Who do you turn to when the blood hits the floor?

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Times like these tend to reveal who we can really trust to deliver.

Geoff Wilson

A crazy phenomenon has happened over the past couple of weeks as the world has digested the coronavirus shock. Executives, many of whom have never been in executive roles in a massive shock, have had to take stock of their teams in the most critical of ways. They have had to close ranks and think about who it is that they really trust.  Think about that.  Who are the people that you trust when it comes to executing all day, every day?  I’m betting that they aren’t necessarily the same people you interacted with the most prior to the crisis.

You know why?  Crises refine trust.

When you aren’t in crisis, you can afford to take a few flyers and let a few things go to hands you may not fully trust with them.  But, today?  You probably already have a good sense of who is “in” the circle of trust and who probably isn’t.  You probably know who can deliver the goods, and you are probably loading them up with everything they can handle.  And, you probably know who can’t, and you’ve probably made choices appropriately.

Mind you, I’m not talking about your “best” talents.  I’m talking about those who can deliver.  If your organization is like many, it’s your high-bred talents who struggle the most in challenging circumstances. They are often the ones who have had a lot of good come their way due to pedigree and profile, and who haven’t had to make a whole lot of nitty-gritty choices. The worst case is that they have achieved their position by NOT making choices. You know them:  They are the ones who probably never had to improvise for a C minus, so now they are hurting when the best and only possible grade is a C minus that requires massive improv.

The ones who CAN deliver in a crisis often look different. Your shop foreman probably isn’t at home on videoconference right now, she’s probably on the shop floor trying to figure out how to stagger shifts to avoid COVID-based shutdowns.  Your grizzled veteran HR, Finance, and IT leaders are probably on the job 24X7 right now while you might be simultaneously finding that their younger, shinier counterparts (in some cases, the grizzled vets’ bosses) aren’t up to the challenge.

It’s a good lesson to learn.

Bruce Springsteen wrote a song to go along with the 2008 motion picture The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke.  In the song, the washed-up, has-been wrestler declares that he’s a “one-trick pony,” a “one-legged dog,” and a “scarecrow filled with nothing but dust and weeds.”  In other words, he declares that he’s not of much use for anything, except…

…the wrestler also declares this:

“…bet I can make you smile when the blood, it hits the floor
Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?”

I am going to bet that you are in the middle of finding your own one-trick ponies and one-legged dogs–rediscovering the grizzled talent in your organization. You know them as the people who are specialized enough to be really strong in a crisis.

I’m also going to bet you are finding out that–sometimes–those are the people who might have deserved a bit more attention.  You are probably  doing the same “trust triage” with your advisors, sorting out the ones who can help you go and go faster from the ones with a lot of polish and bluster but no “go.” You know them, they are the ones who are all hat and no cattle.  Judging by the sudden surge in snazzy marketing pitches on LinkedIn around the COVID-19 crisis, a lot of high polish consultants are suddenly in possession of a lot of free time.

While I firmly believe that you should always sort out your show dogs from your working dogs, now is a great time to keep your eyes open for the ones who buckle in and deliver vs. the ones who…don’t.

Because you need to know who can make you smile when the blood hits the floor

Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?

I’ll leave you with a link to the song…It’s worth a spin.

What do you think?

When it all goes to VUCA, what do you do?

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Is there an operating system for strategy under absolute uncertainty?

Geoff Wilson

Well, the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. It certainly didn’t take long, did it?

Ask anyone and they will tell you that the world is somewhere between an intense over-reaction and The Walking Dead’s best impression of The End Of The World As We Know It (you know?  TEOTWAWKI). That is to say, it’s anybody’s guess where the global economy–nay, the global social fabric–may end up after COVID-19 has run its course.  Sports are canceled, schools are shut, travel is being banned in ever-tightening circles, and social institutions are being completely put on hold.

Right now, just another blog on strategy may not be sufficient for the Big-Mac-layer-cake of stress that is being thrown at the average citizen around the globe.  We are, all at once, not only dealing with commercial collapse, but also social and institutional uncertainty on a scale not often seen without physical invasion. And, if YOU, dear reader, are not feeling the stress, you can be assured the people around you do.

