Writer’s Block
It has been almost two months since I contributed a new posting to my blog. In the first few weeks I was not overly concerned, but as time continued to pass and one month turned into two I started to panic. And with the panic came my first ever bout of writer’s block. Some might find this surprising given that as an academic fifty percent of my professional life is devoted to writing. I have written a dissertation, a book, numerous articles for the academic and business communities, and now regular blog postings (or at least what used to be regular). One would think that in the past 17 years I would have encountered writer’s block at least once, but in all honesty I have no recollection of ever having trouble writing. I love the creative expression of the task.
So, why now? I have several unfinished drafts of blogs that I could have posted over the past two months but I was never moved to do so. They were forced and I felt no passion for the topics I was considering. It occurs to me that this mental block is due in large part to an overwhelming feeling of disgust and disappointment by current events.
In the U.S. alone we have been witness to an alarming array of dysfunctional behavior by leaders we have elected and by those who have advanced up the corporate hierarchy. Much has been made of the incivility in Congress and the populace writ large during the health care debates and corresponding attempts to get health care legislation passed. Regardless of one’s political views, we used to be a country steeped in a tradition of civility and respect, especially for our elected official. Now even our leaders are demonstrating behavior inconsistent with conventional codes of moral and ethical conduct. Likewise, in the corporate world, as recently as this week we have witnessed Goldman Sachs, once a trusted stalwart of the economy, accused of fraud and misconduct of epoch proportions. I add to this line-up of woes the trouble that Toyota has continued to face with its seemingly endless recalls of one of the most trusted automotive product lines. Rewind over the past two years and I suddenly realized why I have had writer’s block – I feel like have already written about each of these topics…at length! I don’t think I have anything new to say.
For more than ten years I have been writing and teaching MBA students and executives about the topics of leadership under pressure and the importance of trust. And yet current events make me question whether my work makes a difference. Despite the plethora of examples from distant and recent history on how not to handle a crisis, or the too many stories of companies and their leaders that have been brought to their knees because of mismanagement, there is simply no evidence of learning, either from history, or from educators, or even from one’s competitors and peers.
So again, it is no wonder that I have had very little motivation or inspiration to continue espousing a philosophy of crisis leadership when it has seemed painfully obvious that it is falling on deaf ears. But the fighter and competitive spirit in me has prevailed and today I was inspired to write about why firms do not learn. Here are my conclusions:
- Stale or inappropriate routines. Firms are tradition and history bound. They also generally have strong cultural norms and ingrained strategies and decision making routines. Consequently, when novel situations arise most firm leaders are unable to readily see courses of actions beyond what they have always done. As a result, they respond to crises or to changing circumstances that are inappropriate for the current context.
- Inordinate focus on defense. Just like a person employs a set of defense mechanisms when they experience threat, so do organizations. For an organization, these defense mechanisms include actions and policies that prevent it from experiencing embarrassment or threat. These defenses prohibit firm leaders from taking responsibility for their actions and ultimately engage in behavior (e.g., blaming others, cover-ups) that is often is damaging to their reputations.
- Lapses in organizational memory. To fully take advantage of memory means that firm leaders would be able to access successful and failed situations from the past and use the insights from those prior experiences to inform them in the handling of current or future events. Yet what we observe time and again is that once a situation has passed, it is neither stored in a firm’s short or long term memory and so each situation is experienced and responded to as if it were the first encounter.
Sure these failings are challenging to overcome, and the fact that in recent history we do not see evidence of many organizations being able to do so is disconcerting. And then I am reminded that the media thrives on worst case scenarios. Of course we will learn about and be reminded of all of the negatively sensational things that go on in corporate America. But what I bring to your attention is why we don’t hear about those companies and the leaders that run them doing all of the constructive things that allow our society to continue to function. The reason is that those leaders who are most effective in crisis handling often prevent crises from surfacing in the first place. As I have stated in Leading Under Pressure, the best led crises are the ones we never hear about. That has to change. We must make the good leadership stories as sensational as the devastating ones that grab our attention. Stay tuned for a future blog highlighting a positive example of crisis leadership.
Tags: Add new tag, crisis leadership