We are continuing from last week. This is part 2 of this topic.
To manage crisis, as soon as you can, take ownership and stop the bleeding. Get to work to minimise the destructive effect the crisis has on your operations and services. Assess the damage so far and get the facts, ask questions, don’t just assume. In other words, do a diagnostic, ask questions of the right people so you can separate the clutter and fiction from reality.
In this situation Covid19 crisis, in particular it has been clear that there is so much garbage especially in the social media, that we have to be careful that we are getting the real and right information.
With a good grasp of the relevant facts, you are now in an excellent position to dispel rumours. You then communicate the next steps. There is no time for emotion or excuses.
Begin to set expectations and responsibilities within your team, regarding the initial tasks. The goal now is to get the team focused on stabilising the situation. Make sure to solicit ideas from your team to help you set realistic deadlines for the completion of these initial thoughts.
Murphy’s Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will it. The truth is that in a crisis situation, Murphy’s Law needs to be multiplied by X where X could be 10 to 100. Regardless of Murphy’s Law, work hard to keep your plan clear and updated demand quality communication and quick action so that there will be few new surprises.
Be sure to get 100 percent understanding and buy- in from your team concerning the job to be done. The best way to do this is to be seen and heard they must understand that you are involved in the work as their leader. As said before, communicate with them often, please don’t make up any stories.
As you realise mistakes of some of your decisions as you go along, communicate this and make a note so that at the end of the crisis you would know what and what did not work.
Don’t forget to acknowledge the hard work of your team during the crisis. Demonstrate to them that you genuinely appreciate their efforts. Learn and help them learn from the experience so that they’ll be even better prepared next time the most important aspect of a crisis is not the crisis it is how quickly you can rally your team and get them engaged to eliminate confusion and bring back order.
So, I want to ask you some questions what is your process for handling crisis is your team? Are your team aware of this process? Before you have them, put it into action, can you and your team execute flawlessly or will you try to wing it? How often do you review and re-evaluate this plan with your team?
The bottom line is for you to create your plan now, soliciting input from your team to make it work for everyone. then and only then will you have an effective crisis management program in place and a team who will perform as planned.
Coming back to stability having a crisis plan like the above is so comforting to staff they know for sure that in time of crisis in time of change in time of flux there is a plan and nobody will be running around like a headless chicken.
This will clearly make for smart and hard work and indeed an entrepreneurial spirit, believing that they are working for their own good at the end of the day and not just for the organisation.
When this COVID-19 crisis first started many of us did not immediately realise it would lead to the kind of lock down we have seen, this means many had not planned for this kind of crisis before. It would have to be navigating uncharted territory.
When it was looking like this could not be business as usual and to all intents and purposes it was a matter of life and death, in my own organisation I first of all made it clear to my staff that they were more important than the work. However, having said that, I knew they all also had it in the back of their minds that the continuity of the work was also of enormous important. After all that is what at the end of the day will ensure that we, both as individuals and as a firm are fine.
Over the years I have always made my staff know that they were important. The truth is that in a crisis like a fire, you don’t start to carry your machinery or your documents out of the building first. What is most important is that the staff get out alive. We can always get new machinery we can always get new documents or craft new documents but cannot replace a life. Without a shadow of doubt, I hope we can agree that staff are the most important factor of production.
We then agreed what and what we needed to work from home. We put things in place that would make it easier to work from home. What this also did though was that it showed up the people who were indispensable and those who are dispensable. Fortunately, we don’t have machinery that can’t be moved. Our machinery are computers and servers that can be accessed remotely. Our intellectual property is what is most important.
I actually shut the office down before the government asked us to shut down because I realised that the shutdown was eminent and I did not want my stuff trolling through the streets trying to get to the office and possibly catching the virus in the process. Once we were home and we had everything that we needed to work, we came up with a plan of meeting every day to see what we had to do and what we have done. We very quickly saw this did not always work out because of internet connectivity, poor network, poor power supply.
We decided to meet on a need basis ensuring that deadlines were met and to a large extent we are working and doing the things we can from home. Since we outsource staff, there has been no work for some of them, which means we won’t get paid. We are losing some income from there but we believe that what you lose on the straight, you will make at the roundabout. In the mean time we have found many new areas and plan to pursue that vigorously.
I am happy that you are reading this and I’m hoping that your organisation is standing the test of time. Don’t be anxious in time of crisis. Always look for the opportunities and they abound. Have a good weekend.
Stay tuned we are starting our career seminar series online, with the maiden all day seminar on the 23rd of May. The series will be called TTBI, Talks That Break Inertia.
