Managing Through Crisis: After 2 Years of COVID, Leaders Must Double Down

welcome to the latest installment of harvard business schools managing through crisis webinar series i have to say this is a reprisal of sorts because we launched this series almost two years ago in march of 2020 when the global pandemic was just getting started and business leaders were scrambling to understand what the implications were for them and for their organizations and at that time harvard business school faculty were more than willing to share their thoughts on everything from supply chain issues to remote work and of course leadership and today we've asked professor nancy kane who was among those folks to join us again uh to give her thoughts about what's happened in the last couple of years and what leaders need to think about as this moves into sort of unprecedented territory and we're not sure how long this crisis is going to carry on nancy's research focuses on crisis leadership and how leaders and their teams rise to the challenge in high stakes situations she wrote the book forged in crisis the power of courageous leadership and turbulent times which spotlights how five of history's greatest leaders manage crisis and in doing this accomplished extraordinary missions uh nancy it's always a pleasure to have you on i love the way that history is still so highly relevant today and you make it highly relevant in the lessons that you teach and that you talk about and i'm glad that uh that you're back to share your insights two years later with us and what we continue to grapple with as a as a global uh society so thanks for being here it's always a pleasure to be with you brian and this series has been so important and so interesting not only i i hope for viewers and and our alumni and our community but also for the faculty right we've learned a ton in the last two years particularly people like myself or dutch leonard one of the uh professors at the school who's also a professor at the kennedy school and we i mean if you're an interesting crisis leadership it's just been like you know in some ways a kind of terrifying and awe-inspiring smorgasbord long long table right that keeps extending into the future um let me see one thing just before we launch into what i'm sure are going to be some fantastic questions from you you know i wrote the book fortune crisis because i was so struck in my research which i'm a biographer i study individual leaders and these experiences dramatic experiences and and then say what do we learn today from right harvard business school we're interested in learning from the past and one of the things that's really struck me and was the real impetus for fortune crisis was that great leaders are really made largely through experience there's a big nature part to it but nurture and they experience particularly crises when sort of all bets are off on stability and you have to do so much improvisation are these amazing greenhouses for individual leaders to get stronger more creative more adaptive more courageous within themselves and then help the people around them who then help the people around them do exactly the same thing david foster wallace an american writer once said real leaders are individuals who help us break through the boundaries of fear and selfishness and laziness and weakness and get us to do harder better things than we can get ourselves to do on our own and that's what happens in a crisis and that cascading effect for people that are paying attention and self-aware and interested in finding some lemonade in the lemons of turbulence that that opportunity is very very rich and very real and it happens most significantly and most lastingly in a crisis so for all the difficulty and challenge and heartbreak of the pandemic we are in a new phase and we have new opportunities to get even better and stronger and braver and more resilient yeah that's really well put you know one of the things that our dean srikantar has said repeatedly is that he sees covet as the pathway to the future for harvard business school uh and so i think that for leaders who want to find it there is a silver lining here there's opportunity that can arise in this situation um but for those who are watching who might feel a little beleaguered at this point because years later and they're a little worn down and we're all feeling that way a little bit what would you say to some to to a leader who's listening about you know how they should think about this current phase and how they might want to adjust and sort of settle into what seems to be an ongoing thing yeah um well let me just first say that anyone that's watching or listening that feels beleaguered you're not alone i do a lot of coaching and i work not only with business leaders with health care leaders and public safety officials and philanthropists and arts leaders and everyone i've spoken to in the last say three months is exhausted absolutely exhausted so you're not alone um that then in a sense raises an issue of how do we kind of inject more credible or buoyant hope and energy we can come to that a little bit later if you want but but i think that this phase of the pandemic is about pulling on tools that we know work developing some new ones but also being very very attentive to helping first ourselves and then the people that look to us for guidance or you look to you for guidance i'm speaking to leaders i'm a coach not a leader help them adjust to the time frame so the first thing i would say is someone who studies leaders most of whom are in prices of at least four years in duration from abraham lincoln to frederick douglass to rachel carson to the civil rights leaders who i'm now studying and trying to learn from