So, instead of writing about what you should do as a strategic executive–which is a hard thing to do when a reader might just as easily be at an airline, a retailer, or a bank–I thought I’d write on how you might organize your thinking in any challenging circumstance. The question at hand is really this:  Is there an operating system for strategy under absolute uncertainty? I think that there might be.

There is an acronym that is commonly used in military circles called “VUCA.”  It has been around since the 1980s.

A VUCA environment comprises:

Volatility – where the speed and magnitude of change is exceptional

Uncertainty – where outcomes are unpredictable and surprises are many

Complexity – where the number of changes happening at once is very high

Ambiguity – where the potential for error and over- or under-reaction is real

or, just VUCA, for short.

We all live in a VUCA world right now.  So, how do we handle it?

With my best fireside chat tone, I’m going to suggest that the first way of navigating VUCA is to realize that you cannot “handle” it.  There is no traditional “control” of circumstances in a VUCA world whether you are an executive or a common citizen.  You cannot “priority list” your way out of VUCA.  If you are used to controlling circumstances, you’d best get ready to learn to read and react. If you are used to calling the plays and issuing the orders, you’d best get ready to play defense and establish your lines of retreat.  If you have been inflexible in your pursuit of success, it may be time to consider flexibility in the shadow of collapse.

In other words, it’s time to focus on resiliency and responsiveness vs. concrete priorities and resoluteness.  VUCA demands it.

But, where do you start?  Your portfolio is a mess, your kids are out of school, your office is shut, and your customers aren’t answering the phone…how does a person regain footing?

Here’s my best advice, and it’s as simple as two steps:

The first step is to major in the majors.  Just as I’m sure there will be a lot of people who may one day regret that they drove all over town trying to hoard toilet tissue when they absolutely should have been ensuring that grandma was comfortably anti-social, I’m sure that there are a lot of minor things you are stressing about that are adding to your sense of VUCA.  You have to prune the ones that matter less.

That means postponing that training program and using today’s environment as a training program in itself.

It means canceling that “nice to have” project and doubling down on the must-haves.

It means stopping the standing meetings that you have and opening up your calendar.

It means ensuring you have enough strategic cash reserves (at home or in your business) without resorting to willy-nilly asset sales.

It means taking a moment to understand what kind of volatility is tolerable (perhaps the market being down 8 percent today really is a secondary concern), and what kind is not (how can you ensure that your customers will actually receive the goods???)

It probably means having a frank conversation with your family and your organization about what it means to live in times of extreme VUCA: about how choices we make now may look a lot different than choices we made even days ago. The circumstances demand that we major in the majors.

The second step is to accelerate your review cycles on the “majors.” Decisions on the majors that might have been revisited quarterly or monthly are now reviewed daily or hourly.  In the first step (majoring in the majors) you created some capacity by pruning the activity set.  Now, it’s time to deploy that capacity to evaluate and react faster than you would have otherwise.  Many executive teams are, today, engaging in rapid, periodic calls about their workforce when just last week they probably did so monthly.  Why?  Because the environment demands it.  The same is true of your household, your office, your customer portfolio, and many other things. This is not to say that short-term thinking dominates and that long-term things don’t get done, it is to say that long-term things are tested for relevance on a much more frequent basis.

But a word of caution:  Don’t try to evaluate everything rapidly.  Step one is critical, lest you over-stress yourself, your family, and your organization.  Be explicit about majoring in the majors.  Take some stuff off your plates, and those of your cohorts.

So, is there an operating system for strategy under absolute uncertainty?  I think so, but it’s a concept–perhaps a mindset–and not a recipe.

First, major in the majors:  Prune the activity set to create the capacity to stay ahead of what matters most.

Second, tighten up your decision cycles: Invest the capacity you have created to accelerate your review and decision cycles to match the pace of change in your environment.

This two-step process for managing uncertainty is true if you are running a household, and it’s true if you are running the largest organization in the world.

Keep your hands washed, and your prayers flowing.

What do you think?