You’re in Crisis Management Mode. Now what?
We’ve all been wrenched out of our comfort zones this year and are in crisis management mode. It’s time to make some tough decisions and regain control.
As a leader in education, it’s your job to steer the ship through calm seas and choppy waters. Your teaching and administration teams and colleagues are looking to you for answers. But honestly, right now, you don’t know what’s to come - or even what the new academic year will be like. From worries about falling admissions, managing online lectures, and deciding how best to protect students and staff, your agenda is full of emergency decision-making and heavy discussions.
No one envies a leader during a crisis management situation: the stress of uncertainty and pressure of decision-making would weigh heavily on anyone. But being perfect isn’t possible: a ship gets battered during a storm. The important thing is that it comes out the other side.
As you navigate this new landscape, it’s essential to put in place crisis management strategies and understand how to make some hard decisions around your courses due to start next semester. There will be no more back normal for universities, schools or institutions - instead, we’ll all be stepping out into a new world.
So, what can you do to prepare your institution to not only weather the storm, but to come out stronger than ever before? We have compiled six tips below to help you with decision-making and leading in a crisis.
1.
Be honest & transparent
Transparency should always come from the top, especially in a crisis management situation. Without honesty and trust, your team will be operating in the dark. If hard truths are covered up by management, the team will act in turn and you won’t receive all the information you need for your decision-making process.
“A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them,” writes Ben Horowitz in his best seller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers.
The team already knows that there is a crisis and expects change, so take action. Tell them they must now be solutions-focused, and help them to undrestand what this means. Whether you call for weekly all hands Zoom meetings, or set up a forum for issues, it’s imperative everyone knows what’s going on and is prepared to plug up leaks before they destroy the whole dam.
2.
Dig deep and find inspiration
Transparency is one thing. At the same time, a leader has to inspire and offer something to work towards together. In a recent Harvard Business School webinar on crisis management, Professor Dutch Leonard noted the dual importance of transparency and hope:
“In very difficult circumstances—which I think is fair to say what we face right now—leaders have to do two things. You have to be brutally honest about what is happening. And you have to offer hope - and the hope can't be a fantasy,” he said.
He goes on to say that this hope has to be based on something concrete. As leader, it’s your job to find what makes your institution robust and underscore it. Consider the following:
- Make your vision clear: what will things be like after the storm?
- Show trust in your team through delegation and responsibility
- Highlight your team’s strengths: show them why they can succeed
- Celebrate wins, no matter how small
- Offer praise when you can and don’t dwell on failure
- Make sure everyone feels like they’re in this together. There’s a lot of power in camaraderie.
3.
Take a cold, hard look at where you are
All your decision-making must have a firm foundation in reality. The unfortunate truth is that with COVID-19 comes a great amount of uncertainty. This means we have to work with the things we do know (or can find out) which include:
- Changing government regulations, home and abroad
- Current government support for your institution and/or students
- Staff capabilities and training needs
- The state of your technological infrastructure
- The number of students
- The aptness of your buildings for eventual social distancing
- Finances
- And the other operating realities of your institution
By undertaking a rapid audit of everything that will impact on your team, only then will you have the oversight needed to manage the crisis. Once the review has been completed, you will be able to effectiviely set objectives, plan how you will mitigate risks and implement a strategy that deals with the short, mid and long-term landscape, post-COVID-19.
4.
Set SMART goals
The old plans are off the table. So we now need to look to create new, robust goals with clear objectives for your team. The SMART goal framework provides key foundations to make sure you are on the right track. SMART goals are:
Specific:
say exactly what needs to be achieved and leave no room for doubt
Measurable:
show how progress will be measured
Achievable:
give your team the training, tools and time to get it done
Relevant:
the goals and objectives need to make sense for all stakeholders
Time-bound:
deadines get things done.
With clear instructions and clearer communication, your team will be on the right footing to help you solve the problems you’re facing, with creativity, focus and vision.
5.
Get ready to innovate!
When everything is uncertain, so many rules go out the window. You cannot expect things to go on as planned. You need to start thinking in a more agile, innovation-first way. Your team needs to harness and maintain your current core business, but also explore new areas to make things more robust and future-proof.
The crisis management plan must align with your business objectives and stakeholder expectations. To ensure you achieve this, you also need to make sure that you are realistic about your capabilities. So, this is a good time to reflect on the following:
- What do you need to/want to do more of? (E.g. teaching online) and what you will need to do to support that?
- What do you have to stop doing? (E.g. encouraging fully attended lecture halls) - and decide how to deal with this in the short and mid-term.
- And what are you going to start doing? (E.g. new course types, internal training, new marketing campaigns)
The key to rapid innovation is having a unified team focused on one overarching goal, strict success criteria, and the ability to move fast and learn from client, student and staff feedback.
A lot can be taken from the principles of lean startup methodology:
- Aim to eliminate uncertainty (we know that in a pandemic, this can be increasingly difficult)
- Work smarter, not harder - it’s important to be efficient in your processes and to look for those quick wins where possible. Do not make things harder than they need to be
- Develop a minimum viable product (MVP) - that is, a product that satisfies the market need, but is further developed based on feedback.
6.
Make sure your team has what it needs
One major stumbling block that higher education institutions are facing right now, is a lack of confidence when it comes to teaching online. If distance learning is going to become part of your 'new-normal', you need to make sure your instructors have everything they need to help their learners thrive.
We’ve answered many of your burning questions and put together an in-depth Online Learning and Teaching resource. Our aim is to help you plan online courses, manage assessments, and deliver world-class student experiences.
If you have any worries or questions about crisis management or decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic, please reach out to us.
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