Living in difficult and challenging times?
By Bryan Wilshire
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Recently I was invited to attend a function hosted by the Charities Commission to hear of their work, issues currently prominent in the media and their future steps. In addition they had invited Dr Lester Levy the Director of the NZ Leadership Institute as the guest speaker to talk about leadership in a challenging period of time. Not only did he speak for 30 minutes without pause to refer to notes or make us suffer under the constraints of a PowerPoint presentation what he had to say was thought provoking and insightful.
He spoke about how for the last decade or so we have been riding the crest of a wave as leaders, everything has been going reasonably well – but then anyone can hold the helm and steer the ship in times of calm – can’t we? But what about leading in a storm when we are challenged? What happens to our organizations, where is the leadership?
He asked us to name the global leaders we knew in times of peace – not so easy – and those we knew in times of conflict, disaster – much easier. He spoke of 9/11, Katrina and the Boxing Day Tsunami. |
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He spoke of the current environment – the economic downturn and the root cause – a systems failure in the credit industry. He believed that our plans for coping for such a situation were insufficient, the timeframes too compressed, the picture easily distorted, authority limits lead to a situation of being over managed and under lead. So just how do we respond or do we just wait for things to return to normality?
We need a radical change, we need to move from being anchored to fixed thinking and traditional ways of doing things without the knowledge of why.
Dr Levy suggested four points “good” leaders” to consider:
1. Display a mix of perspiration and aspiration. People in crisis tend to shut down thinking divergently, batten down the hatches and cling to doing things the way they have always been done. Dr Levy suggested these are the very times that we should value aspirational thinking - to challenge the old order and move towards new ways of doing things. He gave as an example the life history of Maree Currie and her Nobel prize winning achievements .
2. Individual and Collective leadership. Dr Levy spoke about leaders acting like leaders, engaging the team in collective leadership, i.e sharing the problem. He spoke of the example of the Apollo 13 catastrophe – “Houston, we have a problem” and the on duty launch director telling his team that failure to solve the problem was not an option. “In times of crisis we have to step beyond our current knowledge, we have to take risks, try things not previously contemplated.” Thus he challenged the Space Centre Mission Control team to develop a solution to solve the problem.
3. Planning and implementation. He spoke of recent disasters, 9-11, Hurricane Katrina and the Sumatra Boxing Day tsunami and the planning required before any actions could be contemplated to firstly deal with the immediate effects of the disaster and finally implement the recovery phase. He spoke of the composition of the teams assigned to tasks, the importance of their abilities to experiment and try new ways of solving problems.
4. Balancing short term against long term. He spoke about the folly of using first thought responses as they tended to make up the group of major issues for the future remedial actions and be more catastrophic than the original issue.
Above all in current times true leaders have to: |
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a) confront reality,
b) remain incredibly calm,
c) be visible – much more than usual – i.e. don’t hide in the bunker,
d) be incredibly clear – what you say and do is worth 9% but how you act as a leader 91%. New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani at the time following 9-11 was his example.
e) make early sacrifices as a leader, use transparency to build confidence, and
f) be careful about what you do not know. |
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It is your choice he said: lead or bury your organisation in times of crisis.
He finished with the challenge, do not think of yourself as managers – rather as explorers and adventurers – don’t follow best practice – see where it has got us – instead develop new practices.
Henry Ford said …If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. |
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