By Ryan W. Quinn
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Key points in this entry:
- The story of the 2008 Massachusetts ice storm told within the framework of Erika James’ and Lynn Wooten’s new book, Leading Under Pressure
- A review of the five stages of crisis response
- A description of the distinction between crisis management and crisis leadership
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I have had two experiences in the past few months that seem related to me, and worth sharing. First, I had the pleasure, this summer, of meeting Jennifer Flanagan, a state senator from Massachusetts, who told me a story that I will share in this blog entry. Second, my colleagues Erika James and Lynn Wooten published a wonderful new book, called Leading under Pressure. This book takes a Positive Organizational Scholarship view on crises, and is relevant for helping us understand both Jennifer’s story and crisis leadership in general.
The Crisis
In Flanagan’s words:
On the morning of December 13, 2008 the North Central region of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was blanketed with an unprecedented and disastrous coating of ice. Streets were not passable, grocery stores lost refrigerated food due to lack of power, gas stations were being used to fuel generators to try and keep houses warm, lines were forming outside of any fast food establishment that had a generator big enough to cook something. It was like a scene out of a movie.
In the past, elected officials had not gotten involved in crises like these. Usually there is an emergency response plan in place and each community follows that plan to ensure the safety of the citizens. In this case, the public utility company did not have much of an emergency response plan, and did little to follow what they had.
Crisis Management
James and Wooten describe five phases through which almost all crises pass, each of which may be managed well or poorly. These stages are:
- Signal Detection (deciphering which information suggests potential looming crises and which do not) – Signal detection could have happened a number of ways in the cities and towns that Flanagan represented. Early signals may have been poor customer service from utilities, degree of emergency preparedness measures taken by citizens and local business, and so forth. Just prior to the ice storm, weather forecasts might have been another signal. Even after the storm began, however, and the signals of disaster were clear to locals, they were still not clear to State representatives. Flanagan explained, “When the Governor, Lt. Governor, Speaker of the House and other public officials visited our area they were in shock as to what they saw. It was like going into a different world rather than fifty miles west in the same state.” The beginning of positive organizing in crisis is in effective signal detection, and James and Wooten describe individual and organizational capabilities needed for this stage, and each of the other stages.
- Preparation/Prevention – Detecting a signal, of course, is not enough. People must also prepare and if possible, take preventative measures to organize effectively in response to crisis. There was nothing the citizens and representatives could have done to stop the ice storm, of course, but there were things that could have been done to make it less of a disaster. As Flanagan toured the cities and towns she would represent, for example, she saw some towns in which “houses were well equipped with generators and supplies,” but in others “people were living in shelters housed in the local schools.” This differential response suggests that some people, some businesses, and some cities or towns had done more to prepare and prevent than others.
- Containment/Damage Control – Flanagan and the delegation from the state, as well as emergency responders, concerned citizens, and many others, worked night and day to contain and control the damage from the ice storm: “We assembled a delegation to obtain the resources we needed in a timely manner, including Democrats and Republicans. We held twice daily conference calls from our Emergency Operations Centers to keep track of progress and to ensure that we were getting what we needed. Each Legislator has specific requests and we all stood up for each other to get what we needed. Each part of my Senatorial district had its own unique ways of handling this situation and it was up to the Legislative Delegation to be flexible and united in our efforts to protect our constituents.”
- Business Recovery – Once the issue is contained and damage is minimized, people can recover the operations they have lost during the crisis. This gradually occurred as the damage of the ice storm was contained.
- Learning – This step is often, unfortunately, omitted from the process, which is one reason why crises recur and sometimes get worse. Fortunately, Flanagan and her colleagues have tried to learn from the ice storm, and in their roles, to institutionalize what they have learned by crafting legislation to prevent some of the errors of the past from occurring again.
Crisis Leadership
Some crises can be prevented. Some cannot. When crises do occur, they need to be managed: damage needs to be controlled, human needs should be administered to, and losses need to be mitigated. Many managers fail to manage crises well, and when they do, the damage to their own organizations and to others constituents can be bad or even catastrophic. Crisis management is critical. But people can do more than manage crises: they can also find opportunity in crises and use that opportunity to build new possibilities for the future.
Before discussing the idea of crisis leadership, it is important to note that if a person tries to build on opportunities in crises without managing the damage and loss, and helping the people hurt by a crisis first, then capitalizing on a crisis’ opportunity could do worse damage than failing to manage the crisis at all. But if a person can help mitigate the pain of a crisis through effective crisis management first, and also see and build on opportunity in a crisis, then the future can be a stronger and better future as a result.
Crises can be sources of opportunity for a number of reasons, including because in requiring people to re-build what is lost, they can ask how they might re-build a situation in a way that is even better than the way it was built the first time. For example, the Massachusetts ice storm contained the following re-building opportunities:
- An opportunity to create a better legal structure for ensuring that companies that administer the infrastructural services of communities do so well.
- An opportunity to create more collaborative relationships across party lines in the state legislature and between branches of government that continue to exist long after the crisis is over and can be used in other legislative efforts.
- An opportunity to build communities as stronger and more collaborative sets of relationships among citizens.
…and much more. These were opportunities that Senator Flanagan and her colleagues actively pursued. Senator Flanagan said, “Less than one year from the storm the Utilities Legislation was passed by the House and Senate and signed into law by Governor Deval Patrick. All the Legislators affected by the storm, both Democrat and Republican, were at the signing because we all had worked so hard to get to that point. Party lines did not matter at that point. What mattered was that the citizens of the Commonwealth were going to be better protected against companies who failed to perform.”