What does it mean to "never waste a crisis"?

As the world (and particularly the US) began responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, I often heard or read this phrase from leaders of all sectors and stripes: 

"Never waste a crisis." 

On the face of it, this sounds callous and unempathetic, especially in the face of extreme unemployment and personal disruption. An alternative version might be:

"Make sure the outcomes of a crisis include meaningful betterment for [individuals | organizations | society]."

But whichever phrasing you prefer, what does it really mean? And for people in leadership positions, what action does it require?

Let's start with what it really means. In crisis situations, people, for at least some time, put aside day-to-day behaviors and come together to respond to the crisis. UK and US citizens' actions during World War II are often held up as exemplars, from enlisting for the armed services to shoring up manufacturing and embracing rationing at home. Most recently, federal spending packages, community efforts, and businesses enacting temporary pay cuts, to say nothing of all the efforts by healthcare professionals, all serve as examples. Staying at home, maintaining physical distance from others, and wearing masks also count here.

Then there's the outcomes side of the phrase. It's not enough to weather the crisis and return to what was. We should also seek to come out the other side in a better situation than when we entered it. The protests occurring throughout the US and elsewhere speak directly to this by confronting structural inequalities, some of which are exacerbated by COVID-19. News and social media are full of the stories of people taking risks for a chance at meaningful betterment for their society, regardless of how directly those people may benefit.

In general, we pull through crises because of this impulse to help the organizations and communities of which we're a part. But that impulse is not sustainable on its own. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the limits of counting on individuals' self-sacrifice to see us through a prolonged crisis (and possibly making it even worse). In some cases, people show great capacity for helping society -- again, healthcare professionals are doing their work understanding the risks they take. We're also seeing frustration with restrictions like mask-wearing and restaurant availability result in people discarding those temporary norms in the name of "individual freedoms," which take us away from working together.

That's where the second question comes in. People in leadership positions are expected to guide their charges through a crisis at whatever scope or size they have responsibility. This may include:

• Identifying what changes are necessary to make it to the other side of the crisis (in hopefully an improved place)
• Communicating what the situation demands, why changing behaviors is crucial, and how we'll get through it together
• Reinforcing those with tangible changes, personally modeling behaviors so everyone understands the new norms
• Steering culture change by articulating what is (and isn't) acceptable and holding everyone (including themselves) accountable for change

The change in question depends on the situation. It may be as large-scale as combating a pandemic or as specific as breaking down silos in a business. As long as the change is being demanded, it needs to be considered and acted upon.

It's vital that leaders step up because they're the catalysts for the larger organization or community to follow suit. People want to be part of the organizations and communities they choose and look to leadership for inspiration and guidance so they know they're doing what's best for their organization. Through that leadership, we can pull together and make it through this, or any, crisis.

Confronting our fears on empowerment

I've been writing cover letters lately and the word "empower" keeps coming to mind (I'm doing my best to not use the word more than once per letter). Leadership articles have been talking about the need to empower employees seemingly forever, and yet we still struggle to make that a reality. Why?

To be sure, any number of leaders, when asked, will say they empower their employees. At the same time, employees seem to often lack two key aspects of empowerment:

1. Clarity of decision-making rights -- "do I get to decide what to do or do I have to escalate?"
2. Flow of information -- "do I have access to the information I need to make a decision?"

Not so coincidentally, these are also the top two characteristics found in companies that excel in strategy execution. After all, empowered employees should be implementing the corporate strategy and realizing its goals, right?

So why are we as leaders getting in the way of truly empowering our employees? It seems to come down to fear in multiple forms:

1. Fear of failure -- As leaders, our performance is linked to our employees' performance. If they fail, we fail. So we try to avoid failure by stepping in at what we may think are crucial, but infrequent, intervals to "steer the ship" in the right direction.
2. Fear of losing control -- Related to the previous point, our employees are doing most of the work on which we'll be appraised. What if they do that work differently than we might have when we held their jobs?
3. Fear of not being perfect -- When our employees define and do the work, they may not do it as well as we did when we had that job, and the results might make us look bad to our bosses because it's not as buttoned-up as we might have done.

These fears can be palpable and employees pick up on them from our behavior. Even something as innocuous as "I'd like to review your work before you deliver it to [client|boss]" can convey the message that you don't trust the employee to do the job well. More heavy-handed examples include, "Run that decision by me next time before you act," and, "Loop me in whenever something new comes up." All of these can indicate that we as leaders are afraid, or at least unwilling, to empower employees.

And the impact? At first, a team paralyzed by fear we caused and employees who never learn to take initiative or make a decision. More importantly, an organization dependent on its leadership to make all decision, with everything being escalated. When that happens, the organization can move only at the speed and strength of a handful of people rather than at the speed and strength of everyone.

