the Red Cross offered some great advice for those of who would want to help during a crisis. In as much as you are able, don’t become another soul that needs help. This goes back to where we began – the issue of self-sufficiency. Ignoring danger signs and warnings because you feel you can ‘tough-it-out’ is the dark side of self-sufficiency. However, using your available resources and making plans before a crisis is a helpful approach to self-sufficiency. And it may keep you from being someone who needs help and allow you to be someone who offers help.

A good place to start is the Red Cross’ site on disaster planning.
http://www.redcross.org/services/prepare/0,1082,0_239_,00.html

Premortems and Crisis Planning

We’ve heard it said that hindsight is 20/20 but "prospective hindsight" can provide much clarity when planning for a crisis.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article Performing a Project Premortem Gary Klein, chief scientist of Klein Associates discusses the benefits of using prospective hindsight in a business setting during the early stages of project planning. Klein describes a method he devised called a “premortem” designed to help project teams identify risks before a project has a chance to go off track.

Research conducted in 1989 by Deborah J. Mitchell, of the Wharton School; Jay Russo, of Cornell; and Nancy Pennington, of the University of Colorado, found that prospective hindsight -- imagining that an event has already occurred -- increases the ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%.

A premortem is the hypothetical opposite of a postmortem. A postmortem in a medical setting allows health professionals and the family to learn what caused a patient’s death. A premortem in a business setting comes at the beginning of a project rather than the end, so that the project can be improved rather than autopsied. Unlike a typical critiquing session, in which project team members are asked what might go wrong, the premortem operates on the assumption that the “patient” has died, and so asks what did go wrong. The team members’ task is to generate plausible reasons for the project’s failure.

Although many project teams engage in pre-launch risk analysis, the premortem's prospective hindsight approach offers benefits that other methods don't. It not only helps teams identify potential problems early on, but serves to engage team member’s perspectives and thoughts that might otherwise go unsaid. In describing weaknesses that no one else has mentioned, team members feel valued for their intelligence and experience, and others learn from them. The exercise also sensitizes the team to pick up early signs of trouble once the project gets under way.

This type of premortem exercise can be easily applied when planning for crises of any magnitude. As repeatedly reflected in the findings from the Crisis Leadership Forum, the more one can anticipate all that can go wrong in a crisis situation the better able they are to plan for even the most unexpected disaster.

"The magnitude of natural disasters is much, much large than any of us can imagine, so planning needs to go much farther in our thinking about potential scenarios,” said Leigh Allen, CCL faculty member.

This focus on thinking about the worst was echoed by Linda Watts, division manager for Mississippi Power Company. In looking back at what could be done to better prepare for the Katrina crisis, she offered, “I would ensure plans were truly ‘worst case”—such as planning for zero communication capability. I would help our community think through ‘who all needs to be at the table’ as we’re planning for and dealing with a crisis.

Notes from a Survivor of the Andean Aircrash

Pedro Algorta is one of the 16 survivors of the 1972 Uruguayan flight that crashed in the Andes with 45 people on board. The story of the survivors -- who held out for more than two months on the snowy mountains without food, water, or medical supplies -- is chronicled in both book and film (see Alive). Pedro, on reading the Stepping into the Void report, found the leadership lessons we drew from Katrina to parallel what they experienced in the Andean disaster. He writes about the connections in two posts on his blog Survivor Walk excerpted below:

“I just read a “White Paper” from the Center for Creative Leadership addressing the type of leadership that emerges in a crisis situation like the one produced by the hurricane Katrina. And it is amazing how close their findings are to the leadership situations we experienced during the days we spent in the Andes.

… We were peers, we didn’t know what to do, we were not prepared for such an ordeal, we were let by ourselves and we had just to figure out how to survive and to get out of the mountains. And I don’t want to imply that some of us didn´t play a more significant role than others in the Andes, but everyone contributed according to its possibilities, and we all mattered. Even those who were ill or injured played a significant role; just taking care of themselves was important for the group.

… Our survival on the Andes is a case of “Collective Leadership”. There was no one person that accomplished all the leadership tasks and we didn’t have “a Leader”. On the contrary, we were a group of peers figuring out how to get out from the mountains, and everyone contributed according to his capabilities at that time. In some cases, one of us would “step into the void” and make significant contributions; sometimes it was participating in a discussion and offering a new point of view, or giving an inspiring insight, or doing some generous or heroic act, or making an insuperable funny remark or improving the way we did things in order to save energies or provide relief to the injured and ill. The leadership tasks were performed in a collective way.

… As the Katrina analyst said, in crisis situations, systems collapse and there is no one individual person or organization that can cope with the enormous amount of work that performing the leadership task entails. In crisis situations, collective leadership does emerge, and we are clearly an example of it.”

Pedro's blog offers a set of lessons from his workshops that touch on the essence of crisis leadership:

• "We were ordinary people. Anyone, under similar circumstances would have done the same, and eventually survived. And once you have overcome your mountain, you have another one to climb. Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary objectives.


• We couldn’t have survived individually. Survival was team work, which needed each one of us to be OK. You need to work for the team and for you.


• There were no absolute leaders. Different leaders emerged according to different circumstances. You have to find your authentic leadership style. Not all leaders are alike. One thing is to be a hero, another is to lead."

The commonalities in what we learned from these two very different disasters – the massive and very public Katrina disaster involving hundreds of thousands of people in a multi-state region and the ordeal of small band of airplane survivors trapped on an isolated mountain -- is striking. Weaving together the hard lessons from these distinct tragedies provides a deeper understanding into crisis leadership. Our thanks to Pedro for bringing these connections to light.

Preventing School Tragedies Begins with Prepared Staff and Students

On a recent NPR’s Bryant Park Project show school safety consultant Ken Trump spoke about the critical role front line school personnel play in the preparing for and preventing possible catastrophes such as the Virginia Tech shooting last spring. Trump said staff members such as teachers, secretaries, bus drivers and custodians are the frontline people who can make a difference between life and death when a crisis unfold in a school.

