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.

Leading and managing in crisis – Part 2

I started to list essential conditions for success in disruptive situations. I will continue to elaborate on these conditions in this post:

Further essential conditions that are required to maximise the opportunity for success in wicked and disruptive situations are:

6. Harmonise rather than disenfranchise outsiders

Develop a clear understanding of the larger social implications of the larger organisation. Seek counsel with stakeholders. Give “one view” of the situation to the outside world.

7. Simplify the problem – go back to basics  

Seek the “higher ground” of abstraction. Don’t get caught in the detail. 

8. Be honest, but know the difference between science fact and fiction 

Remember that you are dealing in a situation where you don’t know the outcome. Therefore, be honest, be positive, and show integrity in your intentions. Tell your team the target is to survive and thrive. However, don’t be overly optimistic or pessimistic because these sentiments are based on old rather than new knowledge. 

9. Be authentic, reinforce all you do with clear values 

Match your rhetoric with real action. Make sure your decisions reflect shared values. Accept that you are not perfect and know that some decisions you make are going to lead suffering. When you bring sorrow, be gentle. 

10. Use a soft but firm hand 

Leadership is borne from compassion. At the same time, leadership requires direct communication, which reinforces the need for your team to know when it is time to challenge and when it is time to act with faith of your ability to coordinate the campaign. 

11. Know when you have enough data – don’t wait for perfection 
 
Fear of making a decision leads to a “need for data.” Often the data we seek is impossible to obtain because it lies in the consequences of our decision. 

12. Be courageous, but don’t be fool-hardy 
 
The situation requires new approaches, decisions, actions. All of these components of the problem are fraught with risk. However, you have to make your best decision based on what is in front of you, not by betting on “the odds.” 

13. Don’t waiver – show clear intention and direction 

When you make a decision, put yourself into it, commit. Be open and flexible to change, but maintain the intent of your purpose. Inconsistency leads to fragmentation and confusion. 

14. Let go and open yourself to the field of possibilities

The only way out of disruptive change is to keep an options-based view of the scenario as it arises. As the situation evolves, new options come to light and old options are extinguished. Match these options with your intent and the path may become clearer. The common thread that runs through each of these conditions is: 

How we manage and lead others is based on how we can lead and manage ourselves. 

Self-knowledge and meta-cognition (thinking about our thinking) are essential to good leadership, whether it be in crisis or through daily interaction. The greatest leaders are those who command a deep understanding of themselves and what they must do. These leaders imbue self-discipline and self-control, which is a model of behaviour for their followers. 

I believe we all have these abilities within us, if only we would believe enough in ourselves to release them for the good of the situation. 

Therefore, leadership and management in crisis is about each team member’s ability to lead and manage themselves with integrity and shared intent. 

When these forces coalesce, the likelihood of survival is increased radically through an emergent and overriding sense of group purpose.

In truth, there is always a solution as long as we have the tenacity and wisdom to seek it out. 

Leading and Managing in Crisis

Each day need to learn and apply new knowledge to ever-evolving contexts. Most of the time, this process is incremental, . we build upon our existing assumptions and apply the same thinking to solve problems that arise through business activity. We don’t really notice the moment-by-moment accretion of new experience and understanding; this change is within our comfort zone.

At times this steady rate of change is shattered by disruptive circumstances that create radical disequilibrium.

States of disequilibrium in a system are unsustainable in nature. Therefore something’s gotta give!

These moments occur when our current knowledge and understanding is unable to solve the emergent wicked problems associated with the new environment and we are forced to go outside of what is known to seek a solution.

These moments bring great discomfort to those involved.

These moments are when the greatest human triumphs or failures occur. We either rise to the occasion or we are sent to oblivion.

What strategy can we use to weigh the odds of success in our failure when we are faced with these disruptive circumstances? While every situation is different, I believe there are essential conditions we must create to maximise the likelihood of success:

1. Don’t panic!

Use self-knowledge and control to repress our instinctive urge to either fight or flee from the situation.

2. Slow down, be still, and refocus! Timing is imperative to success.

We often feel we have to respond right away at all levels of a problem. Taking control of our reflex to act without direction can often save us. I have also found that spending a moment to completely clear my mind leads to a more comfortable and less stressed state where I feel more empowered to do what is right.

3. Don’t blame or start finding excuses

Every moment you are shirking responsibility and finding reasons for failure puts you one more step towards your subconscious intent – failure. You must attend to the issue.

