It seems like we prepare all our lives for some types of crises never knowing when they will happen. If you live in California, you prepare for earthquakes. Other parts of the country prepare for hurricanes or tornadoes. Where it snows, people prepare for power outages and days without outside contact.
In business, we have unpredictable crises: a vendor stops making a needed part, a senior staff member takes ill, a transformer blows and takes us offline for days. You could come up with a dozen terrible possibilities. No matter what we prepare for there is always a serendipitous quality to crisis. So, what do we do when it happens?
Typically, our fear response sets our adrenaline pumping and we get pretty excited whether we show it or not. The brain starts working overtime-what do I do, what do I do? Answers start flowing in from our amygdala-run, fight, freeze, act, don’t act.
When our neocortex, the rational part of our brain kicks in, possibilities emerge. Maybe there is a silver lining to this situation. Maybe, we can take advantage of this change in circumstances, not to get another supplier, but to drop the whole unprofitable line. Instead of temporarily promoting the assistant, maybe we could move a totally new person from a different department into that role. Maybe we can switch the whole operation to the back-up in the midwest. Don’t let a crisis go unexploited.
In fact, some people manufacture crises to change the status quo and get buy-in to bigger changes. That slow incremental change so cpmfortable to the company culture isn’t going to move it fast enough. As Jack Welch said , “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” This seems particularly apt these days in 2nd or 3rd generation companies. How we have always done things is not just a quaint story when the world outside is on a radical reorganization. This could be a threat to your survival.
So next time you find a crisis on your hands, be ready. Think big, no, think REALLY big about a strategic solution that grabs the current momentum and takes you much further towards your goals than you ever could have imagined before the crisis.
illustration courtesy of InkHouse Inklings blog-July, 2014