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Leading in, and out of a crisis

 Despite the day to day challenges faced by business leaders, rarely, very rarely do business leaders have to lead their organisations in what the military refers to as a VUCA environment.

The acronym VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous and was first coined by PROF Warren Bennis in 1987, and quickly adopted by the US Army War College. Hence, the term VUCA is most commonly associate with the chaos of war. The COVID-19 pandemic impacting the world and more narrowly impacting business has produced a VUCA environment.

Most larger organisation have well-developed business continuity and disaster recovery plans able to deal with short term ICT issues, the need to vacate their buildings and work from home or implement some other short term plan. I wonder how many organisations can truly say their plans were developed to cope with prolonged periods operating in a VUCA environment, potentially for months, years, or longer? Plans are absolutely vital, especially in emergencies, but strong, decisive leadership is what will see organistaions through an extended VUCA period.

Leaders leading in a VUCA environment need to possess and demonstrate courage, stoicism, and the ability to apply critical thinking to solve what seems like insurmountable problems. The character traits of great leaders are forged over time based on their experiences, but the ability to stop, observe, gather facts, confirm assumptions and use deductive reasoning to inform decisions, is a process that can be learned and applied to great effect.

This simple process can also be applied during Business as Usual (BAU) to rationally solve any problem by applying logic, void of emotion. This does not mean that the leader should be emotionless, but rather not let their emotions override the logic and their better judgment. The ability to stop, relax, observe, gather facts, confirm assumptions, and used deductive reasoning is an easy process to learn but is even easier to forget when making decisions under pressure.

Management, Command and Leadership…

Most business professionals are familiar with the terms ‘management’ and ‘leadership’ and some even understand the difference. You know the old adages, ‘leaders do the right things – managers do things right’ and ‘we lead people and manage things’. Robert Sutton’s 2010 HBR article describes the distinction between leadership and management and proposes that leaders who distance themselves from management, as though it’s beneath them are out of touch. To use a popular project management saying, they’re ‘throwing dead cats over the fence’.

In my view, I believe we need to dive a little deeper. When I look at the iconic leaders of the past, I see an obvious distinction that I don’t see today. There’s a glaring difference between great leaders of the past such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela compared with Winston Churchill, Napoleon, or Genghis khan. The difference is that Dr. King, Gandhi, and Mandela led with the absence of authority and had to rely on their ability to influence their followers. When your followers have no choice but to follow your directions or suffer consequences, you are not leading per se. Rather, you are exercising your authority through command.

Unless you’ve served time in the military or similar emergency services, you probably wouldn’t think you’ve worked for a commander. In fact, you’ve probably never contemplated the differences between a leader and a commander, which is ironic as ‘command’ is what most people in “leadership positions” actually exercise – not leadership.

For true leadership to occur, there needs to be an absence of ‘authority’. An example of this is Dr. Martin Luther King, who was able to lead a generation of African Americans, of whom he had absolutely no authority over. He achieved this through his vision for equality and his ability to effectively articulate that vision.

So, if you have authority over the people you lead, that is, there are consequences for them not following your directions, you are a commander, not a leader! Maybe not in the military sense where insubordination and failure to comply with a lawful order is a summary offence and deserters can be shot. Rather, failing to follow your direction could result in the ‘offender’ being reprimanded or potentially fired.

In today’s world of Millennials and political correctness (PC), exercising command is seen as inappropriate; however, command is exactly what is needed. This doesn’t mean a dictatorial form of command such as Directive Control, where it’s “do as I say”, although the reality of business is that this type of command certainly still has a place. What it means in the business sense, is the employment of Mission Command, also known as “workplace empowerment”.

Mission Command provides direction by setting objectives (the Mission) and providing a set of parameters or ‘freedoms and constraints’ and a limit of exploitation known in business as delegation.

So are you a manager, a leader, or a commander? Now that you know the difference, I hope this will help you to ‘lead’ your followers better?

Make a decision and stick to it!

 

I’m sure you have all heard the saying “make a decision and stick to it”. My caveat for this is “make the RIGHT decision and stick to it”. There is no sense in sticking with a bad or wrong decision just to conform with the belief that good leaders stick to their ‘guns’. It’s far better to allocate sufficient time to the planning process allowing for the right decision to be made than it is trying to justify an ill-informed decision once in execution.

When time is lacking and a quick decision is necessary, you should always aim for the ‘least bad decision’ possible and be prepared to fail fast, course-correct quickly, and accept the fallout.

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