Leading in a time of crisis
How should I lead in this time?
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a dramatic interruption in the way we lead. What does it take to navigate this crisis now that traditional metrics and assumptions have been rendered irrelevant? How do we decode the 'new normal'?
On this page we consider the key leadership functions of sense making | strategy & decision making | visioning | and managing change. We explore the diverse challenges facing us.
We look at the how we may have to refigure our teams to meet the needs of the crisis we are living in. At the end of the page you will find links to helpful articles about leading in a time of crisis as well as leadership tools you can use.
"It appears that prudent risk management suggests, at a minimum, that schools need to be prepared for students toggling between receiving instruction at school and students receiving instruction at home—where this toggling may occur during the entire next school year. On April 6, Dr. Gabriel Leung, wrote in the New York Times: After achieving a sustained decline ...and bringing the number of daily new cases down to an acceptable baseline thanks to stringent physical distancing, a society can consider relaxing some measures (say, reopen schools). But it must be ready to reimpose drastic restrictions as soon as those critical figures start rising again —as they will, especially, paradoxically, in places that have fared not too badly so far. Then the restrictions must be lifted and reapplied, and lifted and reapplied, as long as it takes for the population at large to build up enough immunity to the virus. Trying to see our way through the pandemic with this “suppress and lift” approach is much like driving a car on a long and tortuous road. One needs to hit the brakes and release them, again and again, to keep moving forward without crashing, all with an eye toward safely reaching one’s final destination."
“For some organizations, near-term survival is the only agenda item. Others are peering through the fog of uncertainty, thinking about how to position themselves once the crisis has passed and things return to normal. The question is, ‘What will normal look like?’ While no one can say how long the crisis will last, what we find on the other side will not look like the normal of recent years.” (Ian Davis, 2009 in the middle of the financial crisis)
Key Leadership Functions
Sense-making
How do I make sense of this situation? What's really going on here? Sensemaking is about making connections between yourself, the situation you are in and the other people you are with. Reflect: What is most important right now? What might we be missing? Where are we heading? How might we get there? To what extent do we need to break sense with the world we think we understand to imagine new possibilities? Does sense-breaking need to accompany sense-making?
“I think we might go through many years of flux and phases where VUCA is vital. VUCA is a concept that describes the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the world. Each of these VUCA challenges demand distinct types of leadership responses. As an international leader who has led through SARS Swine flu and MERS along with the day to day dramas natural disasters and uncertainty of international education environments, I have long since regarded these considerations as key. However, it has now kicked on to a whole new level. I don't think we will be able to create anything clear and concrete for the feasible future and what will be crucial is how we wrestle with artificial intelligence technology and human intelligence to plan and replan amongst what I would call the only new norm - no norm , just uncertainty. Currently I feel I am wasting a lot of energy thinking about a future I can't control. How will we get teachers in and out of the country at the end of this academic year?” (Neil Bunting, Principal of Shenwai Longgang International School,Shenzhen City, Guangdong, China - in an email to author.)
“'Holding' is a more obscure and seldom celebrated facet of leadership than vision, but no less important. And when crises hit, it becomes essential. What we need is a type of holding, so that we can move purposefully. In psychology, the term ‘holding’ describes the way another person, often an authority figure, contains and interprets what’s happening in times of uncertainty. Containing refers to the ability to soothe distress and interpreting to the ability to help others make sense of a confusing predicament. Leaders who ‘hold’ think clearly, offer reassurance, orient people and help them stick together.” (Gianpiero Patriglieri, The psychology behind effective crisis leadership, Harvard Business Review, 22 April 2020)
School leaders and governing boards demonstrate their leadership in three distinct modes: (a) fiduciary = the stewardship of tangible asset(s); (b) strategic = to have a winning strategy; and (c) generative = being a sense maker (a cognitive process for deciding what to pay attention to, what it means, and what to do about it).
In the current crisis the focus is often on the operational, fiduciary and strategic aspects of the role: meeting the challenges of distance learning, protecting the wellbeing of the community, enrolment and budget planning, and all the uncertainties connected with future re-opening. However, more long-term decisions also must be taken. It is here that it is helpful for governing bodies to act in a generative mode, to help make sense of the situation.
