How managers can lead teams effectively in a true crisis

Jimmy: keeping a really abundant mind for the opportunity that could come up in crisis because if we haven't got that, then we always see crisis as a threat and that can affect how we deal with and cope with crises when they do come along.
Welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader, the podcast for leaders working in complex, challenging environments to gain insights and ideas which help you increase your impact without burning out and to help you build a high-performance culture in your team. I'm your host, Jimmy Burroughes, and if you're new to The High Performance Leader, make sure you subscribe or follow so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes before you put down your device.
Hello and welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. Now, this week, we're going to be talking about something that seems to be occurring more and more for many leaders, which is crises and how to lead effectively through those crises. And you know, if we look on the global stage, since about 2019, it seems that the pace of global drama has picked up quite dramatically. And so the ability of you to lead through crisis effectively and to know what is and isn't a crisis is absolutely key to your success as a high-performance leader. So, what we'll do today is we'll talk about some of those characteristics. We'll also dig deep into some real-world examples of crisis leadership and what they did well so you can steal their wisdom. And then finally, we'll talk about a little piece of practical down-to-earth insights that you can use that might help.
Now, we talked about the understanding of what is a crisis, and how do we differentiate the the VUCA environment, the volatile, uncertain, and complex, and ambiguous, normal environment that we work in now on a day-to-day basis from the crisis environment where a different type of leadership is required? And one of the frameworks that I really like to use to help portray this is called the Cynefin framework. For those of you who want to Google it, it's C-Y-N-E-F-I-N. It's a Welsh word developed in the 1990s. And essentially, what it does is breaks down situations into four or five, depending on which version you look at, the different quadrants that have different characteristics for describing the environment that you're operating in.
And what we see in VUCA environments is that change is generally occurring steadily, but it is consistent. And so leaders generally have time, in most of the quadrants, for strategic planning and for thinking ahead. Now, those four quadrants that we're talking about are a simple environment, a complicated environment, a complex environment, and a chaotic environment. And depending on the environment that you find yourself in, the different leadership solutions or practical methodologies that you can employ are different depending on the quadrant that you're in. So, really understanding that model—and we'll pop in the show notes a couple of links to the framework and a short video to explain it—but understanding where you're sitting in the Cynefin framework then really helps you tailor your mindset and also the way you approach and solve those problems.
Now, in contrast to that, what I would call VUCA environment is a crisis environment. And you know, it could be allocated to the chaotic segment of the Cynefin framework, but not everything that you deal with on a daily basis that's related to volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity is officially a crisis. Many of those things are just normal complex business. And so understanding clearly, "Is this a crisis or not?" is key. And one of the things that can help you to distinguish the impact of, is this a crisis or not, is the speed with which a crisis emerges, the intensity or the impact on your business of this particular crisis, and the nature of the response required, where maybe you haven't seen this before or maybe it's completely unprecedented and there are no playbooks for this. So, you have to come up with something a little bit new. And so we'll give you some examples of companies that have faced that and how they did it.
The first one of those examples actually is going back in time to the Tylenol crisis that Johnson & Johnson faced 20-something years ago, where there was found to be contamination in one of the drugs that they were releasing called Tylenol, and they immediately responded with a swift identification of the fact that this was a really severe issue. This could had the potential to kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. Tylenol in in America is is an extremely popular equivalent to Nurofen or paracetamol. It's the pain killer of choice. So, millions of people buying this on a daily basis. And the immediate recognition that this had a a real severity was absolutely key.
Equally, they made the choice, the CEO of the business made the choice to communicate extremely quickly and extremely clearly. He did not want to try and hide anything. And often in day-to-day business, you don't need to actively share all of the details of what's going on in your daily business, in your strategy, and your implementations plan. But in a crisis, there is that real need to communicate. And leaders who want to be effective in crisis are expert at communicating externally to the public, to shareholders, to everybody else, but equally internally. So, making sure that their people know what's going on, making sure their people are aligned and making sure they have a really effective plan to follow that's clear and everybody understands it.
