A personal account of a business crisis and its aftermath

They say that what you think about often happens to you. Well, after writing the blogs last week, I found myself in a similar crisis situation, where plans that were a long time in development and negotiation were completely uprooted by a new set of fast emerging business imperatives and requirements.

While things have settled a little, the ramifications of the crisis are yet to be understood fully, so it would be unwise for me to give much more detail about the crisis itself. However, I can give you the details of the team that faced the crisis:

• A hand-picked group of 9 people brought in from Europe, SE Asia, and Australia
• Experience and professional backgrounds were all different
• One of the leaders was not present and participated via video conference like a “talking-head in a laptop” (at lunch we would take the laptop into the kitchenette at the office and he would have a break with us – a little surreal really!)
• We didn’t know each other prior to the engagement.

After I had left the scene, I went back to my list of suggestions for crisis management from the last two blogs. It was amazing to read these suggestions and relate them to the behaviours of the people who were present at this team meeting. The following is a personal analysis of the outcome of the crisis:

When the crisis hit us, there was so much that could have gone wrong outside of the actual crisis itself. The differences in culture and religion in the room were diverse, the potential for disagreement and fragmentation was high, misunderstanding based on different language and meanings to words could have created enormous friction and destroyed group cohesion, etc.

You can see how the list of possible problems could have been endless, but the amazing thing was – every member of the team lived up to the actions and behaviours I listed in the previous blog by experience and nature.

I can now report what the aftermath is when these suggestions are enacted by each individual across the group: Intense social cohesion, bonding, and trust

Adversity and crisis has a silver lining when people act with vision and responsibility for each other – even in environments where initial social connections are not strong.

My feelings and respect for the people whom I suffered with during that crisis are strong and I would trust and work with them at another occasion. In fact, I would go out of my way to work with them because rather than being a team of stars, we proved we could be a star team. I feel fortunate to have met them and worked with them and I look forward to a long association with them. These sentiments were shared by the whole group and there is a stronger sense of purpose than if everything went right.

So my key observation about crisis is that when it is well managed, good things happen for those involved, regardless of the outcome. The important point here is that each participant in the crisis I describe all shared a common belief system and a common approach – even though we had never really met and we were separated by culture, professional background, and distance. If we can get positive outcomes out of these complex and potentially adverse circumstances, there is no reason why work teams within organisations can not do the same.

In the end, success or failure is a state of mind, while I do not know what the outcome of my crisis experience is, I can definitely say that I have gained much more through the experience than if things had gone to plan

Even if the project we were engaged to deliver looks like collapsing, I have a feeling we will find a way to get it back on track – because we believe in each other, and we believe the project can still be viable. Through adversity, our goals have become clearer and our intention and commitment stronger.