Leaders of countries as well as in various organizations are sharply challenged by the coronavirus outbreak. It creates fear and escalate the level of consternation day by day, among employees, other stakeholders, and society as a whole. The massive expansion and the uncertainty of the outbreak continuously challenge the leaders to counter against. Leonard and Howitt (2007) expressed that unpredicted incident or an array of incidents of enormous scale and formidable pace, produces a high degree of lack of certainty make rise of disorientation, loss of control and strong phycological disruption.
One of the traits of exceptional leaders have is that they recognize the crisis at the beginning as according to Howitt and Leonard (2009), crisis such as SARS outbreak of 2002-03 and COVID-19 pandemic does not appear at once and grows by adapting to changes in the environment in which it exists. Not recognizing the gravity of a slow-developing crisis which can cause the responsible individuals to underestimate both the possibility of crisis and the impact it can cause (Omer and Alon, 1994). Crisis are rules by unawareness and unpredictability and effective remedies are improvised, usually (Leonard and Howitt, 2007), meaning, routine backup procedure that had been outlined would not be ideal. Once the crisis is recognized, leaders can setup a response by altering the current business practices to leverage the crisis situations which is useful to maintain even after the crisis situation is over (James and Wooten, 2005).
1. Get ready to respond: A network of teams to defend
Firstly, the leaders must relinquish the concept that the top-down response approach brings the stability, during any crisis. Though, in typical emergencies, organizations can rely on their pre-defined approach to control the operations by following scripted actions, but in a crisis filled with uncertainty, usually people face issues that are unfamiliar and less understood. The top-level executives of the company cannot integrate information and sums up to respond effectively. Leadership of the organization should mobilize the staff by setting priorities to react and empower them to observe and develop solutions which cater the priorities.
The organization’s leadership should build a network of teams to respond under stressful and chaotic situations which brings optimum solutions. When decisions are taken, to share the information across the company, this network should consist of teams with highly flexible assembly of groups that drive towards one common objective as illustrated below (McChrystal et al., 2015).
1. Get ready to respond: A network of teams to defend
Firstly, the leaders must relinquish the concept that the top-down response approach brings the stability, during any crisis. Though, in typical emergencies, organizations can rely on their pre-defined approach to control the operations by following scripted actions, but in a crisis filled with uncertainty, usually people face issues that are unfamiliar and less understood. The top-level executives of the company cannot integrate information and sums up to respond effectively. Leadership of the organization should mobilize the staff by setting priorities to react and empower them to observe and develop solutions which cater the priorities.
The organization’s leadership should build a network of teams to respond under stressful and chaotic situations which brings optimum solutions. When decisions are taken, to share the information across the company, this network should consist of teams with highly flexible assembly of groups that drive towards one common objective as illustrated below (McChrystal et al., 2015).
Figure 1: Illustrative Network of Teams for a Pandemic Response (McChrystal et al., 2015)
As illustrated above, some mini-teams in the network carryout actions which are not in their regular business activities while other teams’ primary objective is to recognize the crisis’s implication for day-to-day business operations and make possible changes. The network of teams of the organization have to have an integrated nerve centre which covers main 4 aspects:
- Workforce protection
The organization needs to prepare a plan to assist the employees that is aligned with government-imposed health and safety guidelines. The said plan should be flexible to make adjustments to the policies through the outbreak like work from home concepts, if required. This team should be represented from security, IT, legal, employee communications, the ombudsperson and should be led by head of HR (Mysore and Usher, 2020).
- Supply-chain stabilization
The organization should strategize to control the supply for products that may be subject to abnormal spikes in demand considering long-term stabilization plans. This team should be led with the head of procurement along with the procurement manager, a supply-chain analyst, the logistic manager and junior executive from IT (Mysore and Usher, 2020).
- Customer engagement
In Eastern cultures like Sri Lanka, “The customer is king” philosophy produces a power differential between the buyer and the seller (Kim and Aggarwal, 2016 ). In order to retain the customers’ preference, especially during the post pandemic stage, the amount of time the organization invest in all customer segments should increase by anticipating the actions that segment seek for. This team should include the head of sales and marketing as the team leader, a financial analyst and manager for consumer relations (Mysore and Usher, 2020).
- Financial stress-testing
By using analytics, the leaders should understand the critical variables that can affect the revenue and cost. The organization should be able to model its financials like cash flow, profit and loss and the balance sheet, and recognize the triggers which can significantly impair liquidity. With that, the organization can set the path to stabilize the financials. This team should consists of CFO being the leader, an executive officer in strategy and business development, an executive in treasury, an executive in legal department and one or more financial analysts (Mysore and Usher, 2020).