The Crisis Leadership Forum spotlighted the significant role emergent leaders play in a disaster situations, when leadership systems and structures fail: “At the (Crisis Leadership) forum, we heard a lot of stories about people taking initiative and enacting leadership without authority. Formal constructs had been dismantled. Authority structures, infrastructure had gone away. Regular people who depended on those things found themselves without access to that, but leadership still had to happen,” said CCL Senior Fellow and forum participant Ellen Van Velsor, PhD.

Because incidents such as the Virginia Tech shooting unfold in a matter of minutes, staff members need to be prepared to operate well beyond the bounds of their official titles or roles. A staff and student body that is ready to lead can prevent possible catastrophes and save lives when a crisis occurs.

Leadership Lessons from the 1996 Mt. Everest Tragedy and other Disasters

HBS Working Knowledge, a forum for innovation in business practice, has recently pulled together a collection of archival articles that address key leadership challenges in times of disaster. In Sharpening Your Skills: Disaster! the authors of four case studies present lessons for today’s leaders from important historical events such as 1996 Mt. Everest tragedy and Sir Ernest Shackleton’s trek across Antarctica.

The case studies address questions such as:

• How does disaster change leadership goals?
• What signals should leaders send during a crisis?
• How should organizations learn from failure?
• Can leaders anticipate disaster?

These are important questions. As was reflected in the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina in the Stepping into the Void report, crises, whether isolated on a mountain top or spread over miles of land, requires a response that pushes both individual and collective leadership capacities. Extraordinary circumstances require equally extraordinary responses from both formal and emergent leaders who are willing and able to step into the void when physical and human systems collapse.

Organizing chaos: Crisis management in the wake of Hurricane Katrina

The organizational challenges faced by the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New Orleans during and after the Hurricane Katrina crisis are chronicled and discussed in the recently published abstract, Organizing chaos: Crisis management in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In this case study authors Tracey Rizzuto and Laura Maloney provide practical and theoretical suggestions for how organizations and organizational psychologists can learn from the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe.

In the abstract the authors provide five important learning to help organizations prepare for future crises:

1. Plan beyond organizational boundaries. Part of an organization’s response plan needs to take into account the impact outside influences will have on implementing the plan. “Proactive planning should strive for maximal self-sufficiency while limiting dependence on external entities for vital services.”


2. Develop and exercise crisis contingencies. When forming internal crisis management teams it is important to establish a structure where the labor is divided and responsibilities are aligned with the daily operational structure. Plans should be exercised and evaluated periodically to stimulate feedback and improve learning.


3. Embed leadership throughout the organization. Embracing a concept of shared leadership rather than top-down leadership may be more beneficial in a crisis. “Reliance on a formal leader for direction, motivation, and action could slow an organization’s ability to respond.”


4. Invest in employee-employer commitment. Trust is a key component in facilitating communication, collaboration and decision making. “Building and strengthening relational bonds among employees can enhance communication during times of change and can foster commitment and social support that makes employees more resilient to crisis.”


5. Build a culture that can readily adapt to change. Developing an internal culture that embraces change as an opportunity rather than a threat will enhance the employees’ ability to remain flexible and respond effectively in times of crises.

Many of these lessons relate closely to what we learned from the Crisis Leadership forum. Near the conclusion of the forum, participants attempted to distill the cascade of conversations into a series of key insights about crisis leadership. The following five lessons topped the list:

1. Forge relationships.
2. Develop flexibility.
3. Encourage courage.
4. Empower people at the grassroots.
5. Engender inclusive leadership.

The abstract, published in the February edition of Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, can be purchased through the American Psychological Association.

Before a Clear and Present Danger

The catchphrase “clear and present danger” is a call to arms; a rallying cry that says action is needed now. While quickly reacting to a “clear and present danger” is essential, a truer challenge is to see the danger before it becomes clear or present. Because when a crisis is clearly so it may be too late to do much to avert the danger, only to respond as best possible.

At a presentation at the Organizational Science Winter Conference in February, 2008, Lt. Col. Sean Hannah of West Point offered that in preparing for extreme events the US military looks for strong and weak signals. While the former may be thought of those that are clear, present, or imminent, spotting meaningful weak signals can best help us avert a crisis.

Monitoring weak signals, interpreting them, and building scenarios to envision and prepare for what we’d do in various contingencies is a complex art. On the March 30, 2008 edition of Meet the Press, General Michael Hayden, CIA Director, explained why the intelligence community misread the signals from Iraq and how they’re working to do better.

MR. RUSSERT: You were not at the CIA on September 11th, 2001 and the successive months after that. You were at the National Security Agency. But looking back at what the American people were told about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, was there a colossal intelligence failure?

GEN. HAYDEN: Yeah, we got it wrong. All right? And although I wasn't at the CIA, I was in the room when that National Intelligence Estimate was approved by the community--it wasn't just a CIA document--and frankly, Tim, I voted yes. It was my belief that what we were saying in that document was correct.

MR. RUSSERT: Why did you get it wrong?

GEN. HAYDEN: Lots of reasons. This, this has certainly been gone over by whole generation of American intelligence officers. There are a couple of narratives. I can suggest a few to you right now. Number one, maybe momentum in terms of what we knew about Iraq, what we had learned about Iraq. And even though our more recent reporting had been very thin, we still kind of carried the old conclusions forward without, frankly, holding them up enough to the light in order to see whether or not they were still valid. I, I'll tell you this. I've seen since then, I've seen estimates that we've had with high confidence turn to medium confidence. And I'd say to our... "Why is that now medium confidence? Nothing's changed." And, and the answer is, "Yes, but the information on which it has been based has aged off, and therefore we're reducing our confidence level." So we've gone to school on this.

