Opinion: A Crisis-Management Primer

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b>By John Jackson

i>Executive Vice President

mni Logistics

A transportation manager and a platoon leader have something in common: Both frequently find themselves under fire and trying to make decisions that could affect the well-being of others. Of course, those bullets shooting out of the telephone or zinging out of the e-mail are not real, but your team nonetheless looks to you to get them out of the line of fire when situations occur that are beyond their capabilities.

Problems can be real or imagined, understated or exaggerated. Your company’s primary account may be inclined to exert leverage out of proportion to the seriousness of the situation. Faulty intelligence can mislead you, diverting you from the right course of action. How you handle these events is a measure of your ability as a manager.

Some people have a natural talent for crisis management, but most of us have had to practice, practice, practice the tips we have picked up along the way.

After serving my own time on the front lines, I have developed some survival tips you might add to your own repertoire. Many managers already employ some or most of these practices, but it never hurts to compare approaches, in case something strikes a different, usable note. The following are listed in the sequence of attack:

• Decide whether the situation requires special attention. This is the triage stage of crisis management. Assessing the gravity of the situation will concentrate your efforts where they are most needed. The majority of us do not have enough time in the day, so we have to conserve it by effectively deploying what time we have.

• Once you commit to entering the fray, do it with vigor. Your energy level will influence everyone involved, positively or negatively. You must gain their attention before you can lead.

• Stabilize the situation as best you can. Try to get the troops calmed down to face the challenge instead of each other. Emotion has its place in other venues, but in a crisis you want the team and the antagonist to act as coolly as possible.

• Make sure you select the right players. These advisers are your advance scouts and you will depend on them for input. Take the time to look over the field and determine the size and makeup of the group from which you will receive input. You can, and will, adjust this group along the way.

• Assemble and validate the pertinent facts. This is the single most important step in the process and it is vital that if you suspect any flaws in what you are hearing, you should check out your own facts. It is critical to know what is really going on, in order to transform this into an action plan.

• Design a means of handling the immediate situation, but also let it be a building block in the construction of a plan to prevent its reoccurrence. If you have followed the previous steps, you have by now determined the root cause of the crisis and can work on installing a permanent fix once the immediate situation has been resolved.

• Obtain buy-in from your associates — or work on them until they see the light. Very few people blindly follow a leader nowadays. Your solution to the problem must pass muster with those who are going to implement it. If it fails, contemplate another plan. If your group cannot help you shape up a promising plan of attack, you have made some mistakes in choosing its members.

• Implement the plan. When the time for reconnoitering is over, pull the trigger. Nothing gets better with age except wine. Every delay in taking action is an invitation for further instability and debilitates the people waiting for the decision.

• Monitor the plan’s application. One of the most effective things you can do is to project what else can go wrong and alert your crew to the possibilities. People will stray from the plan; you must be there to keep them on track. Check back often on what they are doing and keep your guidance flowing.

• Hold each person on your team accountable for performance. Each must hold up his or her end of the deal for the plan to have a chance at success. But it is also very important for the exercise to be a learning experience for them. The goal is to develop your team into problem solvers, or better yet, problem avoiders who eventually can take some of the pressure off you. Besides, people want to know how they are doing both during and after the battle.

• Adjust the plan based on valid developments, with no equivocation. Emerging conditions may affect the corrective action planned — or it may be of no real consequence. It is important to weigh these developments against the whole plan to arrive at a proper judgment. Simply hoping things will turn out all right is not an option if you wish to continue to be an effective manager — or for that matter, to be a manager at all.

Most problems end up at management level because the frontline troops are not able to correct the situation. They may be hampered by poor training, lack of ability or because it is simply over their heads. But when a crisis strikes, all these factors are irrelevant. The one priority is for the manager to act decisively to resolve the situation. After the smoke clears, you can count your casualties and pass out medals.

Omni Logistics, a bulk trucking services provider, is a division of Odyssey Overland in Hackettstown, N.J.

This opinion piece appears in the Oct. 3 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.