Crises — make sure you learn from them

A few months back I had taken my two-year-old on a holiday and midway I decided I hadn't packed enough diapers! It seems like a small thing today that pales in the midst of all the other crises the world is facing, but that evening in the hotel, was one of the worst I have lived through! That's the thing about crises — they are superb learning experiences and many of them, if narrated vividly, can galvanise listeners not to make similar mistakes. But when they do happen, they are terrible to deal with!

Define a crisis

A crisis, simply put, is a situation that doesn't go according to plan. And a great way to handle one would be to not let it happen in the first place. What are the assumptions we are making about the people, the process, the budget and the material, may be good questions to ask. Have others done similar things in the past and what has worked or not worked could be another question. Asking such questions in large groups needs a strong moderator. It's always easy to get swayed by negative information and the moderator has to do this crisply and quickly, ensuring that the aim of getting constructive points is achieved and negative energy that pulls the nascent proposal down is not generated.

Who does what and by when

Accompanying a crisis is a lot of confusion and many voices on who should do what. Some may prefer the tasks to take precedence, others the people, and still others various combinations. Clearly, the leader will, in such a situation, not just be decided by hierarchy but also by possession of unique information vital for the crisis to be solved. The leader by position or information or both, if they are different people, needs to give clear, precise instructions of what needs to be done by whom, how and by when.

Post-mortem

The sense of elation that accompanies the successful solving of a crisis soon gets people to forget about it and this is a costly mistake. How can we prevent the same crises from happening again and how can we prevent similar crises from happening elsewhere. This is surely a boring task but an important one. Having this documented is important, but doing it in a way that it is remembered and that it remains in public memory is more important. Of course, all of this is still no sure-fire way to ensure that a crisis never happens. But, in the limited time and energy we have in our lives, it's worth handling new and different crises every time rather than the same old ones!

Pradeep Chakravarthy works with the Infosys Leadership Institute. The views represented here are not necessarily those of his employer. He can be contacted at >pradeep_chakravarthy@infosys.com

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