the first thing that these people learn after the initial will it will be quick right everyone assumes it'll be short lincoln assumed it shackleton the explorer whose lifeboat you see reconstruct here on my virtual background thought they'd be out of this fix in a couple of months it took two years etc uh hitler thought world war ii would be over in four months and those trying to topple him like deeper bonhoeffer thought well this isn't going to take so long because we're going to figure out how to do this the war is going to turn quickly the first thing that the leader has to understand is i don't know when it's going to end so that means first lesson resist simplistic answers about the predictability uh and the duration of the crisis resist it embrace the idea own it see let it seep into your pores this is going to take a while um the civil rights leaders martin luther king john lewis they were brilliant at this lincoln shackleton they they all had to first let go of the idea when this quickly when it was quickly apparent that this wasn't going to be over and done by christmas or in four months and say i'm gonna really entertain conjecture and in fact embrace the idea that i don't know how long this is going to last so the first lesson is you don't know what surrender to that or own that and then help your followers own that martin luther king was brilliant at this you know we will do this and then we will do this and we will not right we will not give up until we reach the promised land even if it takes a lifetime because every step we move forward on that path is moving us closer and accomplishing something important within us and around us so that kind of right again acceptance and then be willing willingness to frame the time the time with an open-ended right if you will like view to your people is really important the second piece though of that is you're saying to each person as you do that second lesson we are we are not starting at square one right churchill in 42 was not where he was when he became prime minister and dunkirk looned in the spring of 1940 right so we are and that has to be owned by the leader you're stronger you know more you have many more tools you will have made great distance already owned by the leader and then as i keep saying pass to the followers so we are not starting from square one we know what to do and we've learned a great deal about which tools to pull out in which order third you help people understand that the fact that this is a long-term crisis presents possibilities as it stretches on right all kinds of different possibilities within your organization possibilities for you srikantitar covic is the harvard business school's path to the future right so opportunities for what we're going to do how we're going to do it what we're going to learn and what our mission how we will keep advancing our mission under great duress and the fourth and final thing i would say is you you as a leader and then for your followers you literally take the mission why do we exist and what are we doing here you take the mission and you grab it close to your heart and then you repeat it to your followers at every possible juncture so you know we hear a lot about that investor relations folks are great at this but i'm talking about something a little bit different i'm talking about literally weaving it in to what you're up to day to day and what you're saying and connecting everything to the fact that despite the storms around us right besetting us threatening to topple the mast we are on mission john lewis once said freedom is not a state of being it's a set of actions that you take and that you don't give up taking no matter the obstacles yeah that's what we're talking about it's not so hard to do leaders just have to keep reminding themselves to do it all these things last comment empower not deplete empower the people that are following and that's so important right now yeah those are amazing insights and i think you know one of the things is you look at some of the people that you've studied shackleton you know churchill these these are leaders who were leading in desperate times in life or death situations uh you know so the people that that were listening to them had a lot at stake and i think you know the point of reminding people that this is ours collectively to make happen is critically important how important is authenticity in the leader in these situations because you mentioned early on in our conversation that this can't just be you know we're not going to be happy happy just for the sake of being positive and trying to energize people uh authenticity gets tested here in situations like this are there leaders today that you can point to who you feel like are are doing this well incredibly uh let me let me just call out big call out to jacinda ardern the head of new zealand who i think from the get-go has been a brilliant crisis leader she's young she's she's serious she has managed both sides of the pandemic that is uh she's managed to help the public health and logistical and practical and tool piece of the pandemic for new zealand right which has just by virtue of its geography an easier time of it in the sense that it's it's an island um but they've had a remarkable cove kind of track record and that's do more more to jacinda ardern and her team than it is to their island status she's managed both again the material critical piece of the pandemic and equally important the emotional piece the you know credible hope piece as i like to call it right brutal honesty credible hope is what leaders are communication leaders are communicating to the people and she's been i think exceptionally authentic but let me let me add a critical bracketed