Canadian Government Executive - Volume 26 - Issue 04

September/October 2020 // Canadian Government Executive / 27 of human psychology. During the early days of the pandemic, actions and remedies were explained in calm, rational terms. “While it doubtless made perfect sense for policymakers to think in this way, it did little to foster emotional engagement. It was too abstract. By contrast, the simple and direct ‘Stay at Home, Save Lives’ message in the UK resonated immediately,” he says. 7. Finding a voice for a crisis: The most compelling leader- ship in the pandemic came from those individuals able to talk confidently about the realities of the outbreak in a humane, compassionate way. People were looking for emotionally in- telligent, right-brain descriptions of left-brain solutions. Car- ing is critical in crisis management. People will scrutinize your words, actions, and body language to see if you care and are worth following. They want you to address the gravity of the crisis without sounding defensive or alarmist, particularly when championing extraordinary measures. You must find that voice for this special moment. 8. It is very difficult to fix a problem you created: In The Fog of War, former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara expressed deep regret for some of his decisions during the Vietnam War, an extraordinary revelation since we are not used to leaders admitting mistakes. In a crisis, when a lifetime of work may have been or is in the process of being swept away, the emotional responses that accompany grief will be triggered. The first stage is denial, during which the tempta- tion will be to claim things are not as bad as they seem. At that point, the leader can become an obstruction, and the right an- swer is to find an alternative role of even move them out of the organization. 9. Know thyself: A crisis is a formative, demanding experience, and therefore physical and mental wellbeing is critical during a crisis. Energy and sleep reserves become depleted (and one of the consequences of that erosion is that you are unable to see that reserves are low). Caring for oneself is therefore a necessary part of crisis management. 10. Confidence is not competence: Business schools do not teach doubt. But doubt has its uses and one challenge in a cri- sis is to find time to think and explore the doubts you may be experiencing without spooking colleagues. “Perhaps the big- gest challenge is to work out what one should have doubts about. When there is much going on and things are moving at a pace, our antenna can be overwhelmed. Working out what matters and what does not is a perennial challenge for execu- tives,” he says. 11. Crises end but the causes endure: During the Spring lock- down, many people were preoccupied with returning to nor- web http://canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca/author/harveys/ malcy. The word crisis is of Greek origin and meant a deci- sion or turning point. The word implies – and has come to mean – that the phenomenon is temporary. “We therefore fail to see that the causes endure, that they have, in some cases, accompanied us throughout human history,” he observes. We need to recognize and address those causes. It is dangerous to believe that crises are exceptional, deviations from normal, and our own brilliance can bring everything back to the way it was before. 12. When we fix one crisis we always create another: In ad- dressing this crisis, look hard to the unintended consequenc- es. This is not easy but try to find someone on your team with an ability to sketch out the possible consequences of different options. “This will not guarantee that you avoid mistakes that come back to haunt you or your successors, But it reduces the likelihood of this happening,” he says. Beware of stopping too early with reforms, assuming prematurely you have been suc- cessful. Reform does not stop because it is no longer needed, he warns, but because people have decided they have done enough. Keep up the momentum, pushing for things that will make a lasting difference. The twelve lessons are not same-old. They make sense but have an unusual and at times off-beat nature. They are worth re-read- ing and contemplating as we continue towards the post-pandem- ic world and whatever crisis looms next. H arvey S chachter is a writer, specializing in management and business issues. He writes three weekly columns for the Globe and Mail and The Leader’s Bookshelf column for Canadian Government Executive, and a regular column and features for Kingston Life magazine. Harvey was editor of the 2004 book Memos to the Prime Minister: What Canada Can Be in the 21st Century. He was the ghostwriter on The Three Pillars of Pub- lic Management by Ole Ingstrup and Paul Crookall, and editor of Getting Clients, Keeping Clients by Dan Richards. The Leader’s Bookshelf “The question we should now be asking is what can be done to escape the effects of the crisis in an enduring way. We should want to build a more resilient social and economic system. We should seek to strengthen the financial system. We should not want to kick these and other problems down the road for future generations to solve.”