How to Prepare For—and Lead Through—a Crisis
25:08 Share

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 Perry 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.

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 starts small and develop up, and then sudden crisis such as natural disasters. 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 professors, Dean 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.

So 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 crises 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, 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 Ps. 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 nonprofit, 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. So 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 and 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 a 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 in 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 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. And then I'm going to do the and and perspective taking.

So what does sensemaking 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 pest plus gene, what's happening politically, what's happening in the economy, what are sociocultural 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 Boston 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?

Asana is the number one AI work management platform. It's where work connects across every department, even in the most complex organizations. Asana is where AI is seamlessly intertwined with every project, team, and goal. Try for free today at asana.com. That's A-S-A-N-A dot com. Long wait times, confusing phone menus. Customer service shouldn't feel like a nightmare.

Polly AI offers lifelike AI agents that resolve up to 90% of customer inquiries. Transform customer service conversations into delightful brand experiences with Polly AI. Visit polly.ai/hbr to learn more. So let's go on to this hindsight, insight and foresight. Hindsight means looking back.

A lot of times when we're leading in crisis situations or we're leading uncertain, this is nothing new. It's happened before. It's a different flavor. It's a different shade. So part of this is taking perspective. Leading in hindsight is going back in time and thinking about, OK, what can I learn? What do I learn from history and how do I apply that? So hindsight is looking in the rearview mirror.

Insight is when you're driving that car. What does the environment tell me right now? And how do I take a perspective on the environment? And then foresight is scenario planning. It's that GPS system that's already mapped out where you need to go. It's being futuristic. So you have to sense make of your environment and the perspective taking. And part of perspective taking is thinking about the hindsight,

You know, what can I learn from the past? The insight, what's happening in my current environment and the foresight. What do I predict that's going to happen in the future? Okay, second principle and practice I want people to take away is that normal problem solving, you can have lots of time, you don't feel pressurized. But when you're in crisis situations, it's decision-making under pressure. And it's not only decision-making under pressure,

In addition, it tells beating those biases. We all have decision-making biases. One of the case studies that we studied recently for our book is we looked at how Burger King in the middle of the pandemic,

took time to say, you know what? We need to reinvent our restaurants. We need a smaller footprint. We need a more innovative menu that caters to our customer. And we need to be able to deliver on a supply chain part of not only how we get supplies into the restaurant, but how we deliver them to our customers. So smaller footprint, more for DoorDash and Uber Eats and more drive-thru. So this is an example. We interviewed the CEO of Burger King.

And what we learned is, is that decision maker under pressure, it's got to be formulaic. It's almost like following a recipe. You have to be quick. You have to be ethical. You have to build trust. But going through these seven steps are so important. And it has to become a heuristic where it really does go from explicit to tacit. I'm in a crisis situation, bringing the team together to quickly define the problem.

After you define the problem, conduct the stakeholder mapping so you understand the implications. Establish desired outcomes. My colleague Bob Quinn often says, what are the results you want to produce? You have to drive that. After you've defined a problem, you've mapped the stakeholders, and you know what you want to produce, then you have to solicit information from diverse sources, not the normal ones. Going outside your industry, looking for experts,

People and sectors that you wouldn't even think about going back in history, going to futuristic people. But diversity of sources are so important. Then you look for alternative options and create parallel plans. And I want to emphasize creating a parallel plan. Good decision making under pressure says, one, I have a plan A, but plan A may not work. So I have a plan B.

And being committed and pushing the team to think about, okay, what's plan A and what's plan B? And maybe even a plan C. But parallel planning is essential. Once you've done the planning, it's evaluating each option and it's making your decisions. So this is probably some of you are saying no different than problem solving. But the difference is you're doing it under pressure. You're being mindful of those biases. And you're making sure that you're parallel planning.

Next, framing the decision. Part of decision making is the ability to frame the decision. In our book, we talk about four frames that we recommend every leader consider. Design and system thinking. When you're working on a decision, have you created the structure? Have you thought about the systems? If you execute on that decision, what's the design going to look like? So this is thinking about structures and systems and how you're going to design the execution.

Power in politics. For each decision that you're going through, it's mapping the power in politics. What are the implications? We are a political world and we have to understand who holds the power, what are the implications, and what are the politics associated with it? And then the human resources. People matter. What are the human resource implications for your decision?

Now, the one that we often forget is that we are also culture beings and we are cultural organizations. Have you done a cultural audit? What will your organizational culture say about this decision? How will your organizational culture support the decision?

Are we thinking about cultural competencies and inclusion practices? Again, when we think about race, gender, religion, global identities, age are all examples of cultural things that we have to think about when leading in a crisis situation. So let's not forget culture and diversity. Let's move on to number three, the team, the team, the team. The ability to energize your team.

Leading in a crisis situation is not a solo sport. One of our favorite case studies in recent years is how the NBA created the bubble. And they practiced everything we talked about in Prepared Leadership.

Composition of the team to plan the bubble is important. It was diversity and collaboration. So they brought lots of different people in from health care providers to food people, to athletes, to coaches, to fans, to conceptualize the bubble, even partnering with Disney to make it the home of the NBA bubble during the pandemic.

And then part of energizing your team, and we saw this in the NBA bubble and this ecosystem of a team, is creating a culture of purpose and accountability. When the pandemic hit, the NBA knew that they had to shut down traditional basketball season.

but they were also at risk of losing monies. And so the commissioners came up with the idea that we'll create this bubble, we'll bring everybody to Orlando, and we'll create this culture where it's a very rigorous, systematic way about how we're managing COVID, but also this notion of a purpose that we want to deliver an NBA season for our players. So the question I have for practice number three is, how are you energizing your team in crisis situations? Who is at the table?

