change management process change management plan
How do you keep managers focused, employees engaged, shareholders informed and a business operating during a crisis?
You may not think that you will face a crisis of such major proportions. But consider the recent events. The politicians have been called to account with the expenses scandal. The media along with their relationship with politicians and police are under scrutiny. Banking is under the spotlight and Fat Cat salaries are under the microscope. Where next? Corporations beware.
Crisis and Change Management requires two things from Leadership. Firstly get prepared by putting robust contingency plans and procedures in place. The appetite for rooting out wrong-doing is high. The next logical step will be big business; and there will be some complicity with the media and politicians exposed. Whether it is the increasing frustration with squeezed household budgets, especially with utility companies, those controlling the price of petrol and those wrongs pe rceived to have been inflicted by the banks the public is hungry for justice.
In his book Too Big to Fail by Andrew R. Sorkin describes the events in Wall Street leading up the Credit Crunch. The interesting thing about the book was not one of the banking giants were prepared for the scale of the crisis encompassing the financial industry, instead there was complete panic among the major players in Wall Street as they faced total financial meltdown.
Contrast that to the events in Japan twelve months ago. The contingency plans meant that the Japanese government was able to deal with not one but three major disasters all happening at once (tsunami, earthquake, nuclear disaster).
They were able to deal with an unprecedented disaster and governing and manage the damage caused by the disaster because their planning meant that despite the scale of the crisis they had spare capacity to strategize and develop tactics to cope with the unprecedented sit uations as they were happening.
It's amazing to consider that after the initial quake and with just 10 minutes left to trade, the traders at the Japanese stock market began to sell as they understood that the stock market was about to take a tumble. They were able to do this because the Japanese Government had been planning for the Big One for over a decade and when it came the Japanese Government and people reacted as they were drilled and trained to.
My second and third pieces of advice for leading through Crisis and Change are Do Not React and Take Time. When crisis comes it is very tempting to react the demands of the crisis but being reactive during a crisis is the worse thing that a leader can do. Succumbing to our instincts to fight or flight can lead to a deepening of the crisis or problems further down the line.
Lessons can be learnt from the emergency services. The fire service do not arrive at a burning building and immediately rush in with hoses indiscriminately spraying water at the flames. Instead they take time to assess what is happening and once they are clear of the situation they develop a plan of action that they implement.
Regardless of the nature of the crisis, taking time to assess exactly what is happening and developing a plan of action will be the foundation for calm and control to be restored. However, taking time still needs to be timely, with the leaders taking an appropriate amount of time to consider the size and impact of the crisis and to plan an appropriate response as necessary. Having a contingency plan in place obviously helps speed things up.
Communication is the fourth piece of advice. Controlling the message can be difficult, but it is possible to control the clarity and consistency of your messaging. Whether a leader is responding to enquiries from external agencies or communicating internally, how you communicate is essential to good leadership when it comes to crisis and c hange management.
The final piece of advice is to learn. In the aftermath of a crisis, "the only mistake you can ever make is not learning from your mistakes." The aftermath requires more than an examination of what went wrong but a systemic diagnostic to make the cultural, leadership and organisation changes necessary to help the organisation emerge from the crisis stronger and confident of a future purpose.
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