Building Organization Capacity During Crisis: Part 1
September 20, 2021 | Bill Bryan
Crisis Capacity Assessment Quiz
My organization … (circle appropriate score and sum when done)
- Is very effective in creating contingency plans that accurately address potential crises:
DISAGREE 1 2 3 4 5 AGREE
- Ensures that everyone is focusing on what’s most important regardless of circumstances:
DISAGREE 1 2 3 4 5 AGREE
- Is very agile in responding to changing demands, regardless of the reason:
DISAGREE 1 2 3 4 5 AGREE
- Has leaders who provide focus, encouragement, and inspiration when faced with crises:
DISAGREE 1 2 3 4 5 AGREE
- Recognizes and responds appropriately to changing individual and team needs as the result of crises or trauma.
DISAGREE 1 2 3 4 5 AGREE
TOTAL: . Implications:
- 5-11: Whoa! Your organization is very vulnerable to crises in terms of loss of performance and key personnel.
- 12-20: OK. It’s worth your time to dig deeper to discover where your organization’s strengths and limitations are with regard to effectively weathering crises.
- 21-25: Terrific! Your organization and its leadership are significantly more prepared for crises than most?
Overview
COVID-19, is a good, if unfortunate, illustration of a crisis causing trauma for most organizations, regardless of sector. However, there is usually a silver lining if you look hard enough. As the old idiom notes, “no pain, no gain.” And, if you are a leader, you will appreciate Churchill’s perspective when he said, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” Let’s look at the wisdom captured by these sayings.
- People must experience discomfort if they are going to improve performance – as an individual, team, or organization. People must stretch outside their comfort zone.
- People are most open to change when they are experiencing anxiety and discomfort.
Even well-performing organizations become stale, siloed, over-goaled, inward focused, top heavy, and bureaucratic. So, if you are a leader, your challenge is knowing what to do to leverage crises or to overcome stagnation to enhance organization capacity and performance. Let’s start with the phrase – Sweat Equity – which we all know means putting significant personal effort into an endeavor to meet a goal. Positive change requires significant effort, and in this case, we are using this phrase as a diagnostic acronym (SWEAT + Equity) for dealing with crises and stagnation. We make the assumption the leader has done a good job in determining what needs to change, what people’s personal concerns are, and what the most important goals are that best respond to needs. In other words: “Equity” encompasses deep empathy. Here’s the inquiry strategy for creating capacity to deal with crises and moving organizations forward that are in a rut.
Equity
Provide everyone the opportunity to share concerns and to provide input into problem and goal identification and solutions. It also means equal access to resources and skill enhancement as part of solution implementation.
Sweat
S = Skill. Does everyone have the skills necessary to meet address new activities and goals?
W = Will. Does everyone have the will necessary to use his/her skills appropriately to meet goals? Do they want to do the job now that goals and activity priorities have changed?
E = Energy. Does everyone have the energy required to meet new goals? Are people spread too thin? Are there too many teams? People can have both the skill and will/desire to meet new goals but be short on energy given the number of demands they are being asked to address. Keep in mind that most people can’t focus on any more than one-to-three goals at any one time.
A = Activities. Is everyone focusing on what activities have been identified as most important to meet goals? Have less important/non-productive activities been eliminated?
T=Time. Is time being used effectively? Is there sufficient time for people to focus on what’s most important? Is there a strategy in place to help people STOP doing what is less important?
Summary
Whether your organization has been pummeled by a crisis or needs a real wakeup call to get it unstuck, you can use the SWEAT + Equity diagnostic framework to improve performance and address employee needs. The following blogs in this series will provide you will some ideas and tools to address the SWEAT + Equity elements.
Our new series of blogs is on the topic of building organization capacity in the shadow of crisis – yes, we are talking about the impact of COVID, hurricanes, wild fires, labor shortages etc etc. Basically, anything 2020/2021 could throw at an organization.
Businesses and school districts CAN weather the storm with the right strategies.
Prefer to watch this info as a video? Click HERE to go to our YouTube channel.
Want to talk about getting YOUR organization through tough times? Save the date of October 12th at 3pm Pacific/6pm Eastern for a LIVE online training & discussion on the topic of building organization capacity during crisis! Details to come!