From Woo Hoo! to Brace! Brace! Brace!
- Bob Merrill
- Mar 31, 2020
- 10 min read
As many of you are road warriors, I suspect your experience helps you figure out fairly quickly what kind of service level you can expect based on the first few interactions with the flight attendants. It may be a happy smile at the door and a "welcome aboard" or encounter one in the aisle moving bags around to make space while mumbling to themselves. You have all seen the YouTube videos of the stand up comedians, and one of my favorite flights was as we were rolling down the runway the loudspeaker was saying "I think I can, I think I can!" Brings a smile and an attitude of "Woo Hoo! This is an awesome flight and we are going to have so much fun you are going to forget about the narrow seats and no upgrade." Southwest created this and others followed to varying success.
My wife feels the plane bump just after takeoff and, as a frequent traveler, gets a bad feeling. She has taken this flight from Chicago Midway to Indianapolis many times and feels the plane change directions and head a different way than usual. More anxiety. This is validated by the flight attendant that sprints from the back of the aircraft to the cockpit door. She opens it, talks with the pilots, and emerges with, as my wife says, massive eyes and a look of distress. She gathers her colleagues and they are rapidly talking to each other and, she observes, grabbing trash bags. All of this is clearly visible to my wife. The pilot comes on the intercom and says that they are experiencing a hydraulic leak in the landing gear wheel well and have declared an emergency. He says there will be emergency equipment on the runway when they land and not to be alarmed if they spray the plane. The trash bags, my wife surmises, are to collect shoes that could puncture the slides in an evacuation. As my wife is sharing, she says "there was no way I was giving up my shoes." Then, as a passenger, you just wait. This is long before texting and calling would have been an option - iPhones did not exist. She said in the next 15 minutes she completely reprioritized her life. We have been married for over 25 years so I find it comforting I made the cut. What did not make the list was the organization she worked for at the time and our DINK (Double Income, No Kids) lifestyle. We had dogs, trained dogs, showed dogs, hung around dog people, had great other DINK friends, went into the city, ate out, walked along the river in Naperville with our dogs. Things were going to change due to this unforeseen event, and one that, quite frankly, I did not experience or share with her. I only was engaged in the response to the event, not the actual event. I was not on the plane, but it did have an impact.
Now think about the flight attendant. This was Southwest Airlines, so you know she is fun, and energetic, and definitely lived the Woo Hoo culture, especially on commuter flights like the one where they saw a lot of the same people. But in an instant, that went away. In a few minutes she could be shouting brace, brace, brace. In addition to being happy and bubbly, they were also receive intense training just for this type of emergency. She still had the skill to deal with and succeed in these new circumstances. Rally the team and get ready for what is next. You see, the flight attendant could not do anything in the moment to change the outcome of what was going to happen. The event was unfolding. She could not stop the hydraulic leak or fly the plane. She was a passenger just like my wife, except she had experience and had a clear definition of her role in the possible outcome. Over years of exercises, simulations, and real world events, she had been trained to execute a series of established actions to get the passengers off the plane. They had done the safety briefing, the passengers were seated with seatbelts for the take-off, bags were stowed. So all the things that could complicate the post event action, evacuating the plane if needed, were done. If not, this was something she was going to have to solve during the crisis or the outcome was at risk, and that is what her and the team were doing.
If you are a senior manager in an organization, you are in crisis mode right now. In some respects you may be the pilot in command, while other facets of your job may see you switch to the role of flight attendant checking to see if you are prepared for what you need to do next. If you have customers, volunteers, staff, etc. the worst mindset that you want to be in is that of the passenger with that uncomfortable feeling of being out of control due to internal and external factors. In fact, you might feel like you are all three at once. You turn on the news or receive communication from your leadership using words like "unprecedented" or "global" or "disruption" and the scale of this feels massive and out of control. It is. Yet, it also is not.
When you stop, focus, and think about where you are right now, you have probably experienced similar challenges before: recession, key staff loss, strategic business model change, a system upgrade disaster, etc. In addition, you have a folder full of team and individual evaluations and assessments. You know your, your staff's, and your peer's Meyers-Briggs, you have your StrenghtFinder repot, you have had an EQ Inventory Report, you completed the I Opt survey, you have been plotted on DISC wheel with your colleagues and peers, and know which of the six colors your thinking hat is. You also have the experience of working through those sessions with your team. So, when you step back, you are like the pilot and the flight attendant in that you may not have been in this exact scenario, but you have skills and tools at your disposal. Be sure to take time to find the connections from your experience to help you say, "I got this."
Key Questions: Do you have a specific and desired outcome in mind?
Consider the pilot of my wife's plane. His outcome, land the plane in a controlled manner so the passengers and crew survive. Think about Miracle on the Hudson. Just because the circumstances of where he could land changed, the pilot's end game was clear.
The flight attendant. Get my team, this cabin and the passengers prepared for the landing and ready to evacuate.
The great work of the pilots had the upside of not triggering the need for an evacuation, but the flight attendants still had done their job even when faced with an uncertain outcome.
I feel confident many of your are doing the first and most important thing, which is ensuring your team members and their families are and remain safe and have access to resources to deal with the current reality. You are reaching out to staff on webinars, doing fun things like having coffee with your peers virtually, doing your job of keeping others updated on the latest news, communicating with key stakeholders, working through budgets to cut expenses that are unnecessary to conserve cash, etc. You may be listening to webinars from industry experts and veterans trying to gather ideas and insights on what new options and creative solutions might be out there. And, a harsh fact, you may be working on lists of people to be released or furloughed. This is hard, emotional work. It requires massive energy and courage and is peppered with anxiety. I know you are doing it well.