There is much to be learned from the work of intelligence communities, the field of strategic thinking, the approaches of breakthrough innovation, and to those who manage diplomatic relations. The latter – the focus on relationship building – is key because insights must be coupled with the capability to act collectively in uncertainty. And that may be every bit a challenge as reading the signs itself.

What Defines a Crisis?

There is a rising concern among some Swaziland government officials that a culture of dependency is contributing to the perennial food shortage in their country. Even with much of the nation requiring food, there is concern that the country’s leaders do not view the problem as a crisis.

What defines a crisis? We tend to think of a crisis as an extreme event or a critical incident yet crises don't often emerge overnight nor fade away quickly. The seeds of a crisis can germinate for a long time -- unseen or ignored -- to explode sharply into our consciousness, and then quickly vanish from our attention. Too often, the lag in the "official" recognition of a crisis is followed by far too little time spent in response ... even as the victims endure years of difficult recovery.

At the CCL Crisis Leadership Forum in March 2007, we heard that crises tend to become chronic. Kyle Waters, senior vice president of Branch Banking at Capital One observed that one of the difficulties is that things become far less clear-cut in the messy wake of a crisis: “In a crisis, the goal or vision is mostly easily identified. But in recovery, the goals and interest get blurred.”

A leadership challenge for us is to be able to better make sense of the subtle factors that create a crisis and to enhance our capability to work through the complexity that follows. Crisis needs a new definition and a new understanding.

New Book Offers Crisis Management Tips

How managers fare during and after a high-level crisis is impacted by how well have planned for the crisis. Those who have an executable action plan in place are the ones who can react quickly, manage rumors, and respond to victims and stakeholders sincerely and adequately while keeping their organization afloat, according to crisis management expert Laurence Barton.

In his new book, Crisis Leadership Now, Barton examines:

• The characteristics that define a true crisis
• Proven strategies to help you understand and respond to early warning signals
• Ways to mitigate threatening situations
• How to effectively communicate your decisions in a timely manner to employees, shareholders, customers, and other constituencies

In the Crisis Leadership Forum Report, Alan McCurry, an executive with the American Red Cross, echoes the importance of planning for a crisis. His experiences as a commander on a Navy submarine helped him understand the interplay between established plans and revising in the face of reality.

“We trained a lot, and we trained primarily so that we could ensure that the routine became automatic,” said McCurry. “I knew every time the general alarm went off, the ventilation was shut down, that the watertight doors were shut, that the automatic breathing systems were broken out so that I, as the captain or the leader of the disaster, now could focus on what’s different in the event.”

According to McCurry, having a practiced and executable plan in place for potential crises frees leaders up during a crisis to react and respond to the unanticipated events that are present in all crisis situations. “If we can get to the point that people really do think ahead about what is going to happen—the planning—then the leaders can focus on what’s unusual or different.”

Forgiveness in the Wake of a Crisis

In an essay on the civil conflict in Kenya, Ann Njeri writes about the need to forgive to heal the wounds:

"Can we, the ordinary citizens and the majority in Kenya, break these chains of hatred and animosity which have been passed to us from generation to generation? Can we forgive those who have hurt us instead of seeking revenge? Can we apologize to one another for being perpetrators of hatred and turning against each other?

Forgiveness remains a crucial thing for Kenya and other countries swimming in hatred. Forgiveness is so radical! It dissolves alienation, brings reconciliation, restoration and renewal. It does not change the past but it does enlarge the future. Its difficult, its challenging but its worth going for it."

The Crisis Leadership Forum report indicates that enacting forgiveness is critical in repairing the damage caused by crisis. In the Forum, Tom Tucker stated with regard to Hurricane Katrina: "I sincerely hope we have a forgiveness authority. . . . It’s going to be very interesting if the right people that did the right things are forgiven. And if they’re not, you’re going to lose a layer of leadership.”

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The need to recognize wrongs and enact forgiveness is a difficult chasm that can and must be bridged. One path forward is the Truth and Reconciliation model pioneered in South Africa. It is a way of healing we need much more in our world and represents the kind of courageous leadership that bridges but doesn't paper over differences.

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In a blog post on the re-emergence of social-identity conflict in our world, Chris Ernst writes of the role of leadership in bringing people together:

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"The implication for leadership is this – as ancient identities work to pull groups apart, the role of leadership will increasingly be to create the context and space for these groups to come together. When group boundaries are successfully bridged, pent-up breakthroughs and innovations are unleashed. This is both the challenge and the opportunity for boundary spanning leadership."

The Weakest Link in a Crisis

General Honore is retiring from the Army and moving to Emory University to build a disaster-relief curriculum. Gen. Honore, in a Christian Science Monitor interview, states that the greatest and largely unlearned lesson of Katrina is that civic response remains the weakest link. He hopes to restore a "culture of preparedness" to America not unlike that which existed during the days of the Cold War.

Gen. Honore's focus on enhancing civilian capabilities is in line with the need expressed at the Crisis Leadership Forum. In essence, we need to broaden our perspective on who is responsible for leadership in a crisis. Crises like Katrina erode the effectiveness of centralized leadership and drive the burden of leadership to the grassroots. How many of us are ready to step into the void?

Restoring Community

One of the issues that the Crisis Leadership Forum raised was the notion that crises are often chronic -- i.e., they last for a long, long time. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the long recovery is far from over especially for those hardest hit.

An NPR story "Storm Survivors Face Hard Choices in New Orleans" reports that only 40 percent of the residents of St. Bernard's Parish have returned home. What's hardest to rebuild are the communities that have vanished says Angele Givens in the NPR piece:

"Let me tell you what I did lose," she says. "My neighbors. My church. My kids' school. My social network. My friends. Today, your friends are all here. Tomorrow, they're in Conneticut and they're never coming back."

