Erika H. James & Lynn Perry Wooten Discuss New Book, "The Prepared Leader," on Crisis Management

Erica and I have been studying crisis leadership for more than 25 years. And we looked at crisis in as many forms, natural disasters, lawsuits, profit type of crisis. We've looked at smoldering crisis and sudden crisis. And before the pandemic even hit, we had this repository of research articles, case study and tools. And one day I called up Erica and said, we need a new book. We needed to update, we needed to refresh what we have done on crisis leadership and create a roadmap. Six weeks later, the pandemic hits and we decided that right now was the time. Well, as Lynn highlighted, when we had the notion to author a new book, the pandemic was not in anyone's radar screen. And as it started to emerge, it so happened to coincide with the point in time when Lynn and I were both at the final stages of making the decision to join a new institution. And we realized that given our background, our expertise in crisis leadership, given that this pandemic had now come to the United States, we could not take advantage of this opportunity. And although, yes, we were starting new roles in the midst of a pandemic and in the midst of a really major crisis, we realized that we had to speak to this, both from our own personal experiences as leaders, but also as experts and scholars in this field. We had a unique perspective and we felt like we had to take advantage of this moment. So Erica and I have spent our career teaching business school students. And in a typical business class, you're gonna start with the three Ps. You're definitely gonna learn profit maximization. You're gonna talk about how do you strategize around profit, how do you do the accounting? The second P is you spend a lot of time thinking about leadership and HR strategy and how you manage people and people being the most important resource in organizational life. The third P is more recent. You know, you talk about the planet and sustainability and being a good societal citizen and the intersection of business and society. But it's not normal that in a business school class or in exec ed or in your corporate training, you talk about what we call the fourth P, prepared leadership. How do you step up and lead in a crisis? Most research on crisis management has been about communication, but prepared leadership is something different. It's owning that stage, it's sense-making of a crisis, it's learning from it, it's showing up to be your best self, it's being resilient. And so we wanted to redefine and add to the three P so that every leader had a toolbox, a framework for leading in a crisis. I would add that the preparation really is fundamental to all of the other three P's as well. So without preparation, you will not be able to maximize profits. Without preparation, you won't be able to leverage and sustain our planet. Without profits, I'm sorry, without preparation, you won't be able to really effectively lead and manage and support people. So the preparation really is undergirds all aspects of the planet, profit, and people. It's a foundation if you think about it as a building, and it's also a continuous cycle. You're always in preparation mode for the current or next crisis. This is such an important way to understand how to become a prepared leader. So it's understanding what the phases of a crisis are. So the first phase really is signal detection. And this is where a leader starts to pay attention to cues in the environment that let him or her realize or understand that there may be something burgeoning that needs to be paid attention to. And oftentimes what we don't do is pay attention to one-off circumstances. We think, oh, that's not gonna affect us. That's a one-time only. It's not a big deal. It'll be fine. And so we ignore it until it emerges into something that is pretty significant. So signal detection is the first phase. The second phase of leadership during a crisis, or preparation for a crisis, is in fact preparation and planning. So once you've identified ways in which your organization might be vulnerable to problems or issues, then it's what can I put in place in my organization to help mitigate, if not prevent altogether, that thing from happening? The third phase is crisis containment. So inevitably there will be something that occurs that we weren't able to prevent or mitigate. And so the question is how do we move into action mode so that we can contain the crisis? From a healthcare perspective, it's similar to putting the bandaid or the tourniquet on the wound to stop the bleeding. So something has happened, we've got to address it at that moment to keep it from getting worse. We have to contain the crisis. Then the fourth stage is business recovery. And this is something that I think is so critical for leaders to understand because while you are managing and responding to an event, a crisis, the organization still has to run and still has to function, even independent of your being a crisis, your responding to the crisis. So the recovery is how do you keep the organization continuing to advance and working towards its strategic goals while simultaneously responding to a crisis? And then what does it look like for your organization once you've come out of this crisis? So that's really the business recovery stage. And then the final stage is around learning. And this is where I think many leaders were so eager to have the crisis end and be finished with it that we oftentimes miss the opportunity to reflect and learn on what we've just experienced as an organization. And the failure to reflect and learn means we're not really able to capitalize on the experience that we just went through, which then could prevent us from actually seizing the opportunities that can often manifest from a crisis. Well, I think first and foremost, it is the recognition that no one leader can address a crisis on his or her own. And so surrounding yourself by trusted colleagues and experts is a really important factor in helping take the organization effectively through your crisis. Now, one of the things, when we talk about diversity, we generally assume a very narrow definition and we think about sort of race and gender. And while those characteristics are certainly important in responding and problem solving, they're not all of what we're referring to when we describe diversity. Diversity of perspective really matters. And so that might mean that you're seeking advice and counsel and input from people who are not on your leadership team, but who might sit in different areas of the organization, who see firsthand some of the challenges associated with the crisis that you're trying to address. But they might not rise ordinarily to a particular level that you would seek their input for sort of strategic learning, but they might have a window into information that is absolutely critical in the time of crisis. And so we have to recognize that perspective and expertise might come from anywhere in the organization. And we shouldn't just narrow our focus on our senior leadership team, who will add valuable insight, but probably insufficient information. So