piece to what i mean by exceptionally authentic leaders in a crisis and leaders vary in almost any circumstance but particularly in crisis when stakes are as high as they are here and and we're talking about life and death and we're talking about enormous amounts of fear and uncertainty on the part of followers leaders never have the luxury of using their followers as valves so you can be authentic about the difficulties even about at certain moments your emotional state of being or your own uncertainty but you only do that in a very thoughtful and deft you do it because it helps people understand you and believe in you and trust you and relate to you but you can't in a sense have the luxury of saying well i just need to tell you about how miserable i feel right now how uncertain i feel or how confused i feel because then your leadership and what people have been the trust people have invested in you will be what will be damaged and that's some you can't you can't risk damaging that at a difficult time so you have to be thoughtful of that she's been both she's been very good at managing the emotional piece of a crisis for her followers and herself and she's been brilliant at keeping abreast of the latest science and and the politics of trying to apply that science because you can't apply it as stringently in most places as you'd like to i think she gets the high marks i thought angela merkel did a very very good job of managing a complicated political scene internally and in europe and because she's a scientist understanding what we must do to manage coving uh angela merkel at the head of germany and let me mention a couple of other people quickly in the united states jay inslee who's not in the news at all he's the governor of washington state he's not in the news at all um partly because he doesn't have anything he does his job he does it very very well um but but but he he has to me as in terms of governance he and gretchen whitmer who's had shall we say a difficult time in michigan for all kinds of reasons including threats on her life you'll remember our viewers will remember people were indicted for trying to kidnap her um but both of those governors excuse me have managed the complicated politics of mitigating the crisis very very well so all those people i think have been authentic true to mission good communicators and very very good at managing right the life and death um reverberations of this virus yeah i love that you brought politics up because i was going to bring it up anyway you can't disentangle the pandemic from the politics these days i mean it's we're in a very charged political climate in the u.s in particular but we're seeing populism you know surfacing all around the globe for people who are feeling you know not just battered by the pandemic but battered by the political situation i would love if you would talk a little bit about abraham lincoln i know you've written about him and studied him and how he was able to to lead uh in arguably the most divisive time in our country's history uh sure so one of the most important things we can learn from lincoln's leadership which grew and grew and grew he was so much better in 1863 than he was in 1861 so much better in 1865 than in 1863 just kept kind of if you will you know honing those muscles of courage and resilience and steadfastness um i think a couple of things were moving first um never forgot the mission right and the mission changed the mission started off save the union with slavery where it existed and after 1863 in 1863 it's saved the union and re-install reinvigorate the promise that all men are created equal and abolish slavery forever so he never ever laid down if you will the megaphone or got off the soapbox of talking about why we were fighting this incredibly bloody war that's the first thing so the mission was right there all the time secondly lincoln understood and this was important for leaders to come back to it was in the toolbox when you were leading so many of these webinars in two years ago but it's really important he understood how to keep himself strong so he did a lot of personal recovery he didn't you know eat or get drink organic milk or do yoga but he he had lots of different ways from riding horses for exercise to to going to the theater to get take his mind off the the pounding you know nature of his leader of the presidency to understanding that he needed to walk and think and get away from the telegraph and press of cabinet members and senators and make sense of things for himself time for reflection so second lesson you've got to keep yourself strong and the longer this drags out the more you have to in a sense keep making the first thing on your list every day how do i keep myself as strong and vital as possible that's physical intellectual and emotional for some people it's also spiritual so that's a that's a second lesson the third lesson from lincoln is how what what what there are no silver bullets so lincoln pretty quickly figured out this was really helpful that there wasn't one single thing that could be done right if lincoln were president now he would not have only vaccines as the key instrument to win the war against covet he'd be talking about masking he'd be talking about gathering he'd be talking about keeping service businesses alive even while traffic falls off during a surge he understood you've got to fight a war with a lot of different way in a lot of different ways on a lot of different fronts and you have to fight it in a practicable way right he couldn't do early on what he thought he needed to do he didn't have the generals he didn't have the political support so so no silver bull that's really helpful because then it unlocks all these other different