The Community Center of St. Bernard created by Forum participant Iray Nabatoff helps those returning home "gather to reconnect" as they rebuild their lives, businesses and neighborhoods. This work of restoring community and spirit after a crisis may be the most essential rebuilding work of all.

Taking a Chance on Crisis

In Progressive Leadership In Times of Crisis Robert J. Fazio and Jason M. Briggs find that many organizations choose to leave crisis preparedness to chance. The stats they cite are compelling:

- An organization will face a crisis every 4-5 yrs.
- A CEO can expect to manage at least one crisis in his/her tenure.
- 81% of CEOs say their companies are vulnerable to serious business disruption due to a crisis.
- Many firms have not fully tested their crisis management plans that do exist.

Why then are we not better prepared? Fazio and Briggs indicate a sense of delusion pervades: 97% of Fortune 500 CEOs are confident that they would perform well if a crisis occurred.

Crises Top the News in 2007

Six of the top ten news stories of 2007 in TIME Magazine's year-end recap were crises. Three were political: Pakistan, Burma, and Iraq; one was economic: the subprime mortgage crisis; one was corporate: the Chinese product recalls; and one was the shootings at Virginia Tech.

In CNN's reader poll, the top 8 newsmakers were crises, with the Minnesota bridge collapse, California fires, and Iran also on the list.

Meaning and Motivation in Disaster Preparedness and Relief

Carol Pearson presented this research at the International Leadership Association gathering in Vancouver. She was kind enough to share her study here.

Meaning and Motivation in Disaster Preparedness and Relief:
Insights from Organizational and Team Culture Indicator™ Results for SELA Red Cross Post-Katrina Organizational Recovery

By Carol S. Pearson, Ph.D.[1]
Director of the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, University of Maryland

The important Center for Creative Leadership study of crisis leadership, Stepping Into the Void, outlines critical questions for our understanding of the dynamics of leadership during crises of mega-proportions, such as with Hurricane Katrina. The following brief article augments that study by exploring organizational cultures and their resilience as they recover or prepare for such unforeseen disasters.

The Organizational and Team Culture Indicator™ (OTCI) was administered to the Southeast Louisiana Red Cross chapter (SELA) as part of a post-Katrina intervention to rebuild chapter resilience. This effort was lead by Dr. John Harrald, Director of The George Washington University Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management, and Laura Olsen, Research Scientist, who coordinated the project. It was supported by funds from the American Red Cross national office.[2] My role was as a consultant on the project, responsible for administering and interpreting the OTCI data and working with the executive team to reestablish the health and strength of SELA’s organizational culture.

Almost everyone understands that organizational culture matters greatly, whether to healthy organizational functioning in good times or to establishing the resiliency to weather difficult ones. However, organizational culture is difficult to decode. Most historical work on culture itemizes discrete behavioral elements such as power distances, acceptable space between people, and the like. Such approaches are valuable, but difficult for most individuals to get their arms around. The Organizational and Team Culture Indicator™ [3]is designed to go deeper to identify the sense of meaning and motivation experienced by the people within the organization. It does so by identifying universal (or archetypal) narratives that groups live out collectively almost as if they were all living in the same movie or play. Because we all know these narratives, which live in all cultures and in all times, virtually anyone can grasp the nature of the culture as a gestalt, not simply as a series of discrete behaviors, and thus know how to behave in it without memorizing lots of individual rules.

The OTCI is a useful tool for helping a group restore a healthy and resilient culture after dysfunction caused by trauma. It does this, in part, by helping people to understand and articulate the best of who they are as well as how they are hurting, and to restoring what has been best about them. It works precisely because it is based on timeless human narratives that have provided meaning to human endeavors in all times and all places—narratives that everyone knows and has access to.

Southeast Louisiana Red Cross Chapter: Post-Katrina Resiliency Project

After a crisis of the magnitude of Katrina and with the slow pace of recovery for New Orleans, how do you reestablish resiliency in a battered but noble organization? How do you care for wounded warriors who give their all to save the lives of strangers—in any disaster relief organization?

Going into the work with SELA, I had not known that after even major disasters of lesser scale, most disaster relief organizations lose much of their staff and volunteers, and many fold or become dysfunctional. Not surprisingly, then, post-Katrina SELA lost a good percentage of its key staff, both paid and volunteer. What was hopeful about SELA is that it quickly hired as many new staff as possible in a city populated by the walking wounded. That it was able to do so was a reflection of leadership—by the CEO, Kay Wilkins, as well as many other capable leaders at all levels.

Meeting the SELA staff who stayed was heart wrenching. Many had lost family members as well as homes. Some lost everything, and many were living in FEMA trailers or camping out in the basements of relatives. Many seemed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress, having flashbacks to the horror of it all—or belatedly feeling the pain of helping strangers while not knowing whether their own family was safe.

What was both touching and inspiring to me was how the staff continued to give selflessly to others while grappling with extreme physical and emotional difficulties themselves. Meanwhile, the organization itself was experiencing huge challenges. The American Red Cross supplemented SELA by funding a Hurricane Recovery Program (HRP) to work alongside the chapter, but its work was hampered by how overwhelmed the government and nonprofit agencies were. HRP staff members were trained to refer clients to other agencies for various purposes, but soon found that even people in desperate circumstances often came up empty-handed, as the agencies either had nothing to give or had huge backlogs. Trying to help their clients in these situations was frustrating and disheartening.

To make things worse, several smaller natural disasters occurred the year after Katrina, and another horrendous hurricane season was predicted. Both SELA and HRP had to hire and train new people quickly, which put an extra strain on all concerned, but particularly those who had just risen into management positions to fill vacancies and newly created jobs. The staff was understandably demoralized and out of juice.

