Friends and Colleagues:
Leadership in times of change, it seems to me, requires that we find a way to live in hopeful uncertainty—knowing that we face challenges so profound they may threaten the lives of our organizations, knowing that we don't have the foggiest idea what the answers to those challenges are, yet hopeful, even confident of creating those answers.
In the first of this series of essays (see http://www.patnicholstransitions.com/resources.php; click on Leadership Lessons Compressed: Lessons) I observed that serving as CEO of organizations in transition can be seen as "leadership learning compressed." I argued that my work (leading organizations for relatively brief periods as they confront major changes) compresses and intensifies the opportunity to learn, but that many of the lessons learned apply to organizational leadership broadly.
With this in mind I outlined six such lessons. The first two, on which I elaborate here, are:
In a world of incredibly rapid change, intensified by an erratic global economy, leadership and crisis leadership look more and more alike.Most notably, no organization can any longer assume its indefinite survival. Who would have imagined, two years ago, that Lehman Brothers would be gone or that some of our great cultural institutions would be imperiled?
As frightening as it is to confront our organizational mortality, when a board member or an employee realizes "my beloved organization may die; our customers (or clients, students or patients) may loose something they desperately need (or highly value) and I share responsibility for that," nearly all react in one or more of three ways. They freeze in terror. They look for ways to deflect responsibility to others. Or, they assume responsibility and look for a path to success.
In fact, in my experience, most freeze first and then, having absorbed the shock, choose one of the other options, or some combination of the two. Why, though, do some move quickly and others move later to responsibility? For, I think, the same reason some people respond to a plane crash or a natural disaster in those ways.
It is the same reason that some great ball players--the Yankees' Derek Jeter comes to mind—frequently rise to the occasion in clutch situations. And, it is the same reason a surgeon, in an operating room crisis, is expected to rise to the responsibility.
The central reason is hope. A rare few of us, like Jeter, are inherently hopeful. Those few seem to find opportunity in even a crisis, to rise to nearly any occasion. Others, like the surgeon, find it comes with experience an preparation. They have been trained to rise to such occasions. They expect as much of themselves and that expectation is shared and reinforced by those around them.
But most people can rise to responsibility if given both reason and opportunity. It is up to those of us who would lead to rise first, to accept the content of our doubts but reject the crippling emotions they would convey, to choose to believe in the possibility of success and to convey that possibility to others. It is up to us to make hope credible.
We can do that in a number of ways. We can list a number of alternative, hopeful futures—"we can do A or B or C or D, but we will find a course." We can emphasize the imperative—“we will survive because we must survive; others depend upon us.” We can cite other instances of improbable survival—“heroes had the courage to help one another from the burning twin towers; Haitians pulled one another from the quake; Ford Motor Company was given up for dead, declined federal aid and is now turning profits.” The key responsibility of leadership, though, is to choose and to offer hope, and rally those who respond.
Note, on the other hand, that if these rallying cries are emphatic about hope, they are ambiguous about the course to it! They don't say, as I gather Napoleon and Patton did, "I know the way." That kind of leadership, if not dead, is slowly dying. And, good riddance to it.
That approach places too big a bet on the wisdom and charisma of a single figure and too little on the shared wisdom and collaborative power of his colleagues. However, in the absence of a path, the leader must offer a path to a path, and in doing so she must invite others to share the responsibility for forging it. She can do so by saying: "We will be decisive; we must be. We will clarify our strategy by X date. I propose we do so through Y process. I urge you participate in Z ways. And, the first way to participate is to tell the rest of us how to improve upon that process and that timeline!"
In the absence of a solution, she has offered a date, a structure and the opportunity to share responsibility. She has not said, "I know the way; rely upon me." Rather, "we'll discover the way; let's rely upon one another."
These thoughts, as I mentioned in my earlier email, come to mind as the result of a collaboration with some trusted colleagues, all of whom also serve as Interim CEO’s of Nonprofits and NGO's. John Brothers of Cuidiu Consulting, John Corwin of Corwin Consulting, LLC, Dick Goldbaum of Transitions In Leadership and I are developing a seminar from our work that can help build the organizational capacity in other organizations. As they help me refine my thoughts I will report on them to you.
As always, I welcome your comments and critique.
© Pat Nichols, 2002. All rights reserved.