things that in combination can move you forward last lesson from lincoln understand that there you have no you can't afford to have really lasting right poisonous enemies so lincoln for example never called the confederate state's rebels he never even used the word confederacy because he thought that legitimated an alternative country within america an alternative government and when peace began to work likely in early 65 he instructs general grant who is then the head general in the union army uh leniency leniency leaning to not unlike mandela in south africa becoming president in 1994. so we have to understand that when we have a very strife you know kind of riven country you actually have to resist that seductive or lord hate people or organizations or forces you regard your enemies because that then gives other people license to hate and fair as civil rights leaders understood very little good comes of lasting hate yeah those are great insights again a couple more questions before we let you know one of the groups that has probably been most beaten down by this thing are the health care workers the people who are providing the services to make us better uh have gotten caught up in all of the the whirlwind of politics and science and other things that are going on i'm wondering if there's some insight you can share with uh with with healthcare leaders who might be listening um is there a way that they could uh you know do what they're doing more effectively when the hearts and minds of people who are so has hesitant to be able to uh to accept the advice if they're being given from the medical uh experts so it's a great question um and i've worked with a lot of health care leaders but not so much in the last six months but a lot in early 2021 a lot in 2020. um i i don't think the onus for in general the onus for dealing with some of the divisive aspects of mitigating the crisis rests primarily on health care rates i mean that with the exception of say the surgeon general and people like dr fauci the internment intimate right public doc medical professionals that are involved in government i think most health carers people i work with hospital ceos head docs right even the nurses who lead groups of medical assistants and and and physicians assistants i don't think right now they have an onus here i think the gauntlet rests on the ground of public political and state and local and national leaders here i really do and that gauntlet right i think it's to answer that question with that big caveat i think because health care workers are strained beyond measure right now it's not it's not their responsibility to keep everyone vaccinated or help keep everyone messed the responsibility rests on leaders at all ill levels of our of our country to tell people what are three or four people can't remember more than three or four things they can get and i know i know we've had a lot of that let me add a twist and i think the most effective way to do that for willing leaders some of whom were originally say against vaccines or against certain mitigations and for different reasons largely because they had personal experience with something close either themselves or someone they knew have changed their tune where a number of people from the governor of alabama to a few to other leaders like that i think the way to do this is to start bringing people followers americans viewers of television shows or webinars or twitter films to bring them up and closer to stories of people who have coded that's the first thing second thing is to talk about something that no one's really talking about outside the epidemiological world yet and that's long code right which is not talked about but it's absolutely critical aspect so you think it's mild it's okay to get it because you think it'll give you immunity wait a minute do you really want your children to develop brain fog neurological difficulties diabetes early alzheimer's i mean long covet is the single biggest reason that can really cut across political divides to really think about what we can do one two or three four things to to try and stop community spread and to try and protect ourselves and our loved ones last we're going to need leaders that can call to other times in history had almost none of this since at the at the national or even a local level that can call to other times in american history i'm not talking about the spanish flu i'm talking about rosie the riveter and and and mobilization during this during the um during the second world war in early 42 i'm talking about the civil war i'm talking about the way that that people on the frontier banded together i'm talking about benevolent societies of workers policemen helping other policemen that fall ill we need americans need to be reminded i'm talking about hurricane katrina we need to be reminded that we know how to jump into helping others and that really empowers us as well as really offers grace and service to others we need to be reminded of that every single day by a leader why every single day because there's so much toxicity and there's so much division coming at us through different media channels and in our politics we have to literally appeal day by day story by story to the better angels of our nature and uh for the life of me i can't understand why leaders aren't doing this and i assume when you say leaders you mean uh you mean business leaders too i mean it's uh you bet yeah because let me say one other thing about business leaders this is important i didn't i wouldn't have said this two years ago to everyone in the audience who's leading the business organization your leadership has more magnetism and more power and you have more trust from your people than you