The intervention, as designed by a high-powered consulting team, began with an interview process, identifying the concerns of the SELA and HRP staffs, and administration of the Organizational and Team Culture Indicator™ instrument to participating staff. The concerns raised in the interviews were discussed during a four-day retreat, and groups were formed to address them. At this same retreat, the OTCI results (based on an N-64) were shared and their implications discussed.

Three archetypal stories were identified by the instrument and validated by the retreat participants as providing the meaning and motivation narratives for SELA’s work:
The Everyperson narrative, which spoke to the deep belief held by the staff and volunteers in the importance of respecting the dignity of every person they work with, regardless of their education, income, circumstances, ethnicity, or gender. It also reflected the fact that many of the staff were living in post-Katrina New Orleans in very basic conditions themselves; they had not been spared the devastating experiences their clients endured.

The Hero narrative, whereby they expected to do whatever was necessary—no matter how difficult—to help people during and after disasters, even if those disasters were unprecedented in their severity.

The Caregiver narrative, whereby they simply assumed that they should be compassionate, altruistic, and caring to others, no matter how shattered their own lives might be.

The results, as interpreted by the participants, put in sharp relief a paradoxical outcome of living such idealistic stories together: the staff recognized how their demoralization resulted, in part, from the contrast between the enormity of the devastation in New Orleans and the limited resources available to address the results of this devastation. This meant that no matter how hard they tried, they could not succeed in fulfilling the expectations of even one of these noble narratives.

As might be expected with so much stress and frustration, the staff had begun to spend a good bit of time blaming other agencies, each other, and management for the inability to solve the massive problems facing their clients and themselves. Recognizing the discrepancy between their aspirations and what was really possible began to undercut such divisions and helped people to focus on working together toward realistic goals and to solve the very real problems that were overwhelming their system.

Two other archetypal stories also were important to them. The story that actually scored highest in their profile was the Ruler. The participants determined that this story was not a primary motivator for them, but it reflected their being part of a prestigious, powerful, and bureaucratic organization. The Innocent story defined their organizational learning style (a narrative that—in contrast to the autonomous Explorer and scholarly Sage—assumes that others—in this case the national or local leadership—should be responsible for providing all necessary training).

Understanding these results helped the participants normalize why they felt so demoralized and understand that while they could not help the fact that Katrina happened and the pain its aftermath caused for them and their clients, they could decrease their pain in some ways: supporting one another more so that they would not feel so alone and letting go of feeling inadequate because they could live out Hero/Caregiver/Everyperson only at a human scale, not on the mythic scale by which they judged themselves. As the organizational leadership worked with the data, they recognized that they needed to help the staff develop reasonable, focused, attainable goals and to celebrate the heroic, caring, and egalitarian spirit they demonstrated in doing so.

In addition, the high results on Ruler—which was the Red Cross’s public identity—helped SELA’s leaders understand why desperate people in New Orleans sometimes believed that SELA had secret funds that they were refusing to provide to the relief effort. People were projecting onto them a perception of the Red Cross as an elite and wealthy organization that was rich beyond measure. So the charge was that the Red Cross was simply holding out on them. Recognizing this, SELA’s leaders were able to go out into the community and talk about the Everyperson, Hero, and Caregiver motivations of the organization and to model transparency in what resources were actually available to them, thus quelling as much as possible the negative rumor mill.

SELA’s leaders also were aided by seeing where the organization had scored low. The leadership had emerged from the Katrina experience with great respect and pride at what had been accomplished, but some accompanying concern that while had they showed more creativity in the moment, more might have been accomplished. The OTCI results suggested that great creativity was not to be expected, as the organization as a whole scored low in the more innovative narratives: Creator, Explorer, Magician, Revolutionary.

This is not to say that innovative resourcefulness was completely absent. After all, these are people who ran shelters for evacuees without enough food, water, or medicine, or diapers for incontinent elderly and babies—much less enough toilet paper. They could and did tap into creative solutions in the service of their Hero and Caregiver motivations. What some were grieving was that while they had followed orders and evacuated with others, putting together shelters outside of New Orleans, in retrospect they felt that they lacked the more radical and rule-breaking sense of innovation that might have allowed them to get more help to those who were desperate and trapped in the city. However, such Revolutionary action was acknowledged to be unlikely in an organization whose highest archetype was the Ruler.

Both leadership and the consultation team also learned from observation of the process as well as from the OTCI results that our initial intervention design was not a good cultural fit, as it expected staff to take ownership of identifying solutions to the issues and concerns raised in their interviews. Both the busyness of their schedules and the Innocent expectations that others (management and the consulting team) should remediate those concerns made it necessary to adapt the consultation design to fit their situation and culture. Discussion with leadership also explained why abandoning hierarchy and turning the power over to the people (staff) could not work in disaster relief—a field much like the military. As the CEO put it, when I tell people to leave their own families and evacuate others, I need to know they will do what I say.

Heroes and Caregivers are used to helping others without thought for themselves. Given the level of their pain, however, many staff felt betrayed that the organization was not caring for them the way they all cared for the client groups. Moreover, they felt that management, overwhelmed by their own pain and challenges, was not listening to them when they raised important questions or asked for time to address their own recovery needs.

As a result, a major focus of the project became an initiative in which management practiced empathic active listening with their staffs. In this process, management also demonstrated that they were modeling the ideals of the culture: a Ruler sense of responsibility and authority; the Everyperson’s respect for and attention to each person on the staff; and the Caregiver and Hero commitment to helping those in trouble—in this case, the staff, which was feeling as demoralized as were their clients. As a result of this process, the staff gained familiarity with their individual as well as the organization’s archetypes, creating a shared language for discussing deep motivations and the stories they were living individually and collectively. Most salient for many was understanding the Destroyer archetype, which allowed them to normalize the feelings elicited by unwanted loss and change and recognize how the Destroyer can lead to metamorphosis and renewal.