Now, re-read the above paragraph. Which role are you performing? Are you the pilot? Are you the flight attendant? Or is all this activity just a passenger getting ready for what comes next along with everyone else on the plane?
ACTIVITY:
On a piece of paper write down the outcome or result you are working towards. If you can't or you don't know, that is perfectly acceptable, but the first phase of turning around the organization is to have a clear definition of the outcome you want so you can focus on the critical path that leads to the highest probablity of success.
Woah, you said turnaround?
No, this is just business continuity.
OK, what about transformation, is that better?
Heck no, this is just business continuity. Let's get through as painless as possible.
OK, you win, what is the ultimate goal and outcome of your business continuity plan. I'll help. We want to be the same business with the same processes with the same expectations from our employees and customers even though they have experienced a monumental shift in ways of working and personal financial conditions that impact our product and services.
You know this is not reality. It may be a story you are telling yourself, but the impact of what is happening is going to vary based on the industry and the level of transformation organizations are willing to execute. It is not zero, and there are both upsides and downsides. It is scary but necessary. Donald Rumsfeld was famously harassed for a common risk analysis saying "there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns." Ironically, if you listen to the press conferences, you can bucket all of the statements the various experts make into each of these categories. The risk is the processes and behaviors that seek outcome of "return to normal,""stabilize," or "survive" may lead your team or the larger organization into the role of passenger subject to the fate of the industry. I know you will do better than that, because you are fully capable.
In his book "High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders," Morgan McCall Jr. talks about taking charge of your development and describes a poster you may have seen that usually is a photo of a full lifeboat that has the proverb "Pray to God, But Row Toward Shore." In this challenging time I think his advice applies here as well, mainly because though hard, this is about development. Trial and error and learning new ways to do things. "To trust that an organization will do what is in the best interest of even its most talented people is like hoping the IRS will find errors in your favor if it audits you. An organization may have the best of intentions, but you still have to do what you can do to get yourself where you want to go." This is not insubordination or that you are acting against the group or you do not have trust in the organization, but if you are waiting on the definitive next step, that is a known unknown. You are losing time and, quite frankly, not using the skills and talents I know you have. The flight attendant could not waste her time thinking about whether the pilot was a good student in class, got a full nights sleep, had a good co-pilot next to him helping him, or how the plane would land or even make the airport. She was doing what she could to support the process in the crisis.
The following is an exercise to get you started thinking about the outcome you have in your mind and the activities you are doing to support it.
Step 1:
Get out a piece of of paper and write down the key, material activities you have been doing in the past two weeks. Again, we are starting from the point that this is a crisis and there are a lot of things you are doing that need to be done. Here are some starters and you can create your own, build on these, or use them. Don't overthink it and set a timer in your head similar to popcorn in the microwave. You know when you are pretty much done.
People:
Checking in with staff to keep them healthy and safe
Prioritizing roles
Revenue:
Calculating and adjusting forecasts based on cancelled events
Forecasting revenue for events remaining in the financial year
Expenses:
Exiting or cancelling contracts or renegotiating
Estimating expense increases in categories due to remote working
Strategic Initiatives in Flight:
Evaluating the delivery date of Innovation A
Step 2:
Turn over the paper in Step 1. Take out another sheet of paper. This is hard. Think of your organization, product, and team. What were the most critical things you were working on right before the crisis? Write them down on this new piece of paper.
Step 3:
Compare the two sheets of paper. Pull out any that are similar, and don't be too dogmatic in the similarities. If you were having weekly team meetings to see how people were doing in their job, then that is the same as checking in on people.
Step 4:
Going back to the earlier ACTIVITY where we wrote down the outcome or result you are working towards, perform a self assessment and check-in. Caution, do not "judge" your performance or think there has been something wrong. This is about analysis and sharpening the focus. Simply, are you spending time doing the activities and spending time that will help you achieve the outcome you envision for you, your team.
If you are still trying to define this THAT IS OK! It just highlights you may need a spend a little more time and maybe gather a little more information from your staff and peers. However, the sooner you commit to an outcome and start aligning your actions around it, the more momentum you will build and the better opportunity you will have to learn and adjust as the world evolves.
Good work and I am happy to volunteer my thoughts and feedback if you would like some additional discussion or challenge. We can do via email, phone, or conference. No fees.
My wife has a button that was in the Truman Show Movie. It says "How's it going to end?" This known unknown about the lifting of restrictions, financial conditions of organizations and individuals, etc. are some of the big open items. I am finalizing a tool I have used many, many times to share. It will help you and your team balance the near, medium, and long term priorities and resources. Why do we have weather radar? So, we can prepare for when the storm is coming, but also so we can adjust our plan and activities for when it is over.
The end of the story: I had dropped her off at Midway and then was heading to an appointment with a customer up by O'Hare. After her plane landed back at Midway, she called me in my car and replayed what had happened with the adrenaline still coursing through her veins. She needed me to come and get her and take her home. I called the customer to cancel the appointment, which he understood. I picked her up and she basically laid on the couch the rest of the day. If you ask her today which customer I was going to see, she can tell you. The reason for that is not because of the incident on the plane, but because about a year later I was traveling to that same customer when the car phone rang again. This time it was my wife calling to tell me she was pregnant with our first child. Life would never be the same....it was transformed.
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