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あらすじ・解説
On Leading In A CrisisI don’t know how I learned this, or when I learned it exactly but at some point I came to the realization that in every crisis there is actually opportunity. This isn’t so much true of crisis in your personal life. Those are just crisis and you have to keep a level head and get through them. But in the workplace especially, when a crisis arrises it affords you an opportunity. I say that it is an opportunity in the sense that you are given the opportunity to show how you as a professional behave in a crisis situation. You are being given an opportunity to lead and show leadership. It’s not something to jump up and down about in excitement but it’s not something to shy away from either.I guess some people figure this out and then like to manufacture crisis so that they can then resolve them. Kind of like a firefighter who is also an arsonist. This is obviously phony and a waste of everyone’s time so this is not the kind of thing I am talking about. Generally people like this don’t last long in an organization, but if they do well then you’ve got a larger systemic organizational problem that should be addressed.Naturally crisis situations are uncomfortable for everyone and should be avoided at all cost. However they do arise and when they do they provide the backdrop for a display of true leadership. There are a couple of simple guidelines you can use to show leadership and guide your organization through a crisis situation.Remain calm. Don’t panic. Many people will be running around with their hair on fire. I don’t have any hair so I don’t have to worry about this in particular. But in general you know what I mean. Tensions rise, voices rise, tempers flare, fingers start pointing, people turn on each other etc… Don’t give in to this wave of emotions. Stay centered and grounded. There will be plenty of time to figure out what went wrong when the crisis is over (blame, finger pointing, throwing people under the bus) these all fall into that category and should be left to the crisis post-mortem, during the crisis they only serve to deepen the sense of impending doom so they should be avoided at all cost.Ultimately a crisis is just another problem that needs to be solved. There is obviously a sense of urgency around solving this particular problem but as a problem, basic problem solving techniques can be used here as well.Break the problem down. What needs to be done in the short term, medium term and long term to resolve the problem. Short term things are like, “well, the break room is on fire so we should probably put that out” Good idea, where is the fire extinguisher? Let’s do that. You don’t need to break the whole problem down before you start working on the short term items. Identify them up front and start addressing them immediately.Mid term issues are the meat of the problem. Get a team of people together, identify the meat of the problem and assign tasks. Circle back frequently to make sure people are working on their assigned tasks. Communication is super important in this situation. Find a way that you can communicate with the entire team working the problem. If this is email or chat, make sure you have one thread which includes everyone. I’ll cover communication in another podcast but one thing I’ll point out here is that, in a crisis situation, nobody has time to read some long diatribe on the situation. Keep your communication simple, short and sweet. Bulleted lists of tasks and assignments that kind of thing.Long term issues are the things that ensure that the problem and crisis doesn’t happen again. In this you’ll have to figure out the root of the problem that resulted in the crisis to begin with. Identify ways in which you can make changes in the organization or your processes that will help avoid this in the future. Nobody enjoyed the crisis of course so they should all help work on doing the hard work of digging into root cause and figuring out how to avoid a recurrence.Communication:People involved on your team will have a tendency to mix and match items from this breakdown in their communication. This is also not helpful but mostly unavoidable. Just keep everyone on task and remember the breakdown of tasks. When someone starts finger pointing gently remind them that that can be addressed in the post-mortem. When someone starts ranting about some systemic problem that causes this remind them that this fits into the long term issue category and can be addressed once the short and mid term issues are out of the way. Your entire goal here is to lead the organization through the crisis, things like finger pointing and ranting only feed the fire. Remaining calm and centered at all times this will help guide you and your organization to a successful resolution.Post-MortemOnce the crisis is out of the way there should be some sort of post-mortem. To be honest this is my least favorite part of the task. I think it is this way for ...