RISKFACTOR: Expect the Unexpected

We have all experienced crisis situations at some point or the other in our lives — be it personal or professional. A manager who ran his companies’ operations in Japan at the time of the Fukushima nuclear disaster that occurred because of the tsunami in the year 2011 described the following: “The principal characteristic of the situation was confusion and uncertainty. Getting reliable data on the impact was challenging. Whilst the immediate reaction was to evacuate our site in Tokyo, this may have exacerbated the situation with the power shortages and no clarity on the extent of the radiation that was spreading. In terms of feelings, it was real anxiety in terms of making a decision that may have had a significant impact on the wellbeing of the team members.”

Another manager at a global pharmaceutical company narrated this, “the company is about to launch a new vaccine set to generate $1.5 Billion for the company by 2025 years. The launch in five key markets is to start in 2018. However, on key market has said they will not implement the vaccine before 2020! The company isn’t prepared to lose that kind of money and this might mean massive layoffs.”

Unexpected events will happen. However, what complicate the situations further are the feelings that these events generate — anxiety, fear, anger, disappointment — that blur our logical thinking. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss psychiatrist, described five stages of grief that an individual goes through while dealing with moments of grief and life changes such as loss of loved ones. These stages are denial (clinging on to a false reality), anger (‘Why me?’), bargaining (‘I promise to do such and such if the situation is reversed’), depression (‘what’s the point of living’), and acceptance (‘It’s going to be fine’).

Similarly, within organisations problems and crises invoke changes. And with any change initiatives, employees typically go through these stages too. They could deny that the changes are essential, find evidence that the events aren’t true, or could become inflexible. Next, they could become emotionally attached to the past, show anger and frustration, and get into blame-game and politics. Post this negative cycle, employees (who haven’t quit yet) could begin to experiment on how to accommodate to the new situations.

What is important for the leaders is to be able to reduce the intensity and duration of the negative phase and start the process of adaptation early on. Rather than letting employees do the trial-and-error themselves under moments of crisis, having ready emergency plans in place is essential. That way, all members of the organisation can be rallied behind one common goal with absolute discipline and without the interference of those blurring emotions. Take the case of fire drills. We practice the routes and behaviors of vacating the buildings and it helps us in keeping calm under situations of actual emergencies. Or the crew reminds us each time we got on to a flight about the safety procedures to be followed. It is essential to have made fool-proof logical plans that can be executed when things do go wrong.

The manager at the pharma major where payoffs are imminent said that they never had a Plan B and that has hurt them more than anything else. There are rumors and employees are in a constant state of agitation. Organisations need to have business continuity plans (BCPs) in place. For the manager stuck during the Fukushima disaster, having readily accessible BCPs helped “had we not had this documented process, which was tested annually, I think the situation would have been far more dire. Whilst it wasn’t possible to make decisions because there was always incomplete information, having a calm process to ‘fill in’ as many gaps as we could was key.”

Being in crisis clouds our judgment. Trying to overcome fears and devising a plan to deal with the situation in the moment can be difficult. Instead create BCPs through these steps: conduct a risk assessment and identify potential threats, set up clear roles and responsibilities, establish clear emergency procedures and communication protocol, and rehearse the procedures from time to time to keep them updated. Nelson Mandela famously said “the brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Having a planned course of action ready when things go wrong is essential. It gives a safety net to be able to conquer that fear and to keep calm.

(Dr Kriti Jain is a faculty member at IE Busine­ss School, Spain and an EU Marie Curie Research Fellow)