4. Keep the team focussed and motivated

Your one greatest asset is your team. You must ensure they stay together and keep focussed. All is lost when we start acting individually (all hands for themselves) rather than as a group.

5. Keep the core team together

Sometimes, the problem is so large that we need to re-engage it with more people, processes, and technology that are brought in from outside. When this situation occurs, ensure that the core-team remains intact, either by literally keeping them together or by giving each original member a leadership/coordination role in each of their areas of specialisation.

Establishing knowledge flows to solve “unexpected” problems

The plot I described in the last post shows how complete loss of meaning can occur in chaotic environments created by completely new and unexpected events. Let’s reinterpret the events as they unfolded:

The first scenario dealt with the common situation where we are personally uncertain of a situation and call for a “life-line” from our trusted colleagues or team to obtain advice built on a pool of talent and experience.

I believe this is a completely valid way of dealing with the problem because regular communication in teams and between knowledgeable colleagues is necessary for continued organisational growth and learning:
Highly experienced staff have the opportunity to influence important outcomes and connect their expertise with others.

1. Managers obtain enhanced opportunities to learn and influence others outside of their direct area of concern. Managers also show their leadership trump card in acknowledging the fact they are not infallible and they value the meaningful contributions of others.
2. Junior staff obtain invaluable experience in working closely with others in the formulation of a response. Junior staff are also provided with positive role models in both the administration of the group towards a solution and the calibre of the senior personnel in facing the problem.
3. “Knowledge flows” occur between participants and if the group is successful, positive outcomes will be enshrined in the hearts and minds of the participants and the organisational culture itself through stories, myths and legends.

Suggestions for action:

The development of informal and formal social networks does not occur “overnight.”  Therefore managers should take the following preparatory steps to enhance their team’s performance in preparation for the unexpected:

• Managers need to provide significant opportunities for their staff to interact and develop the personal skills and trust to interact in such an environment. These opportunities come primarily from on-the-job routines. For example, meetings reflect a “facilitated” rather than “manager -to-direct-report” style, with responsibilities shared, protocols developed, and contributions valued and enacted when purposeful. Therefore, the group trains under the same conditions as it “plays.”

• More advanced mediation and facilitation training or coaching will also improve outcomes. However, it is imperative that training is well selected and the outcomes are discussed, demonstrated, and integrated for the benefit of the group as a whole.

• Managers should be able to develop good relationships with experienced senior staff. These relationships can be created and enhanced through the use of web-based technologies such as social-media (blogs, wikis, discussion boards, recommender systems, personal pages, etc) as a resource.

The routinisation of these social processes create close social ties between the group members. These ties are stronger than most of us think. Social routines positively influence the way that participants construct their reality and meaning. Furthermore, the schema of each participant are overlapping in the sense they can “imagine” different roles and actions of their fellow group members even when they are not present to view or interpret them first hand.

The next post will deal with the next scenario in our sequence, which shows a significant escalation in the “unexpected” problem.

Uncertainty and the unexpected

A clear point made in previous posts has been that we should “expect the unexpected,” in the new order of things. While “expecting the unexpected” may sound like a cliché, there are a host of important leadership and knowledge management issues represented:

• How do we deal with events that we have no prior knowledge or experience of?

I think that most of us would say, “We’d ask someone we thought could provide the basis of a solution based on their experience.” Or, “I’d call my team together and work through the issues to find a solution.”

The implication:

Dealing with the unexpected requires participants to have good informal or formal social networks that can be enacted quickly.

• What if the “wicked” problem we are facing continues to increase in magnitude through events our of your direct control and others your networks fail? At the same time, others from outside of our network are brought in “to provide additional support” because the problem is becoming more dire to the firms’ (and your) continuity.

At this stage, responses would be more difficult to represent. People would have their own approach to the problem and how it should be solved. However, many people would comment that the “incursion” of outside assistance may not improve the situation.

The implication:

As pressure to perform increases, managerial actions that essentially throw resources at the problem is likely to lead to more confusion and sub-optimal outcomes.

• The next stage of the unexpected occurs when the group is frustrated in its attempts to resolve the issue and a sense of panic starts to take hold. Your leadership is threatened and traditional allies seem to be focusing on trivialities or self-preservation. 