And then, decisive action was the third piece that Johnson & Johnson followed. So, they actually made a call to recall all of the product that had been released that had the potential to be contaminated. It cost them millions of dollars, but equally, lawsuits for killing people could have cost millions more. So, they took the short-term hit and what that response did was actually built a lot of trust with the public and with their shareholders and with consumers around the reliability and and integrity of Johnson & Johnson through following that process. They didn't try and suppress it or hide it. They got in front of it and they communicated actively. So, first lesson is to recognize and communicate really really really well.
Another thing that might happen in crisis is a sudden threat to your market share or to your product line. One of the great examples we saw here was when Apple noticed that their flagship product, the iPhone, was just not selling in the numbers that it used to sell. In fact, iPhone sales have consistently dropped since about 2016. And there are many reasons for this, but one of the ways that the organization has responded is to really ramp up the ability to be agile decision-makers and to be flexible and adaptable in their service offerings.
So, instead of just focusing on selling more iPhones, they've really expanded their service business network to offer cloud storage and music solutions, TV offerings, and a variety of other services that now are not quite equal to the iPhone, but are certainly significant in the revenue that they generate for the business. Therefore, staving off that crisis, they got in front of it, staving off that crisis of losing their flagship product and being a one-hit wonder. They differentiated through many different products, but now they're differentiating into services.
Equally, they've involved a lot of their teams in the decision-making to what are the services and products that we should work on next. So, second lesson here is get in front of it, but also to really involve those around you for a discussion. And one of the things we always talk about in JBL is being the inclusive or collaborative leader versus the lone wolf leader who's out there feeling like they have to solve all the problems and come up with all the solutions.
Instead, when there's a crisis, gather your war room, your close team of those people you trust and those people who can have diverse ideas, discuss the crisis, and make your plan together. Your job as the leader is to make the decisions on what happens next and to communicate that effectively, not necessarily to solve all of the issue alone.
Hey there, Jimmy here. I just wanted to drop in on this episode and say an enormous thank you for all of the amazing reviews and testimonials and feedback we're getting about the Ways of Working podcast. Top 10% globally and absolutely thrilled to be there bringing as much value as we can from the Ways of Working community to you, our listeners.
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One of the things we commonly see with leaders as well is the what we call the double-edged sword of crisis leadership. Leading through crisis is like leading through war. It's exciting. It's filled with adrenaline. You can solve things quickly. Often, red tape is removed, and bureaucracy is pushed aside to make quick decisions, and that could be quite attractive if you're trying to work in an agile, fast-paced industry or business.
But equally, there is a cost on your people, on yourself, and certainly on the well-being of an organization if they're continually being led through crisis scenarios. And there's definitely a tendency from some leaders to turn everything into a crisis and to make everything seem like a crisis because they know how to operate in that type of environment. And it doesn't require the strategic capability of the more VUCA environment leadership style. It requires you to be directive and stronger and push more to get decisions quickly and implement them to survive the fight for survival, and less to be extremely collaborative, slow-paced, and engage all the right stakeholders to make sure everything happens in slow time. Equally, the resistance in a crisis tends to be lower because people are just fighting to survive. So, that can feel easier. If I just make it seem like a crisis, then we get our way, and we can move forward. Be careful and be mindful of that.
One of the things that is going to allow you to gather those people around you is building a crisis-ready team. And Amazon do a great job of this. They wargame a lot of scenarios that allow their leaders to work through effectively and quickly knowing each other, knowing their strengths and weaknesses, knowing who to bring in the room when something happens, but also because they're wargaming certain scenarios, they are more prepared and more agile to move quickly through a variety of different scenarios because they've already practiced. It's something we do in the military as well. We train, train, train so we can fight more effectively.
And the example that really came to mind when I was thinking about this episode was Amazon's response and Jeff Bezos's response to the COVID crisis, where suddenly, logistical supply chains were really disrupted. And they practiced for this. They had work-around solutions already in place. And so their crisis response was almost responding in a business continuity fashion versus having to start from a blank sheet of paper.
So, if you have the opportunity, build a really good knowledge of who in is in your team with their strengths and weaknesses, and what they bring, and who you can trust, and focus on building that trust and connection. But also, focus on wargaming and practicing. What are some of the likely scenarios that might come up for us, and what would really hurt us that we haven't thought of? So, some really open-minded thinking, what haven't we even thought of yet that could bite us and how how are we going to start planning for that? And we can look back through history at a number of moments where organizations have either pivoted and been really successful or have been very very stuck in the way they're doing things and have not survived those crises because they didn't have the right people and they didn't have the concepts or the practices laid down.
