Several years ago, I was a senior attorney in the Pentagon responsible for advising top Department of Defense (DoD) officials during an unusually tumultuous event. Our team had been planning the response for several months, and, if we needed to execute the plan, we were ready. A few weeks later, we received the news that our plan would become a reality. That is when it all fell apart and demonstrated for me in real-time that even the best leaders can fall prey to the lesser side of human instinct.
Moments of crisis should be an organization's Le Mans Championship. This is when the organizational "machine" should be running at peak performance. Every part of the Formula 1 racer, every member of the pit crew, every engineer, the manager, the driver – every one and every thing should be working in lock-step, coming together in perfect harmony to observe, orient, decide, and act on the crisis at hand.
Based on my decades of experience in public and private practice, I have come to develop the "4 C's" that every leader must actively foster in themselves and their organization to ensure a winning crisis management and response strategy.
#1: Calm.
Stay calm. Breathe. Don't get frazzled. Where you go, the team will follow. If you lose the edge, so will they. So, take a second. Take a few breaths. Focus.
A couple of quick things to remember with this important step. First, it's not a one-time action. You must repeat this step over and over again throughout the course of the crisis. You may feel perfectly in control one moment only to have that feeling of zen obliterated with the next email or phone call. Don't panic. Remain calm, take a few more breaths, and keep moving forward.
Second, ensure your team does the same. Panic is like a wild fire. Once one person—or one team—begins to spark, the fire will quickly spread. You cannot let this happen. Set the standards and expectations for how the team will function. In other words, create a culture of calm throughout the crisis. Doing so will keep the pistons pumping and the systems synchronized.
#2: Coordinate.
Coordination is the process of aligning people and teams to effectively and efficiently accomplish the mission. It is the coming together of all the parts to form a unified whole. In a crisis, coordination is key. It is also, oftentimes, one of the first things to go. One minute, you're flying down the road. The next, bolts are flying out of the machine. There is no time for this during a crisis.
Coordination requires planning. If your organization is working to build a coordination plan in the middle of a crisis, good luck with that. You are already way behind the power curve. The bolts are already beginning to loosen. Building the plan must take place well before any crisis begins. When all is calm (well...as calm as it gets in an organization), that's the time to bring the team(s) together and get to work.
As a starting point, here are ten essential questions for developing a coordination plan:
- What are our organization's potential crises?
- Where are our vulnerabilities?
- What are the essential teams needed to handle our organization's crisis management and response?
- Who are the members of those teams?
- Who should lead each team?
- What are the clearly defined roles of each team?
- What decisions can each team make, and what decisions need to be elevated to higher echelons?
- Who is the ultimate decision-maker?
- How do the teams interrelate and work together to harmonize the organization's crisis management and response?
- Who is responsible for harmonizing the team and managing the organization's process?
An equally important part of the planning process is testing the plan once it's in place. Things may look great on paper but utterly fail in execution. The last thing you want during a crisis is a "Who's on First" moment within your organization. The only way to avoid this is to engage in realistic scenarios that allow you to test the plan, expose weaknesses, and make corrections where needed.
It could be a tabletop exercise with a few key leaders, a day-long team leader event, or a full-scale organizational game play. Any of these offer valuable insights for how to improve your organization's plan. To maximize readiness and response, I recommend conducting some form of all three in successive phases. You are only as strong as your weakest link, and every member of the team plays a valuable role. Each person must fully understand their part in the process. So exercise the plan, frequently.
Finally, it is important to stick with the plan once it is in place. I watched in horror on one occasion as a senior DoD leader held up the physical copy of the organization's response plan and, quite literally, threw it in the trash during the first moments of a crisis. They clearly forgot #1, and everything went downhill from there. Plans are created for a reason. Stick to them. Of course, you may need to make adjustments along the way, but don't just throw it all away. You planned. You're ready. Now it's go-time.
#3: Communicate.
Team communication is critical to crisis management and response. It ensures all individuals are equipped with the information needed to perform their role in the process. Communication may be broken into two components: magnitude and direction. To begin with, consider the magnitude of communication needed during a crisis. Not too little. Not too much. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the communication should be "just right" to accomplish the mission. Too much communication floods the channels and requires greater time and effort from all players to filter out the important from the extraneous. In the alternative, too little information risks decision-making errors as individuals commonly fill information gaps with assumptions that are often incomplete or flat-out wrong.
The direction of communication is also vital. In moments of crisis, people tend to freeze communication and adopt an "I'll just do it myself" mentality. A crisis is not the time for such behavior. This response violates both #1 and #2. Organizational crises require a team, and everyone on the team must remember to keep the information appropriately flowing in all directions. Communication must flow up to key decision-makers, across to other teams, and down to essential team-players. Failing to keep all information channels open and flowing (with the appropriate filters in place) risks uninformed and/or untimely decisions, which will lead to further issues down the road.
Providing firm and clear direction within the coordination plan will help identify appropriate communication channels and guide expected communication flow. Exercising the plan will also greatly increase readiness, as all players will have an opportunity to practice communication management. In magnitude and direction, successfully managing communication within an organizational crisis ensures that the machine stays running in-sync and on-course at all times.
#4: Comedy.
In times of crisis, a little levity goes a long way. I'm not suggesting that you "laugh" your way through a situation (though, on rare occasions, that may be exactly the right approach). Rather, I merely seek to remind us all that having a good sense of humor and allowing in a certain level of comedy during tense moments may be exactly what your team needs to succeed.
Taking a moment to smile or laugh is good for body, mind, and soul. It serves as a much-needed release valve for built-up stress on the body, it resets and refocuses the mind, and it reinforces the reality that we are human, life is a temporary gift, and this moment of crisis and panic shall pass. As a leader, introducing a certain level of comedy helps shed light on the organization's path in moments of darkness. So turn the frown upside-down, stay positive, and find moments to smile and/or laugh together. Doing so will help you and your team clearly see the road ahead and keep driving forward together.
In any race, a crisis may feel like the end of the road. For companies that fail to stay calm, stay coordinated, stay communicating, and allow a certain level of comedy along the way – it may be just that. But it does not have to be. Instilling within your team the Four C's to Crisis Management will help keep your organization on-course and on-pace all the way through the finish line.
If your organization needs a pit boss to help create, exercise, or execute a crisis management and response plan, Dunlap Bennett & Ludwig is here to help get you to victory lane! Aaron Jackson and his experienced crew are standing by at all times, ready to assist.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.