The implication:

The group begins to disintegrate when it fails to attend to the unexpected. Disintegration drives fear. Fear drives a wide variety of self-survival behaviours that loop back to create further friction, lost opportunity, and desertion. 

The scenario I have described is extreme to make a point. However, we are often faced by similar “accidents and emergencies” during our careers. Unfortunately, the prognosis for the story is not a happy one because continuing on the current trajectory will lead to further shocks that will lead inevitably to total collapse. 

If only a miracle can redeem the situation, could the likelihood of it occurring have been reduced in the first place? My answer is YES and I will tell you why in my next post.

KM, self-Knowledge, and Transcendence

I have been focussed on personal aspects of organisational behaviour because we need to understand ourselves before we can lead and manage others. Leadership in today’s organisation is about capturing people’s trust and belief, harnessing their professional capability, opening their imagination, and motivating their efforts with passion and enthusiasm for the cause.

To me, this is the essence of knowledge management – developing business environments where all participants can reach their personal potential and attain their goals. Participants is a general term that caters for organisations (the value network), groups (business units, teams, external interest groups, communities of practice), and individuals (shareholder, board member, employee, public).

How we develop this KM environment is a decision based on the particular context. Earlier beliefs surrounding KM centred on the use of repository-style technologies to gather, codify, store, distribute (push and pull), and retire or refresh “knowledge.”  (Actually, I would argue what is “managed” is data or information at best, but that is another post to be written!)

This approach was based on the notion of “quick wins” and “one size fits all”. Quick wins – because we thought we could miraculously trap and share “implicit” or “tacit” knowledge through “explicit” or “externalised” knowledge. The outcome was that we created a mountain of unstructured information (documents, emails, reports), all of which had dubious search-ability and reusability.

“One size fits all” in the sense that we thought we could apply the same principal to all business environments to yield a new organisational “homogeneity” with respect to knowledge. The outcome of this belief was a poorly adopted and scarcely-used, redundant set of expensive repository technologies that were nothing more than “glorified databases.”

You will note the early belief saw people as secondary in the process. Once knowledge is trapped, the technology takes over. Thus the firm’s value model was based on the premise that people were present to improve the technology and therefore, technology was more important than people. This is an “industrial” value model – where the knowledge is held by the technology and the people are seen as functional “necessities” that ensure the technology uses the knowledge efficiently (i.e., via repeatable processes that create mass-market products).

There is no doubt, business in-general has moved on from these primitive and simplistic notions of organisational wealth and value. As individuals, I hope we would strongly deny or support any notion of a “production line” where the technology is valued more than the people in our knowledge-based world.

However, I believe there is an “underworld” of beliefs that are strongly imprinted into our thinking that steer us subconsciously towards this industrial mindset. Let me give an example: We all have a preference for tangibility and we are even more attuned to some sort of quantification of that tangible. Therefore, it is relatively easy to make purchasing decisions which lead to increasing material assets. However, it becomes much harder to justify expenditures that do not have any material asset value.

Therefore, my purpose in focussing on exploring our own personal assumptions and dispositions as individuals, leaders, and managers is to better improve and prepare the “ground” in which next-generation knowledge management is cultivated.

Complexitisation: The greatest threat to personal and organisational change

I have chosen to create this word, ‘Complexitisation’ to illustrate a fundamental set of human activities that create enormous barriers to change at both the individual and organisational levels.

Complexitisation is a rich concept! Here is an example to illustrate its impact:

A new graduate is recruited for a junior management accounting position in a manufacturing firm. From day one, the graduate is barraged with a torrent of new employer expectations, business rules and processes, cultures, human relationships, technologies, and defining situations that shape their understanding of their work environment and themselves.

To survive in this environment, the graduate must attend to many things. Unfortunately, attention is guided primarily by self-concerns about performance. In the end, they want to be part of the team and they want to be held in esteem by their workmates. They remember what brings self-assurance, comfort, strength, authority, and control to theirs and others lives and these experiences compound and aggregate as a representation of themselves – to themselves, and to others around them. The processes they have been through are what I call complexitisation, which is the continuous growth and clustering of experience and meaning around a set of activities, tempered by emotional and social circumstances.

Now, how does complexisation impact on the graduate’s (now senior employee’s) ability to change?