Part of what you're going to do when you're wargaming is start to cross-functionally train people. You'll start to scenario-plan and you'll put people into new roles because one of the crisis might be you lose some of your people. They maybe they can't get to work, or maybe they're stuck overseas, or they're stuck in another environment, or maybe they don't have access to your systems. So, make sure that you've got people who can work through that crisis doing maybe their job, but also double-hatting or switching seats into another role so they can take over and run with it. And the joy of senior leadership is that often it's about the leading leadership skills, not the technical doing skills. So, making sure that each of your senior leaders has got the ability to rotate and work through different scenarios in different contexts can be really advantageous.
The final real mindset shift I want to lay here for leading through crisis is the opportunity that can come up through crisis. You know, we often see crisis as a bad thing, as something that is a threat to us, as something that could potentially damage our business or destroy our careers. But equally, crisis can create massive opportunity if you're abundant and open-minded to it. And you know, the great example here would be the video platform, Zoom. When Zoom was starting out, they were a meeting platform. They were something that if you couldn't make it to the meeting, you could dial in, or maybe we can save a little bit of money by doing a video call.
When COVID happened, it became one of essentially two or three platforms of choice for the people to communicate, for business to be done. And they recognized the COVID crisis extremely quickly and massively scaled up the features they offered, the functionality, the bandwidth they had, and they really pushed hard on allowing the people who used Zoom to have a great experience.
Now, this was done through extremely resilient leadership. You know, they worked around the clock to meet the demands of the public who were looking around for a platform that would really work. You know, before that, it was really Skype, Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams was kind of available, Google Hangouts was what was seen as more of a fun platform. And Zoom immediately leapt to the head of the pack by taking advantage of this opportunity and turning it into essentially their growth strategy.
They also were extremely innovative in the way they developed those new features and they connected really quickly with users to discover what are the features that are missing, what can we add, how can we support you better. So, that crisis became an opportunity landscape not a a threat landscape and that was fantastic for them. And as we now know, Zoom is still doing extremely well on the open market.
So, if I just summarize then what we've talked about today is, recognizing the difference between a crisis and a non-crisis. Is the situation you're in one of the three Cynefin quadrants that is simple, complex, or complicated? Or are you in that chaos zone where everything is unknown and you are in crisis?
Being sure that you're not creating crisis to make your leadership seem easier and to get things done more quickly. Actually, are you leading effectively in non-crisis environments? Are you able to cope in VUCA and are you able to work with those around you?
Are you building resilient teams? Are you communicating effectively? Have you got an innovative strategy, and are you keeping an open mind to wargaming potential scenarios that you haven't even thought of? So, working on brainstorming what those scenarios might be and coming up with some basic solutions that you can start the ball rolling on practicing what that might look like.
And then finally, keeping a really abundant mind for the opportunity that could come up in crisis because if we haven't got that, then we always see crisis as a threat and that can affect how we deal with and cope with crises when they do come along.
So, I hope that was interesting for you. Definitely, one of the masterminds that we run regularly is Leading Through Crisis and we go into in a lot more detail over a 90-minute period. How does this work? And how can you be thinking differently? But this little short episode is just to share with you some of the ideas and concepts and some of the examples of great company leadership out there where organizations have switched it up, have really changed and pivoted effectively, and have dealt with crisis really effectively. And if you are interested, make sure you go and look up that Cynefin framework video that I mentioned. It is a really great framework to help you think through, "What should my response be in this situation?"
Speak to you soon. Take care. Have a great day.
That's it for this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. If you enjoyed this episode, please drop a review on whichever platform you listened on. We really appreciate it and it helps us to connect with new listeners. Also, if you haven't already, head to jimmyburroughes.com and download a copy of my latest best seller, Beat Burnout, Ignite Performance. It's the leader's playbook for building a high-performance culture and is packed with practical action tips to get you started. Stay tuned for next week's episode of game-changing insights and ideas on The High Performance Leader.