How to Lead in a downturn. The most important lesson of all.
It occurs to me a lot of us are leading through a downturn - tough trading conditions, whatever you want to call it - for the first time. So, Douglas Adams' advice from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, is the best of all - Don't panic. Those of us who are old enough to have been through previous downturns are still here. You will be too. And so will your organization if you lead it right (no pressure, then). Â
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Magnoliacom
Newsvine
Furl
Facebook
Google
Yahoo| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| don_t_panic_button.jpg | 11.79 KB |
»
- PhilDourado's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Copyright © The Leadership Hub 2008. Contact us
Panic gets bad press
...when is the best time to lead through panic?
Panic can produce some of the best orthogonal thinking. As animals, we have developed a panic response becuase it can deliver some awesome short term results. However, I agree that panic-induced, chaotic tactics are rarely sustainable.
Unfortunately, it is only when panic creates really bad results (eg stock market crashes) that panic gets any press at all.
As much as I like Douglas Adams - he has contributed to the demise of the reputation of a highly evolved and uniquely value-added natural response to problem solving.
Long Live Panic!
Come on all you panic-mongers out there - let's get the positive panic case studies posted!
R
PS
...to lead, you must be human..
Richard, you're right about panic getting a bad press...
Hi Richard,
At the risk of completely contradicting myself, the slight sense of panic (frisson, at least) that the 'end of the world' scenario around the CERN particle accelerator generated today, shows how mild panic (I know, no such thing as 'mild panic', but you know what I mean) generates a sense of 'aliveness' and breaks us out of the mundane and makes us feel more alive and energetic. Good call... Phil
y2k
The y2k-panic was another big one. The recent LHC-black-hole-goodbye-switzerland-panic reminded me of those 1999 fears where everyone's money was going to disappear at midnight on 31st December. Businesses were either investing in huge amounts of IT expertise or buckling in, holding on tight and squeezing their eyes shut.
As I recall though, in the end, the y2k-panic was just expensive. But then I'm not in IT ;-)
..and I think I just contradicted myself there too..
Understanding cycles
Everything on this earth is about cycles. We have ups and we have downs -that is the natural order. The reason why we panic is because we do not plan for the down cycle. You would think we would have have learnt that lesson by now.
I do believe some of this is driven by our short term thinking. When times are good lets put some 'nuts' in the jar to help us through the downward cycle.
Now I accept this is somewhat simplistic but the lesson is valid all the same.
Kate
cycles and oscillation
Where you have feedback and delay, then you get oscillation. If it's not damped, then it goes haywire.
My first degree was in Electronics and we learned about it with amplifiers, resistors and capacitors. I later found the same principle applies well with human systems.
Short-term thinking with long-term feedback is a great recipe for the wobblies.
Dave
on feedback....
...I wrote an article about it here:
http://syque.com/articles/feedback_delay/feedback_delay.htm
:D