The qualities these networks of teams’ display;
- Multidimensional – A crisis brings high degree of complexity and it requires to engage experts in different fields to act together to collect information, define solutions, apply in real world and refine them accordingly with time.
- Adaptability – They organize, expand accordingly to conditional changes by reading the crisis.
In order to the network of team’s concept to be successful, the leaders of the organization should foster collaboration and display transparency across them by delegating authority and sharing information. Leaders should create an environment for the network of teams to openly discuss ideas, question when they have any without fear of repercussions by allowing them to have a good sense of the situation, how to keep them under everything control, through constructive arguments.
2. Identifying and upgrading leaders during COVID-19: “Calm and Quiet” but “Steady and Vigilant”
Leaders of the organization should identify the key individuals who are a part of network of teams and prepared to absorb additional responsibilities. These individuals should be allowed to empower others to direct crisis responses. With that they should be elevated by granting them the authority to take and apply decisions without prior approvals, because as the crisis evolves, new set of crisis-response team should construct the appropriate responses. Leaders can create a model for decision making to have clearer way to accountable for the decisions taken by appropriate people at different levels (Swepstson, 1990).
Though the experience is valuable for leaders in routine emergencies, but when in an unprecedented situation, character shows the utmost importance (D’Auria and Smet, 2020). When in such situation, being calm and quiet makes think clearly on how to navigate it (Garcia, 2006). Similarly, being steady and vigilant is also found often in well-grounded individuals. Closely observing the uncertainty of the crisis and with bounded optimism can wrestle with the crisis and lowers the impact it could have. When the crisis is no more, these qualities add more value to the teams.
3. Develop solutions in the middle of the crisis: Evaluate, anticipate and react
The leaders of the organization must avoid to keep themselves waiting for a full set of facts to understand what methods to follow as crisis is always a mix-bag of a lots of surprises and unknowns, which make the facts unclear and delaying the decision-making process. Therefore, the leaders should cope with uncertainty by continuously taking information as the crisis goes and planning how appropriate their responses worked.
In practice, it is similar to agile methodology, a software development approach, pause the process and evaluate, then anticipate what would happen next and react accordingly. So, the solution for the crisis evolve through the collaborative effort of the network of teams.
4. Empathy over sympathy: Employee health & wellbeing matters the most
In workplace, mental health issues have been an area of concern for some time but with the COVID-19 pandemic, the emotional challenges facing employees have increased (Pfefferbaum and North, 2020). Therefore, the leaders have to acknowledge the hassles the employees confront in their personal and professional lives with their beloveds during the crisis. Employees might struggle with stress and anxiety as they are concerned about the stability of their jobs and/or if they are asked to work from home, so it is important for “Workforce Protection” team in the network of teams to be alert on such incidents.
Also, the leaders should invest time in their well-being, demonstrate empathy and boost the confidence in employees by following government’s health guidelines, taking safety precautions, creating safe environment and monitor continuously to ensure everyone remain safe.
5. Effective communication: Be transparent and keep all informed
One of the important factors in fighting against COVID-19 is effective communication (Finset et al., 2020). Especially, during the times of crisis, being transparent to their stakeholders is the primary task of the leaders and express what already know, what is yet to know and what methodology to follow to learn more (Edmondson, 2020). Thoughtful, frequent communication displays the situation is controlled well by the leaders. Through the crisis respond team, the questions and concerns of the employees should be addressed.
Even after the crisis situation is over, the leaders encourage them to follow the same procedure by displaying optimistic, realistic view can boost the level of trust on employees and other stakeholders.
The COVID-19 is unique unprecedented situation as a pandemic with this nature has not been encountered in the history of mankind and political and healthcare authorities follow invasive actions (Finset et al., 2020). Therefore, the negative impacts of the crisis could last days and provide greater difficulties than anyone could imagine. However, the leaders of the organization follow the practices detailed with a positive mindset, they can establish behaviours and values that boost the image of the company and stakeholders during the crisis while setting up their own regulatory framework to safeguard from falling due to corruptions (Obama, 2011) as emphasised by the former president of United States of America, Mr. Barack Obama in his speech at Westminster Hall to members of Britain’s parliament.
I’d love to hear what you think about this post, Leadership Challenges for Banks & NBFIs in Sri Lanka to Overcome in Post COVID-19 Management. Let me know in the comments or contact via the form.
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