Out of these exchanges, a shared sense of working together to remediate problems was restored.

Recognizing that strategies for healing must be culture specific and appropriate, the design of the final retreat was influenced greatly by the culture of New Orleans—a city built around the love of music and the art, and one that celebrates life through partying. Creative Leaps—a group of world-class musicians who teach leadership (and other topics) through music and other arts—inspired the group by its musical celebration of SELA’s heroism and by connecting what they had done with the shared human legacy of heroic and noble sacrifice. At this final session, participants shared their love of New Orleans, one another, and the work they do, as well as their appreciation for the healing nature of the work they had done together. Many disclosed that they felt once again like “one Red Cross,” with the confidence that together they could handle the challenges of the next season.

The intervention was so successful that the retreat ended with an authentically celebratory Second-Line Parade, with the staff dancing down the street behind a New Orleans jazz band, looking energized and genuinely happy.

[1] The views and analysis in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect those of the Red Cross or the Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management.isas
[2] Amy Mintz and Gregg Oryon at the Red Cross National Office and SELA CEO Kay Wilkins played major roles in supporting this project.
[3] For more information about the Organizational and Team Culture Indicator™, visit www.capt.org.

The Literature on Crisis Leadership

Donna Dinkin, a public health expert and scholar of crisis preparedness, was a discussant at the Crisis Leadership Forum. A literature review of crisis leadership by Donna is available in the Forum report.

I was negotiating space for a large public health conference which was to be held in New Orleans in the fall of 2005. I was scheduled to fly into New Orleans on August 29, 2005 for a meeting with event planners the following day. This ended up being a remarkable day in the history of our country and in the world of disaster response. Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast that day at 6:10am. Needless to say my flight was cancelled, I relocated my event and I watched, with millions of Americans, a tragedy of epic proportions unfold on our television sets. My brush with what is now known as one of most devastating US natural disasters in recent history is not the reason I attended the Crisis Leadership Forum at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in March 2007. While the effects of this disaster on me highlight the trickling impact such a disaster can have, the reason I was present at this forum has more to do with my hat as scholar of crisis preparedness.

I have studied organizational crisis preparedness in local health departments and have been a contributor to preparedness efforts in both a school setting and in a public health arena for the last 15 years. I am also a member of the Guilford County Medical Reserve Corp, a new volunteer entity preparing itself to assist the local health community respond to any public health emergency. It is with these lenses that I reflect on the proceedings from the Crisis Leadership Forum. Specifically, I would like to share my opinions of the value of this event in light of the current literature on crisis preparedness and crisis leadership and share some resources that may be helpful to those wanting to increase their own skills at leading during a community wide crisis.

While not designed as a research study, the Crisis Leadership Forum hosted at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC supported some of the key points that have been made in the literature about crisis leadership. It also highlighted some areas in need of more study. I believe the discussion supported the need for improved collective action for crisis response and underscored the need for long term emotional support of all people affected by a disaster or crisis. It also highlighted the need for an integration of what is known by different academic and practitioner disciplines to help create a better understanding of how to prevent or respond to crises. Even forum participants from CCL identified links that had not previously been made between their work and the field of crisis leadership. Current work at CCL which could contribute to our current understanding of crisis leadership include the studies around complex challenges, relationships and collective leadership and stress and resiliency.

The forum also produced some questions that have received little attention in the crisis literature. First the discussion at the forum unveiled in more detail the paradoxical nature of crises. The Chinese word for crisis, wei-ji, is often used to highlight one paradox (Nathan 2000, Roux-Dufort 2000). This word is composed of two characters which apart symbolize the concepts of danger and opportunity. While threat and opportunity are often seen as two sides of the same coin, one doesn’t always take advantage of opportunities while they feel threatened. The same is true for other paradoxical aspects of crises. For example, some have difficulty planning for the worst while they are also simultaneously hoping for the best. The forum highlighted many such paradoxes of crisis leadership which deserve additional discussion and research. How does one lead in a crisis when opposing views are equally truthful and right? Research suggests that having a plan of action which outlines what to do and when to do it is helpful in a crisis. Knowing what steps to take can make the difference between life and death. On the other hand, no crisis occurs as planned and crisis leaders must be able to solve problems that no one had ever considered. Not having a plan allows direct responders to make decisions at the time they are needed. Not following a prescribed plan can make the difference between life and death. How to derive wisdom and skill from the paradoxes found in crisis is a need for future study.

The CCL Forum exposed another dimension of the crisis response system that I believe should receive more attention; that is the role of the grassroots community leader. Efforts have been made across the country to build the skills and capacity of governmental agencies and private businesses, particularly those within the medical community, to deal with crises. Other non-profit organizations and faith based institutions have also been identified as potential service providers in times of community crisis. But little is known about the role of the real "first responders"; individuals without formal responder training, who not only take action but become leaders throughout the response and recovery periods. It is because of the chaos and gaps that these people rise and it’s because of these people that gaps and chaos are minimized. Others have written about the need to manage and coordinate the work of unaffiliated volunteers who rush to the location of a disaster ( Fernandez, Barbera and vanDorp). But what has not been thoroughly researched is why and how some of these individuals become leaders in traumatic situations? And, how the formal crisis response system can support and manage these individuals as they take action? Their role as crisis leaders is important to study. Including these leaders into the crisis leadership framework and finding ways to support their work will improve our current response system.

