Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis

"An executive team on its own can't find the best solutions. But leadership can generate more leadership deep in the organization."

My comments on the article 'Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis' by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky on page 62ff in the July-August 2009 edition of the Harvard Business Review:

The authors distinguish two distinct phases when it comes to crisis leadership:
In the emergency phase, leadership's task is to "stabilize the situation and buy time."
After that leadership needs to address the structural and systemic causes that led to the crisis in the adaptive phase. This is to prevent a similar crisis to happen again, but also to "build capacity to thrive in a new reality". Obviously we are not necessarily talking about production capacity. But what I like to call 'management capacity' or 'leadership capacity'.

"The danger in the current economic situation is that people in positions of authority will hunker down. They will try to solve the problem with short-term fixes: tightened controls, across-the-board cuts, restructuring plans. [...]. Their primary mode will be drawing on familiar expertise to help their organizations weather the storm."
Senior managers do not realize the fallacies of their decisions. Typically they have successful careers and have built organizations, so what can be wrong with their expertise and decisions? Well, what got you here, won't get you there.

Most companies (and people for that matter) like to go back to their own ways after making it through a crisis. The authors compare it to people going back to smoking and not changing their diet after surviving a heart attack. The crisis is averted and the sense of urgency dissipates. As such, they do not even enter the adaptive phase and are vulnerable to threats in the post-crisis reality. They are also vulnerable to competition that does enter the adaptive phase and becomes better suited to navigate in the new reality.

Hitting the 'Reset' button requires some new leadership practices. Executing today, while adapting what and how things get done tomorrow. The authors' demands to "confront loyalty to legacy practices" and to "distinguish the essential from the expendable" seem like standard change and strategic management practices, but the suggestion to "run numerous experiments" is something a lot of leaders and employees like to avoid because the failed experiments are viewed as, well, 'failures'. The key is obviously to view them as learning experiences, to make the required course corrections, and thus arrive at a better process, product, or competitive position.

To foster this environment of learning the authors call to "depersonalize conflict" and to "create a culture of courageous conversations". This type of leadership sets the groundwork for an environment of trust, spurring leadership, ownership and accountability at different levels of the organization.

Generating this leaderhip is key. "It is an illusion to expect that an executive team on its own will find the best way into the future". Leaders need to start sharing their burden and accepting input from different levels and areas in the organization. This means giving up some authority and (legal or psychological) ownership.

Essentially, the article is not just about crisis leadership, but gives light to general leadership qualities that are already required of leaders and will become ever more important as global competition increases.