Moving past this doesn't mean letting go of those fears. Rather, we must recognize that they exist, that we have them, and that they need conscious action to work through them. Those actions might include:

• Being open with your team and colleagues about it. Acknowledge you need their help to call you out when your behavior reflects your fears.
• Defining and sticking to new behaviors that change the dynamic. For example, I've struggled with overly wordsmithing documents and communications to the point where my "track changes" are an inside joke. So I started to hold back on "track changes" and focused on using comments to ask questions instead.
• Push your employees to make decisions. Sure, they can come to you; when they do, don't give them the answers! Ask questions that make them work out the best answer for them. By doing it in front of you, you can also assuage your own fears about whether their decision aligns with your thinking. 
• Share information, even if you think it's over-sharing. Yes, information is power, and shouldn't your team be powerful? It also builds trust and confidence, minimizing the risk of sensitive information being inappropriately disclosed.

Over time (usually less than you think), your employees will consistently and confidently make the right call because they learned how to do it and were given the information and space they need for learning. As that solidifies, your team will take care of running things so you can focus on the work only you can do.

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More information: Empowerment in the Workplace: Definition and Best Practices (Smarp)

Resetting, reaffirming

Historically, I've used this blog to work out some of my own understanding and learning about my professional life. For a while, that was all about working toward a cloud-first approach while at an institution that was very much on-premise. Later, it became more about the role of the CIO and leadership issues overall.

I'm now unemployed for the first time in twenty-five years without knowing what my next opportunity will be. In the meantime, I'm doing a lot of reading, from Google's Site Reliability Engineering book to back issues of Harvard Business Review, all to keep my brain engaged in the kinds of work to which I'll eventually return. This space can then be a scratchpad of sorts -- a place for me to synthesize what I'm reading and form an informed perspective for future reference.

If you happen to read this blog, thanks for indulging this approach. Hopefully some conversations emerge from the topics -- I look forward to it.

What’s your orientation?

I’m inordinately proud of my new ability to do pull-ups from a dead hang. It’s taken me over three years of strength training to go from zero to one to two, and currently to three without a break in-between reps. It reminded me of how, maybe eight years ago, I went from zero push-ups to five push-ups after over a year of daily calisthenics.

Why am I spending time thinking about this, much less telling anyone else? It’s because it made me think about intrinsic motivation, especially self-motivation. Many people I know are motivated by fulfilling a landmark achievement — running the Chicago Marathon, hiking up to Machu Picchu, or completing a full Ironman Triathlon. They train for months to get ready for the moment, and then they achieve! But then what? Hopefully they celebrate the accomplishment, but is it then gone? Do they have to find a new mountain to climb? For some, this is incredibly motivating and they thrive on the cycle of train and achieve.

That cycle is also pervasive in the workplace. Think about any large project that you’ve worked on or knew about. Lots of work and stress over a long period of time, building up to a big launch, release, or opening. High fives all around, and then… find a new large project? It strikes me that this approach has a few challenges in a professional context:

1. Our professional worth is tied up in these “Big Bang” achievements, so we might start inventing them just for the rush of doing them. But the organization might not need all those projects.
2. It crowds out tightening up operations, documenting previous work for future reference, and other “dot the ‘i’s, cross the ‘t’s” activities, because nothing, NOTHING is as exciting as the start of a big project.
3. It prioritizes “new” over “better”, even if “better” would have more impact.

The last one has been on my mind the most of late. A friend and former supervisor loaned me Atul Gawande’s book Better several years ago and it really resonated with me professionally and personally. In the book, Gawande describes situations where attempting to solve problems can obscure the opportunity to incrementally improve, making the situation better in a shorter timeframe than the problem can be solved. More recently, I became a fan of Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the co-founders of Basecamp, and their mindset and values on running a business and leading an organization. In particular, Fried wrote about goals (or not having them):

“When you shift from 1st to 2nd, 1st is behind you. Then from 2nd to 3rd, 2nd is behind you. I approach things continuously, not in stops. I just want to keep going — whatever happens along the way is just what happens.”

That’s not to say they don’t identify and pursue improvement — that’s what they’re doing most of the time. They’re simply not looking for the “Big Bang” that will transform the world or their company. Rather, they’re constantly improving their product and their workplace to make many people’s work lives a little better, a little more effective. As DHH puts it, they’re putting a dent in the universe, not trying to own it.

That approach inspires me. I've spent much of the past couple of years in the “messy middle” of a long-term organizational improvement, but it won’t have a launch or even a moment where we say we’re done. Its entire underpinning is a mindset that focuses at least some of our attention on “better” through clarity, transparency, and reflection. And we’ll be able to see the results — not all in one moment, but every few weeks and months as we get better at what we do and how we do it. Those kinds of results, and our recognition of them, gets me up every Monday morning ready to keep moving.