ever had before why because one of the things that covet has shown us a national political level across borders across political parties across countries is incompetence surprising levels of incompetence that's been uncertain pandemic and unprecedented event but even allowing for those handicaps i don't think there are many people around the world that would say yeah it's really been amazing to see how complicated most leaders have been so what that means if you're a business leader is you're looking for leaders that you can believe in who get the job done so ironically all of what's the way that this pandemic has been managed across countries has actually given business leaders if you will kind of ruby ruby slippers in terms of how people regard their power and their and the trust so you can use it now with new effectiveness yeah that's a great segue into into my final question for you we have a lot of young people that that follow us and are probably going to be watching this this video uh they may not be leaders yet but they may be aspiring to be leaders yeah some examples earlier of of leaders who are rising to the occasion uh we know we've seen a lot of leisures that have fallen short what can they learn both from the good examples and the bad examples that can help them to to be effective leaders when they have that opportunity um i think at first let me let me start with the good the good leaders and maybe this is truly not badly but they just don't do it the right way which is that in in the midst of every storm there's some pocket of light and possibility and and it's left to individuals young aspiring leaders to in a sense seek that out right don't wait for it you have to find it in the clouds in the you know in the high winds you have to find it seek it out in your organization roll up your sleeves as howard schultz says in starbucks and get them in the mud right in that little lagoon with the light shining through while the storms rage around you go and roll up your sleeves and learn by doing so that's the first seek out the opportunity and then be willing to work very very hard you're going to learn more in these kind of moments in those kind of lagoons then you are going to learn in the next 10 years of your life in formal schooling or formal kind of development opportunities that's the first thing seek it out secondly right realize that a lot of the unchartered the the flip side of the uncharted growth is the chance to build something better in all that openness right build something better the campaign for justice and equality what i see is the second chapter the next chapter of the civil rights movement which really be re-energized after mr floyd's murder in 2020. um that's a perfect example of this right let's get to work let's really get to work and let's not just get to work on specific aspects of systemic racism let's get to work on helping privileged more privileged americans as often white americans understand what the experience of being a person of color is right so right so understand that there's a chance even in all the uncertainty and go back to the top of the conversation even in all the stretching out to build something lasting third join with other people covet has been in some ways one of the most isolating things that has happened in the last 50 years on the other hand right because of the positive possibilities of virtual connection right we have the opportunity to meet and talk and and work with people all over the world that are you know linked by something very positive from whether it's the if you will dealing with the climate crisis greta tunber just take one example of amazing young leader she's under 20 my friends or or you know try try and try and uh provide water and sanitation in underdeveloped areas or deal with food deserts there's so many ways in which this crisis has pulled lifted the shades up on issues that that we want to address and that can be addressed that aren't completely intractable so get involved and find others that want to get involved because that will help you grow and it will make you empowered and then last but not least play it clean play it clean you know when i say that i mean act responsibly act with your own sense of hold yourself right to the higher road not in a kind of perfect you know 10 out of 10 way every single day we can't live don't live our lives that way but you have like most people strong values live your life in small ways and then in larger ways in sync with those values i say this to young people because what i have learned from watching leaders that go dirty or go bad it's a creepy kind of it's a creeping kind of condition it comes up on you in little tiny pieces is that if you start off saying you know i really am going to basically declare all my most you know all my income or my tax return or i'm really going to basically someone that would give me some more money has changed and i deserve i'm gonna most of the time all the time hand it back i don't mean perfect you're not prophets but i mean basically i'm gonna apologize i'm gonna forgive you just build this incredible deflector shield against the dirt and corruption and buying and selling of actions by leaders that we see and we just shake our head and say how can that be happening you buy yourself absolute deflection from that and in doing it act by act you build respect in others that then feeds your strength of character absolutely words to live by nancy all you're always so compelling i love having having these conversations with you and and thank you for sharing your insights on this i hope i don't have to have you back two years from now really great seeing you thanks so much nancy thank you brian

2022-01-29 01:11

Other news