Finally, I believe the CCL Crisis Leadership Forum has the potential of making a significant contribution to both the crisis leadership literature and to the practice of crisis preparedness by sharing the process used for dialogue and conversation at this event. Specifically I believe that the process used over the two day event was a model for both community recovery and systems learning. These are two areas of preparedness that are often neglected. The recovery process, as seen by the struggles of the communities affected by Hurricane Katrina, is long and complex. It goes well beyond the length at which Americans want to think about any one event. Unlike the immediate focus of saving lives after a tragic event, long term recovery has no single focus, nor any quick answers. Research shows that learning from a crisis is also limited. Researchers have suggested that there is a limited time period in which people and organizations will be able to optimize learning from a crisis (Roux-Dufort, Kovoor-Misra and Nathan). Factors which limit learning include lack of trust, need for normalization and fear of self awareness (Roux, 2000). The Crisis Leadership Forum provided a safe and constructive environment for constructive learning from a key event, the Katrina tragedy (Ernst and Martin, 2007). As described in the Forum report, learning and healing occurred through an unconventional conversation which included storytelling, art, and reflection. I believe this process is worth sharing with crisis scholars and community leaders.

In summary, the study of the nature and practice of crisis leadership is limited by the nature of crises. It is further hampered by some aspects of American culture such as a crisis focus and desire for immediate results. The result is a base of academic literature that has significant gaps. Deficiencies include a lack of empirical studies on crisis leadership, a lack of common terminology, a lack of integration of what is known by different disciplines, an incomplete paradigm of leadership which includes only formal individual leaders and a focus on the needs of immediate disaster/crisis response versus long term recovery and systems learning. The Crisis Leadership Form, hosted by the Center for Creative Leadership was a two day dialogue between formal and informal leaders who played a role in the crisis response and recovery efforts in the gulf coast region after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. This discussion supported the need for an integrated model for crisis leadership and highlighted the need for improved long term recovery strategies, particularly as related to emotional health for leaders. It also drew attention to the paradoxical nature of crises and the tensions that arise from these opposing but truthful realities. Finally, the dialogued modeled an effective way for communities to recover and learn from tragic or key events.

I appreciated the opportunity to be part of this discussion and look forward to future discussions on the topic of crisis leadership. For those interested in learning more about my perspective on this issue, I suggest the following readings:

Arjen Boin, Paul 't Hart (2003) Public Leadership in Times of Crisis: Mission Impossible? Public Administration Review 63 (5), 544–553.

Klann, Gene, Crisis Leadership, CCL, 2004.

Linsky, Martin and Heifetz, Ronald, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive During the Dangers of Leading, Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

Marcus, Leonard J., Dorn, Barry C., and Henderson, Joseph M. (2005) "Meta-Leadership and National Emergency Preparedness: Strategies to Build Government Connectivity", Working Papers, Center for Public Leadership.

Mitroff, Ian I. Crisis Leadership: Planning for the Unthinkable, Wiley, 2004

Pauchant, Thierry and Mitroff, Ian, Transforming the Crisis Prone Organization, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. 1992

Leading Before a Crisis

Colonel Tom Kolditz, PhD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point, and the author of In Extremis Leadership, Leading as if Your Life Depended on It. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Management. Col. Kolditz was a participant in the Crisis Leadership Forum and offered these comments in response to the report.

The Center for Creative Leadership’s recent forum on crisis leadership, and the subsequent report, Stepping into the Void, represents our nation’s best effort at composing the dynamics of leaders faced with crisis. Beyond the descriptive value of CCL’s work, the report also points readers to performance imperatives for the next crisis they may face—a valuable tool to help organize leader and leadership development to better prepare people for the crises they will inevitably face. I was humbled and moved by the forum, its participants, its goals, and its achievements.

For those who have some experience in matters of life and death, the report will truly resonate. Its finest quality is that ably reflects the blended knowledge of experts, successful, authentic crisis leaders, and leader developers into a marvelously creative product with an evidentiary basis. I find myself rereading the report, envisioning my next serious challenge, and playing through goals, strategies, and outcomes. As I reflect on the value of our collective effort in the forum, it’s clear that every leader bears some responsibility to prepare for crisis, rather than merely react to the next disaster.

Use the report to prepare now. Crises are assumed to be “over the horizon,” but it is all too easy (and wrong) to think and speak about crisis only in reactive terms. For example, in our report, the phrases “during a crisis” or “in a crisis” are used six, and sixteen times, respectively. By contrast, the phrases “before a crisis” or “prior to a crisis” only occurred once (though the phrase “prior to” was quite common in our biographical sketches). The structure of our language and the contents of the report reveal that assumptions about crisis leadership tend to be reactive, rather than proactive. We all hope that our next crisis remains at least a day away.

Yet there is much evidence that what one accomplishes as a leader BEFORE the crisis makes a tremendous difference. That’s the first step in putting a leader above, rather than inside, a crisis. Don’t allow your own emerging framework for viewing crisis leadership to be limited to actions inside the crisis, in the grip of the disaster. The best among crisis leaders don’t have to change when the crisis occurs. For example, Lieutenant General Russ Honore received national acclaim when he arrived in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina and immediately took charge in a colorful, aggressive fashion—and those who know him recognize his actions as typically characteristic of the native Louisianan. Katrina was simply one more important success in the lifetime of life and death challenges undertaken by the experienced Army leader.

People like Lieutenant General Honore, who lead in circumstances where others believe that the leader actions will influence their physical well-being or survival—defined as in extremis leaders—lead every day with the assumption that at some point, the stakes will be life or death. Police officers, firefighters, military leaders, and extreme sport coaches hold the in extremis orientation habitually. Such an orientation is a window to the positive daily leadership habits that best prepare people to lead in the inevitable crisis.

One does not have to be a public service professional to lead every day as if lives depend on it. One of the best examples of in extremis leadership overcoming adversity is the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) response to the devastation of Katrina. The Gulf Coast disaster is perhaps too often considered an exemplar of failed organizational response. The HCA successfully coalesced its organization, developed a plan, and evacuated patients from Tulane Hospital as the disaster swirled around them.

