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By Patrick Mayoh
Whatever the title suggests to you, a crisis is never easy to resolve, actually mishandling one could prove to be fatal to your team and your career as a manager. Recently read through an article from the Wall Street Journal about handling corporate crisis, and although the tips seem to apply only to senior executives, I reckon they could be useful for any manager or team leader.
You will surely go through a crisis, no matter how prepared you are or in spite of all the precautions you take as a manager, you will have to deal with one. Some are quite minor, like all staff turning up late at work or major like a 50% profit loss due to hefty competition. As a manager I think the guidelines provided by the WSJ might well apply to you; this is nothing new by the way, the tips contained here are surely contained in countless management books and journals around the world but this is still worth a read they include:
· Resisting the temptation to resign
· Coping with anxiety and scant sleep
· Building esprit de corps within your team
· Seeking outside help (from your informal network for example)
· Always keeping records of what goes on
Do not resign yet
The circumstances never determine the end of a story. Just because it starts catastrophically never means it is going to finish this way. Even a dive in your market value or the loss of your major customer need not mean you are doomed to fold up as a company. There should always be a solution to ANY type of problem; therefore a crisis might actually be the opportunity you need to show your senior manager your unique problem-solving abilities while on a personal level reveal qualities you were unaware of as a manager or a person. Great leader usually emerge in times of crisis, they (crises) provide the ideal opportunity to actually showcase all what you are worth as a manager.
Anxiety and sleep management
Do not neglect your sleeping time WSJ suggests. Anxiety usually precludes insomnia and a sleep deficiency could have tremendous consequences on your productivity as a manager during a crisis. So it is well worth making sure you actually take time to rest. A study carried out by Harvard[1] Education actually shows the negative effects of sleep including how it (helps) consolidate learning and memory; “Sleep helps the brain commit new information to memory through a process called memory consolidation. In studies, people who’d slept after learning a task did better on tests later.” So the best way to actually find the “waouh” idea or solution is to get some sleep. People usually suggest to “sleep” on problems that could probably be the only way to make things happen.
Esprit de corps is the key
Isolation is suicidal. The last thing to do in a crisis is to hibernate to your own world to try and find solution there. That is surely the reason we have teams. As a manager your team’s unity might be the only difference between success and failure. Isolation is equally contagious and usually breeds suspicion, gossip and fear (you get the picture right?); by bringing your staff together you can actually share the burden and find the solutions you need to make things happen for your team. John Wooden once famously said that “the main ingredient to stardom is the rest of the team”. The danger when solving the crisis is to put too much focus on who get the credit rather than who gets the job done, individual might get the credit but team always get the job done.
Outside-in help
You probably have an informal network of colleagues and alumni, if not friends and family could actually provide the vital equilibrium you need between work and life. Of course you do not want everyone in your network to know about what you are facing. But it is still worthwhile to open to two or more friends that will listen and say one or two kind words to boost your morale. Did someone say there was wisdom in many counsellors[2]?
Records make all the difference
Ethan M. Rasiel and Paul N. Friga in the Mc Kinsey[3] mind actually recommend writing a note at the end of each working day to record anything new you learned in a particular day. The key to crisis management in this sense is to chart the progress while keeping notes of the things you are learning and how they are changing you as a manager. This will serve as future references for yourself but your team as well. Memos, minutes and decision-making processes have to be carefully documented and serve as reminder of what should not happen or what needs to be done in the future.
I will be writing something on perceptual mapping next week, let me know what you think about this one in the meantime.
