Marcia's Leadership Q and As: Navigating the Business
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Q. The economy is strong, yet corporations are laying off. Shall our management team layoff, too, in anticipation of slow times?
A. The issues that businesses are facing today are escalated by outside factors. Some factors are outside of a business leadership team’s immediate control. But it does have a choice about what news to perceive, how to perceive it, and what reactions or actions to take.
Ideas and actions (right or wrong) can become contagious! One company starts a new policy; others follow suit. Is it healthy? Does it make sense? Are decisions and choices thought through strategically from the purpose of the company to the decisions that impact the customers? Not often enough.
To make your decisions, check the facts, not opinions. Dig deeper than the day’s headlines. Do you want to make decisions based on the data and information about your organization, your customers and their needs, and your industry over time? Or do you want to jump on the fear bandwagon and react to sometimes false perceptions?
High technology corporations have rolled through layoffs for decades. They inflate their hiring, then re-adjust. Or they start a new product line, decide to discard it (and the people working on that product line) and shift to a new product line. Variation exists in everything.
Some corporate leaders are loyal to their employees. Others lay off employees on a whim. Executives wonder why they have absenteeism, employee turnover, disengagement, and quiet quitting. Root causes for problems are often easy to see and understand.
Q. In recent years, it seems we business leaders have had to react to a myriad of challenges from the pandemic to inflation to the labor shortage to bank failures. Neither college nor decades of experience prepared us for these. How do we best navigate them without burning out?
A. With any unforeseen challenge, first take a deep breath, and pull your team together and lead them through a collective deep breath—seriously! Quickly share and assess the feelings people are experiencing. Acknowledge them.
Second, assess the safety of your team, customers, finances, etc. What do you immediately need to address? You may take rapid actions or within an hour or a day.
Third, discuss the questions you need to answer and what you know. What are the facts; what you need to further understand to make decisions; the impact on your employees; what your customers need, and the impact on the business. Ask, what can we anticipate for the short and long-term? What decisions do we need to make? What actions do we need to take? What’s our plan for today, tomorrow, this week, and going forward?
Fourth, based on what you need to accomplish together for all involved, focus your team and communicate often. Use the PDSA model: Plan what to do now; Do it; Study what worked and what didn’t work; Act to keep what works and let go of what doesn’t; then PDSA again. It is a model for rapid learning, communicating, making decisions, and moving forward.
As you navigate a crisis, your mindset is critical. Be future focused. Don’t get stuck in the past. Later it is important to discuss what you could have anticipated. And discuss what you can anticipate in the future. What can you do to be better prepared for a crisis? It is the role of leadership to anticipate. Great leaders have a plan for a pandemic, bank failure, recession, etc. When you have a plan, modify it with the reality of the moment.