HCA comprises 170 hospitals, mostly in the Southeast and Southwest United States and in London and Geneva. It manages approximately 5 percent of all hospital care in the United States, including deliveries, surgeries, and transplants. More than $23 billion of revenues flow through it each year. The CEO is Jack D. Bovender, a humble, soft-spoken Nashvillian. He dissected HCA’s recognition and response to Katrina at an October 2006 meeting of leader developers at the Center of Ethical Leadership (COLE Center) at Duke University, where he sits as a member of the board of visitors. Bovender explained that an entity of the size and complexity of HCA was well prepared in terms of planning for hurricanes. Its hospitals had successfully weathered many such storms, sometimes with near-catastrophic damage, but their plans and preparations led to rapid recovery of routine operations. The problem with Katrina (as we all know) was the extensive flooding and attendant lack of communication and transportation infrastructure. The aftermath of Katrina presented Bovender and the leader teams at HCA and at Tulane hospital with, in Bovender’s words, “a whole new paradigm.”

From the leadership perspective, the paradigm shift had to occur throughout HCA, it had to be flexible in order to be effective, and the senior leadership had to make it happen with their own people, with minimal dependency on outsiders. Jack said two things that reflect leadership when lives are on the line: “One of my favorite quotes is from von Moltke [a nineteenth-century Prussian military strategist]: ‘Strategy changes when the first shot is fired.’” Jack’s second comment, which underscores the value of leading daily as if lives depend on it, was, “You can’t change yourself in thirty minutes into something you haven’t been for thirty years.”

Bovender’s comment illustrates the futility of treating crises as isolated incidents, and approaching crisis leadership as a unique “emergency” style instead of an approach to leading on a daily basis. Bovender characterized the unification of the HCA team under the incredibly adverse conditions of Katrina as the result of four elements seen daily in the operations of HCA. Consider how these elements can be built into your own daily operating style:

1. Commitment. The HCA approach during Katrina built on a characteristic value that had been grown in the business over many years: hospitals’ first commitment was to their patients. With that as the guiding value, the right decisions were made at the personal, team, and organizational levels.

2. Empowerment. The HCA response was, in Bovender’s words, “incredibly decentralized and empowered locally.” People understood that they could take action because, he said, it was “easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.” Importantly, this extended to actions or communications that may have exposed HCA to lawsuits, especially when it came to telling the truth about problems with the evacuation. Bovender helped set the tone of truthfulness and candor: “I’d rather lose the lawsuit and come out with people respecting me or the institution.” It’s easy to see why HCA found itself on the moral high ground.

3. Responsibility. Bovender and the rest of the leadership at HCA did not wait for governmental assistance or depend on it beyond what was absolutely necessary. They did coordinate with state government for the use of some helicopters and for the use of the Alexandria and New Orleans airports. They not only marshaled an air fleet of more than twenty-four helicopters from various sources, but they heavily augmented the airlift with ground convoys of ambulances and buses, including armed security, some of it rather hastily composed.

4. Communication. Bovender and the leader team communicated as best they could throughout the operation. Because e-mail remained one of the most reliable means of communication, they used the “HCA Everybody List” on a daily basis to keep everyone tied together, communicating, and informed.

Whether you consider yourself a leader now, or whether you will emerge as a leader in the midst of crisis, there is incredible power in the acknowledgement that our world is volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, and sometimes dangerous. If you can discipline yourself to lead every day with that in mind, you and the people around you will be better prepared for your next critical challenge. And as you step into that void, the value of the CCL forum and this incredible report will be realized.

The Forum in Pictures

Graphic Artist Bruce Flye captured the Crisis Leadership Forum conversations in a series of drawings.

Read Bruce's report on the forum on his blog: http://makingvoicesvisible.blogspot.com/

Continuing the Conversation about Crisis Leadership

When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, it left in its wake untold destruction. One of the casualties was any assurance we may have had about the ability of existing leadership systems and strategies to adequately address the broad and unpredictable array of demands in a catastrophic crisis.

To better understand the leadership dimensions of crisis situations, the Center for Creative Leadership convened a forum with formal and emergent leaders who played a role in Katrina. Using an array of facilitation techniques, we overlaid this conversation between crisis leaders with the perspectives of discussants with expertise in disaster, terrorism, public health, and leadership.

What we found is that when crises such as Katrina overwhelm the capacity of formal systems and structures, new leadership systems take shape and emergent leaders step into the void, playing critical and improvised roles in rescue and rebuilding efforts.

The dialogue at the forum also indicates that leadership in mega-crises requires a systemic response that extends beyond the leadership capabilities of any individual or single organization. The leadership response required pulls in different—and sometimes opposing—directions: planning and improvisation . . . top-down and bottom-up leadership . . . individual leadership and collective capabilities . . . critical short-term crisis response and sustained long-term capabilities.

The individuals and organizations that rose to the challenges brought by Katrina, some of whom are profiled in this report, were the ones who worked collectively to improvise a response as physical and human systems collapsed. A question formed from the discussion is how we can enhance a more inclusive and adaptive leadership capability in more individuals, organizations, and communities so that we may be more effective in the face of future crises.

A few intriguing possibilities emerged from the forum in this regard, including the role of education versus training for crisis preparedness, the importance of shared leadership, and the link between crisis leadership and the field of complexity thinking. The frameworks used in thinking about complex challenges may be quite helpful in thinking about leading in times of crisis. Furthermore, these capabilities needed for complex challenges—such as collective leadership and adaptability—are increasingly integral in helping organizations and communities face ongoing change—from the forces of globalization, competition, and technology—even if this change is not of the intensity and magnitude unleashed by Katrina.

The importance of this work can only be underscored by our connected world today, in which health epidemics, disasters, and terrorist attacks are not abstract ideas but inevitable realities. Our lack of better preparedness and leadership will extract a heavy price, and perhaps one much greater than has been exacted in recent times by 9/11, Katrina, and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

To read the complete report on the Crisis Leadership Forum, please click here.