When the senior employee is faced with a challenging, new situation that requires change, they use a complex network of knowing to navigate through the situation. They now judge the situation from multiple perspectives and consider multiple alternatives. They “rationalise the situation, they pre-measure the likely impact and risk on their personal comfort, continued success and self-belief. In effect, the emotional scares of prior victories and failures bubble up. The senior manager, when faced with the overload of the situation goes back to the ingrained mental structures that have served them well in the past – HABIT.

Therefore, complexitisation leads to a looping downward spiral of behaviours. The more the senior employee is confronted with the new situation, the more likely they will provide the same simplistic and habitual response.

Ironically, the senior employee will tend to complexitise the reasoning for their habitual response with superfluous data and information dredged up from a range of different sources. Deep analysis and “information warfare” add unneeded complexity to the decision making process. At the same time, these processes are making the senior employee feel safer and more in-control of the change situation.

I chose the word complexitisation to illustrate this process – you were faced with a new word (probably with a deal of cynicism and discomfort!) As you read through my description, you took your own circumstances into account and tried to match them with my definition and example, and now (perhaps) you are faced with the option to either “discount” or “act.”

If you have decided to “act:”

The first step to reducing the influences of complexitisation is to recognise and re-evaluate our HABITS, which requires you to reflect on whether those habits are really worth holding onto as the truth. The second step is to ask those you work with for their observations on your behaviour. If you are a manager, open up the conversation (gently) with your team. Being a leader is acknowledging your own weaknesses and actively trying to address them in ways that model good personal change behaviours to your direct reports. You will be surprised how they will respond if this process is done with sensitivity and forthrightness.

Riding the bull or fighting the bear – competing in a world of change.

Change is fundamental to our being and therefore we should embrace it.

Change applies equally to the groups and teams we are a part of and the organisation, industry, nation, and global community in general. It is all a matter of scope.

There are four omnipotent laws that guide our lives in business and in general:

The Law of Impermanence:
This law is stated simply as “nothing lasts forever.” Life is flux and a necessary cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death is an inevitable consequence of life itself.

The Law of Uncertainty:
We never know what our fate will be and we can never predict anything with absolute certainty.

The Law of Centricity:
Life is balance – we experience joy as equally as we do suffering. Nature always seeks equilibrium or centeredness.

The Law of Active Participation:
Life learning and adaptation is not passive – we only maintain our currency and vigour through continued active participation in life by effort and activity, which leads to first-hand experience and ultimately wisdom.

I have tried to provide a balanced view of the forces that continually shape our life. While impermanence and uncertainty conjures “negative” sentiments (depending on your perspective of course), Centricity and Active Participation provides hope through external (centricity and natural equilibrium) and self-induced (active participation) transcendence.

These axioms combine to provide a number of significant insights that I would like to share with you:

1. If change is inevitable, we need to learn to deal with change as a fundamental and necessary part of our business environment and our careers.
2. The success of our enterprise is based on our ability to comprehend, predict, and adapt  to an ever-changing global business environment.
3. If our life and our career are transient and we don’t know how long either will last, we must make the most of each opportunity presented to us. Lost opportunity and wasted time detracts from our ability to reach our true personal and business potential.
4. If our managing and leading a modern enterprise is fraught with risk and uncertainty, then break-through innovation is based in accepting (and hoping for) the unexpected.
5. If our business and career strategy is not working, we need to go back to first principles and learn from our mistakes to avoid the systemic mistakes that keep placing us behind where our stakeholders believe we should be.

How does change impact on your business? How do you deal with it? And how do you overcome resistance?

In the next post, I will discuss why we often don’t like to embrace change and how we can improve on this situation – at both a personal and organisational level.

Technology, Truth, Integrity, and Honesty – Keys to success in the new order – Part 3

Finally, I would like to discuss counterfactual thinking for high expectations. At face, high expectations would seem to be a positive driver in the current order. However, high expectation or a desire for excellence is only of real value if the goals are realistic and obtainable.

Question: How do we deal with high expectations?

Answer: Think low expectations!

Often, we exaggerate what we can deliver to make the sale. However, exaggeration leads to heightened expectations that cannot be fulfilled, leading to dissatisfaction. Ironically, even if we deliver on our exaggerated promises, our customer’s expectations were at that same level, leading to marginal satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Unfortunately we know we can’t “under-sell” (develop Low Expectation) because the customer won’t easily see the benefits and probably won’t be motivated to buy. So, what do we do?

The answer is simple – we tell the truth.