expanding who we have access to, who we seek information from is a critical part. And that's what we mean when we refer to diversity in times of crisis. I so agree with Erica. And when I'm doing the checklist, there are a couple of things that I consider for diversity in times of crisis. One, I wanna hear the voices I normally don't hear. So I'm gonna seek them out. You also want the provocateurs, people who are gonna disagree with you, people who can see the pros and cons. And then I tend to talk about the ease. I wanna bring everybody in the room who has expertise to help resolve the crisis. I want people who have previous different experiences. I want execution capability, and I want different levels of emotional intelligence. And all of those make that diversity melting pot that you need in the room to resolve a crisis. There's oftentimes a tendency for leaders to defer their decision-making or to abdicate even their decision-making to people who are deemed to be an expert. So for example, depending on the nature of the crisis, if there are legal matters to be considered, it is very tempting for a leader to say, let me ask the general counsel and then just do whatever he or she says. And it's important to gain the perspective of the general counsel for that legal information. As the leader, you have a much more fulsome view of the organization, and the legal perspective is but one perspective that you have to take into consideration. And so we need to make sure that leaders don't assume that a particular expert is going to have everything that's needed in responding to this crisis. So again, opening ourselves up to a variety of sources of input. I'll start. One of my favorite ones is Mary Barr. And since she's been CEO for the last seven years, she has really exemplified prepared leadership. She started her CEO-ship with a product recall. There was a problem. Right away, she communicated. She came up with a solution. She put safety first. She used a diversity of teams. If we go into the pandemic era, she really has done people, profits, and planning and used prepared leadership as a foundation. One of the things that she did is she wanted to be a good corporate citizen during the pandemic. So shifting General Motors plants from making cars to making ventilators and to making masks, an example of giving back to society. She has been very intentional about rethinking even in the midst of the pandemic GM strategy. Initially, she focused a lot on trucks and SUVs, but now her strategic commitment to the world is changing and I need to be strategic and invest in electric cars. So managing the crisis of everything we've seen in this pandemic era, but also really thinking about profitability for the long-term. And then her HR strategy, really thinking about the way of work and how work has changed. How do you run a manufacturing plan and the support staff and administration and flexible work schedules now? So she's my favorite prepared leader. I will add on to that with a different example of a leader. And for me, the moment I realized that the pandemic was something that was going to be an experience that none of us had ever had before was when Adam Silver, who's the commissioner of the National Basketball Association, canceled a basketball game. I remember watching television, the game was on, players were coming onto the court. There was a timeout and there was all this commotion and discussion. And then the referees came out and announced that they were canceling the game. And it seemed really unusual at that moment. And I remember even people in my household were saying, oh, they're overreacting. What on earth could be problematic and et cetera. And then within a matter of days, it seemed like the entire season for the National Basketball Association was canceled. And that's when I realized how significant this crisis was. And that's when I started to pay attention to the decision that Adam Silver made, which I think, and we talk about this in the book, could have fundamentally changed in a positive way to the extent that anything about this pandemic has been positive, but changed the course of how widespread the pandemic was going to be in the early days. Because as you know, in those arenas, you have people very, very close together. They're screaming and yelling. And it was such an environment in which the virus could spread so easily. So to make a really significant decision to cancel the season, which cost billions of dollars, affected players, affected fans, affected the organizations of all of the teams, that was a monumental, risky decision. And yet the way in which he gathered information, solicited input from a variety of sources, going back to our conversation around diversity, all of that played into the decision-making to make what was fundamentally, at the time, a really risky decision. And I so appreciate and respect the fortitude that he had in being able to make that decision, which, again, I think just changed the course of how we experienced and responded to the crisis. So, you know, both leaders we shared, they were courageous. They had quick, agile decision-making, but at the same time, creatively resourceful. And that's a lot to balance, but they did it. For me, it's making a culture of prepared leadership. That it's everybody's constantly going through those five phases, scanning the environment for what's working, what could go wrong. Once we get in crisis mode, stepping up and rolling up their sleeves to help. And thinking about how we not only learn at the end of the crisis, but learn through the crisis. And this requires that at the individual level, we commit to learning, so that we're prepared leaders. That we have team learning, so that when a team comes together, the learning is more than one plus one. And that we're thinking about the system and scanning the environment. So it's learning and everyone, a culture of prepared leadership is what I want people to take away. And I would add to what Lynn said, two things. One is, when you're thinking about managing a crisis and responding to a crisis, it really is about the people. And if you surround yourself with people that you trust, they're the ones who are gonna go through the fire with you. They're the ones who are gonna be there through the thick and thin and help you resolve the challenge that you're experiencing. So I think having trusted counterparts throughout this process is a critical aspect of prepared leadership. And the other thing I would say, which harkens back to Lynn's comments around learning, which is you learn not just for learning sake, but you learn also to do something with that information. And what's possible from crisis is that the opportunities that can be realized because of what you have now learned, because of the new investments that you've made to address the crisis, because of the new skill sets that your people now have because they've gone through these really challenging circumstances. It allows for creative, innovative ideas to emerge if we are intentional about seeking those opportunities. And so I think that's the second thing that I would like readers to take away from the prepared leadership.