Transcript
A (0:01)
Why should you listen to the Worklab podcast for Microsoft? Because it delivers actionable insights for business leaders on how to leverage AI to access untapped value, turbocharged decision making and sharpen their competitive edge. That's W O R K L A B no spaces available wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to HBR on leadership case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts, hand selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. Over her career, Simmons University President Lynn Parry Wooten has studied crisis leadership and managing uncertainty. Her most recent book, the Prepared Leader, breaks down successful strategies for navigating crises, whether it's a pandemic or a viral customer complaint. And she taught leaders how to deal with these predicaments during a masterclass at HBR's Future of Business conference in 2023. Here she is.
B (1:04)
I'd like to ground my audience in an opening thought, and this is a quote actually from the end of our book. We are living in times of extraordinary change and uncertainty. Countless risks and crises remain ahead. Some of them are foreseeable, others less so. As leaders, we really have a duty to prepare our organizations and our people for the worst, to weather the storm and to drive positive change in the aftermath. So what does that mean, these countless risks that we're living? We're seeing smoldering crisis, crisis that start small and develop up, and then sudden crisis such as natural divestment. And often we're just unprepared for many things that we're called to lead. So if we think about our leadership journey, we spend most of our time, most of our training, most of our development, learning how to lead when business is as usual. But if there's one thing I think all of us agree, from the last three to five years, we're in a state now where we're no more business as usual. There's a crisis a day, a crisis a moment, a crisis a year or the season. So as I said, we began our research when we were young, Assistant Professor Steve James of the Wharton School and I and we wanted to take a very different approach to how you live in a certain times, how you lead in them, and how you manage crisis. Before our research, most of the research on crisis was about crisis communication. And we wanted to shift and expand that paradigm in three areas. The first question that we wanted to understand is why do some organizations or leaders thrive in extremely difficult or pressurized situations, and why do others flounder? Secondly, what are the aptitudes, capabilities and attitudes and mindsets that make leaders successful or not in crisis situation? And then thirdly, how do crisis unfold over time? And what does that mean in terms of opportunities as well as threats for organizations and their leaders? We have spent more than 25 years looking at hundreds of crises and all different types. Everything from natural disasters to discrimination crisis to the pandemic to Ebola to product effects to case studies on Martha Stewart's to the BP oil spill to airline crisis. Looking at these questions and what I want to share with you are some things that we've learned from this research. So our current premise is that all of us are going to lead in uncertain times. All of us are probably, as we move up the ladders in our organization, going to have to lead and manage a crisis situation. Dean James and I have spent our entire career teaching in business schools. And when you're a business school professor, you usually focus on the three P's so everybody knows, for example, you focus on profit. And so many of us who are leaders, we have profit lines. Even if we're a non profit, we're responsible for the finances. In addition to finances, leadership is about managing people. All of us walking around saying people are our greatest asset. And then in the last decade, and I'm proud to say many leadership classes and MBA education and undergrad business education, we talk about the planet and what it means to be a good citizen. But what I'm challenging you today is to think about, okay, you're managing people, you're managing profits, you're managing planets. But how are you managing being a prepared leader? What do I mean by prepared leadership? In this fourth bottom line, it is the ability to deliver in terms of people, planets and profits. When confronting uncertainty, it's the ability to manage and lead when the unthinkable happens. Let's think about leadership expectations. When things are usual, we sit up in our offices or we maybe brainstorm on zoom. If we're working remote and we know that we're responsible for articulating achieving strategic goals. But in challenging uncertain times, not only do you have to articulate a vision and achieve strategic goals, you also have to sense, make and have perspective taking when you're leading under uncertainty. So that's the first thing we're going to talk about sense making and perspective taking. Leaders love to problem solve. So the next thing is in everyday circumstances you're problem solving. Well, when you're leading in a crisis situation, it's decision making under pressure. Third, we're responsible for managing, motivating and developing our team. But in A crisis situation. In addition to managing, motivating and developing our team, you have to orchestrate your team. You're on the stage, you're the conductor and you have to make sure the team is prepared to be agile, to be creative and to seize opportunities. We know that we live in a society and organizational life where we have to work across internal and external boundaries. But this is elevated in the crisis situation. We have to work in mega communities for collective action and capacity building. And then I'm going to wrap up this masterclass with talking about managing yourself and other functional roles and the importance and uncertain times about managing for resiliency and ensuring you're creating a learning organization. So the five components that I want you to take away for this masterclass sense making and perspective taking. Decision making under pressure, energizing your team for agility and creativity, building and working in mega communities and managing yourself and your team for resiliency. So let's talk about sense making. Many of you may recall in August when Maui caught on wildfire. This is a personal story for Dean James and I, who are like family and sisters because we were actually in in Maui during the wildfires for my son's wedding. If you read the articles about Maui, this was a report that was prepared in 2020 that said that Maui was at risk for wildfires. When you looked at the vegetation, when you looked at the infrastructure, all of these things were predicting that if wildfires hit Maui, it was going to be a dangerous situation. So the first part of leading on uncertainty that I want all of us to take away is the ability to sense make. Then I'm going to do the and and perspective taking. So what does sense making look like? You need people in your organization who are constantly scanning and looking for warning signs, looking in the environment, understanding what problems might be up front, paying attention to the data, asking ourselves sometimes we talk about the PES plus G what's happening politically, what's happening in the economy, what are socioculture trends, how is technology could be a threat, and what's happening in the global world. In addition, it's understanding the implications for each stakeholder. Sense making is not only about scanning the environment, but it's also about saying I have served five different stakeholders and constituent groups. I need to understand if a crisis situation hits, what are the implications. So in my roles, it's students, it's faculty, it's staff, it's alum, it's the greater Bost community. For you, it may be customers, it might be suppliers, it's your workers the next thing about sense making, it's the ability to see all around you. And I'm going to talk about hindsight, insight and foresight in a minute. And sense making is not only about thinking, it's about strategizing actions. What does the data tell me? What does my environment scan tell me? What do I learn from hindsight, insight and foresight so that I can prevent wildfires such as what we saw in Maui.