The “truth” is more valuable now than any other time in human history. The truth creates trust and loyalty. Most people would prefer to know the truth (good and bad) before entering into any relationship or business transaction. All of us have been marketed up to the eye-balls and are weary of false claims from false prophets. Low expectations are about authentic and honest communication at all times. Furthermore, in long-term relationships, maining realistic expectations is about regular communication.

I see this communication occurring as a matter of business process and at times when “direct interventions” are required. Communication can be provided via information access (i.e., the customer can log-in and access the current state of their transaction or file), through automated responses (e.g., letting customer know their particular order is being fulfilled and it has not been forgotten), or through 1:1 communication (e.g., via email, discussion list, or telephone). Overly high expectations can only be managed with honesty. This may seem like poor market positioning in the short term (against those who do overly exaggerate and can’t deliver). However, in the long-term, your products and services will be valued because you do what you say you can do consistently, nothing more, nothing less.

Knowing and doing

As a business researcher, I often wonder why people know what they should do, but don’t! My challenge to you is simple – are you taking conscious steps to change yourself? Counterfactual thinking is a process of “destructive creation” where we go back to first assumptions and try to see the world in a different way. Managers must model these behaviours in an organisation and processes need to be remodelled to accommodate innovation and change. Furthermore, employees who actively seek to express these values should be encouraged. These sentiments may sound obvious, but many managers in many organisations work actively against fundamental change – even when it is sorely required.

I intend to look at change a little closer in the next couple of posts, with the view of providing you, as managers with insight as to how we can turn the tables on this problem and reap the reward of greater productivity and economy of effort.

Technology, Truth, Integrity, and Honesty – Keys to success in the new order – Part 2

I am currently involved with a group that is developing a B2C portal with Web 2.0 functionality. The lead software engineer in this project is on the road constantly. When I call him, he is in Malaysia, France, London, or Sydney. Sometimes, he is at two of these destinations in one working week. When he gets to those destinations, I get a flurry of email responses and I am just one of the stakeholders. He is often talking to me at 2.00am in his time zone and vice-versa. I often wonder if and when he sleeps, let alone finds time to have “a life.” With this in mind, let’s consider distance compression.

Question: How do we deal with distance compression?

Answer: Think distance decompression!

Business travel is a funny thing – at first it is a “junket”, then it becomes necessary, and often it leads to be habitual. Distance decompression is working against the notion that we are all one flight away from being anywhere we want to be. The first tenet of distance decompression is thinking where we want to go is a long way away. Thus, distance decompression is re-assessing the need to travel, particularly for those of us who travel habitually. Secondly, distance decompression is about considering alternatives to business travel when it is not mandatory. The World Wide Web offers a vast array of rich-media communication tools to replace regular travel. Global companies have been quick to seize on this media and have developed purpose-built facilities to cater for these requirements. However, it is my experience that these facilities are never used to their full potential. In an age where increasing focus is placed on sustainability, we will need to start thinking more about how we can decompress distance and travel less.

Is my friend the software engineer doing the right thing? Are we slaves to our own machine? I think we are to some degree. However, I am not advocating “doing less.” Rather, we all should strive to reach our “potential” and therefore, we need to do more with less. A big step in attaining this goal is by simplifying our approach.

Question: How do we deal with complexity?

Answer: Think simplicity!

A key focus in business decision making is data gathering and analysis. We are constantly encouraged to keep digging deeper to find greater meaning. We are often deceived by an assumption that more data and more analysis will yield better outcomes. These notions become even less plausible in a world where there is virtually limitless information (e.g., Google yields 3,700,000,000 hits on a search for “information”)! Conventional wisdom has driven us to the point where we know more about less (I should know – I’ve got a PhD!) and complexity and paradox abound. Rather than solving the problem, we are paralysed by our analysis. There are two solutions to this problem. The first lies in the use of technology (business intelligence) that assists us to “mine” large amounts of data to discover new associations. The second, which is far more contentious, lies with our need to reconnect with our environment and trust our intuitions. My personal opinion is the battle will be lost and won on the second rather than the first. We know more than we will ever be able to say and this knowledge arises as wisdom and intuition, which is based on very little (if any) information. Therefore, simplicity is about:

• Understanding the level of analysis we need to undertake to solve the problem.
• Seeing things as they are and not over interpreting them.
• “Chunking” complex problems.
• Using advanced technologies that simplify our view.
• Trusting our wisdom and intuition when there is little or no information to guide our decisions.