Do you have diversity? Are you creating collaboration as an essential practice? And then does the team know its purpose? And does the team know the results you're trying to achieve? And how is the team accountable in this particular crisis situation? Another metaphor that we talk about in the book is what makes leading in a crisis situation different from everyday team leadership is

is think about it. It's like a jazz ensemble. If you have a great team, then every player needs to take a turn to lead because they have to feel valued. You need their skills. You need their knowledge. You need their expertise. So think about a jazz ensemble. You have the saxophonist. You have the drumist, the voice person, the trumpet.

Well, if your team is playing like a jazz ensemble and it's trying to really resolve that crisis situation, leadership is rotating as the music dictates. Sometimes I might need the physician to lead. I might need the engineer to lead. I might need the marketing person to lead.

The other takeaway from the jazz metaphor is that part of leading a teen in a crisis situation is the ability to improvise. You're looking for cues. You need to know when the drummer sets up, the saxophonist or the vocalist. But for the whole thing, the work, each person is taking cues and they're listening. They're listening to the other musicians. They're listening to the audience and the environment.

And they're truly working together to create that note to resolve the crisis situation. Let's move on to four. Leadership and everyday leadership is really sometimes insular focused. And we might have our normal strategic partners of our vendors or our customers. But in certain situations, some of the best practices we've seen call for mega communities.

So what are mega communities? Mega communities are when nonprofit, government, and corporations come together to solve complex problems. Why are we able to walk around here now and have a vaccine? Because this is what we saw. We saw the government come together to invest in the vaccine. We saw corporations such as Moderna and Pfizer. And then we saw nonprofits think of ways to distribute the vaccine to get it out and support it.

The next time you have a big problem, think about how are you engaging in mega communities in the traditional sense of government plus corporations plus nonprofits, but even beyond the traditional definition, who is your mega community that's going to help you to lead uncertain times? Mega communities, think about it simply, they're conglomerates. It's bringing knowledge from diverse sources, from diverse sectors, from diverse organizations.

And it's coming together, breaking down barriers, breaking down silos and structures so that you can build capacity so that you have the resources to meet and solve these crisis situations. Another example of a mega community that we've written about is the Me Too movement.

Often when you see social movements, they are the result of mega communities. The Me Too movement has changed how we think about misconduct in corporations. The Me Too movement has been involved in nonprofits and education, and it's also impacted government regulation. So social movements are another example of ways that we can create mega communities, and we've seen them in other areas too.

Let's talk about the fifth practice, and then I'm going to open it up for questions and dialogue. So resiliency. During the pandemic, my family and I played lots of word games, Wordle and Scrabble. And I like to think that resiliency was one of the words of the year in 2020 or 2021. When Dean James and I speak of resiliency, we speak of the notion of this ball that bounces because resiliency really is about bouncing back. But it's more than bouncing back.

It's experiencing growth trajectory. It's making positive adjustments in the midst of challenges. So resiliency means you have these crucible moments when you're leading uncertainty, but you not only survive them, but you thrive them. You come out better as a person. You come out better as a leader. You come out better as an organization and a team. You're resilient because you're mobilizing your resources. You're building capacity.

you're strengthening to overcome that adversity or change. So one of the things we talk about, and I'll share the tool, you can go to jamesandwooten.com and you'll see all these tools for managing crisis situation and leading uncertainty that we provide free. But resiliency really does start with this notion of, okay,

Take a deep breath. I'm going through this crucible moment. Things are changing. So what can I do? I got to take a deep breath. I got to say, how am I going to plan to adapt and how I'm going to embrace the change? Once you take this deep breath, give yourself some grace. You have to start to ask yourself, what do I need to learn to get through this situation to be resilient? And part of learning is also checking for alignment.

Alignment for, okay, I'm in this crisis situation. How can I get out of this crisis situation? How do I make sure that my pathway out is aligned with my values and what I want to accomplish the goals? Part of learning and checking for alignment is going back to mega communities. This is not a solo leadership activity. You have to broaden your networks.

People who are resilient go into problem-solve mode, they adapt, and then they say, who can help me? How can I broaden my networks? How can I broaden my knowledge base? Who can I partner with? And then lastly, part of resiliency is monitoring your well-being. And what I'm asking you to think about is that next crisis situation, that next time you're confronting something uncertain, what are you doing to create a culture of well-being for yourself and for your team?

And like I said, if you go to our website, this is the resiliency tool. A lot of the other things that I posted are also on the website. So before I turn it over to questions, I want to wrap up once again and think about what are you doing for sense making perspective taking? Hindsight, foresight, are you doing that? What are some of your best practices or what questions do you have about decision making under pressure and how that's different for everyday decision making?

Remember, it's the team, the team, the team and the jazz metaphor and using that jazz metaphor to make your team agile and creative. All of us can benefit in good times and bad times for mega community. But how are you investing in mega community and who are you partnering with? And then finally, prioritizing resiliency and well-being. That was Simmons University President Lynn Perry Wootman at HBR's 2023 Future of Business Conference.

We'll be back next Wednesday with another handpicked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave us a review. And when you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world's top business and management experts, you'll find it all at hbr.org.

This episode was produced by Dave DiIulio, Julia Butler, and me, Hannah Bates. Kurt Nikish is our editor. Special thanks to Ian Fox, Ellie Honane, Maureen Hoke, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you, our listener. See you next week.