A group of school leaders has created a list of generative questions, to act as filters to ensure that the school keeps in the forefront of their minds what is most important.
- How, if at all, should we need to govern differently in this time of crisis?
- What core values, beyond student and staff safety, should guide our decisions and actions?
- What elements of the school’s values and culture are being put to the test during this time? Why? Implications?
- What questions should we be asking ourselves before considering this issue?
- What does decide the issue this way (vs another way) reveal about who we are and what we stand for?
- What’s really going on here?
- As we focus on the most immediate and pressing needs, how do we ensure that we don’t lose sight of the bigger picture / longer term?
- What are we learning about our community and about education as a result of isolation?
- What does the Head of School most need and how can the board add the most value at this time?
- What will the school, students, and staff most need when we reopen?
- Are we learning anything that might cause us to rethink the assumptions that 'school' is based on?
- Do we WANT our 'school' to be the same as it was before this crisis?
- What must we not lose or compromise as we adapt to the new reality?
- What did we think was true before (the pandemic) that turns out not to be true now? What does that tell us?
Strategy | Decision-making | direction-giving
As we focus on the most immediate and pressing needs, how do we ensure that we don’t lose sight of the bigger picture / longer term? How am I making decisions? In times of crisis leaders need to provide clarity of purpose, intent and priority both for the long term and the immediate, in order to allow teams and individuals to be fully empowered. Which tools are you using to make these decisions and provide this direction? As well as mitigating current challenges, how are we building capacity to withstand subsequent waves of the pandemic?
Key aspects of strategic thinking going forward
"Fluidity in Strategy: Strategic planning will need to shift toward more stealth thinking and planning, placing fluidity at the core. Great schools and colleges will practice more fluid and real-time strategy and planning exercises and will respond with greater scalability in their business model. They will desire to ramp up or taper down resources according to their circumstances."
"Ongoing Scenario Building - Great schools and colleges will become more accustomed to building scenarios, from enrolment to fundraising to investment planning. This will keep them in a more flexible rather than fixed mindset, understanding that it is our anticipation and response to circumstances that often determine our destiny."
“Diversified Ecosystems of Delivery - Finally, schools and colleges will be forced to do what they have only begun to consider in the past. They will begin to diversify their delivery platforms for learning, allowing hybrid approaches to teaching and learning. This might look like a mixed-model of delivery that includes three nodes or sessions of learning each day: 1) location-based school, 2) experiential or real-world learning, and 3) online. Students might even rotate them through concurrent sessions or nodes, which could increase enrolment capacity and even…crazy idea here…bring cost down and make the school or college more accessible.” (Ian Symonds, Seven Things That Will Happen in Education as a Result of COVID-19, 6 April 2020)
“Agility: Schools must be agile, making decisions both thoughtfully and nimbly with well-curated information, and able to implement them quickly. And, they must be able to reconcile opportunities against their long-term direction. It is what we call finding the intersection between mission and market. Most educational institutions were not built for speed or endurance; they were built to feed themselves. The new normal will force all organizations to be agile, or they will not endure.”
Scalability: Schools and colleges of the future must be able to ramp up, or scale down, depending upon circumstances. Fixed assets - including faculty and facilities - cannot slow them down or impede their ability to mobilize and implement the decisions they have made. The ability to move from idea to implementation becomes a hallmark of a new strategy paradigm. (Ian Symonds, A New Breed of Strategy, March 31, 2020)
Leading change
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How am I leading change? Covid-19 has disrupted the way we have been doing ‘schooling’, calling for significant changes in the way we do things. Have I effectively communicated a change story that helps all stakeholders understand why and how we have to change? Have I put in place systems that support the change and skill up the teaching faculty to work in a new way? Am I leading in such a way as to model the change we need to bring about? What will the school, students, and staff most need when we reopen?
“The role of the administrator as a pollinator and as a catcher of ideas” is critical. As teachers continue supporting their students online, fostering faculty connections and the opportunity to hear firsthand what is working online and what new ideas are emerging requires a more deliberate approach on behalf of school leaders (Michael Nachbar, GOA Executive Director).
Here are some tools you may find helpful as you work to make sense of the situation, lead people in it, make decisions under pressure, bring about significant change and look to the future.
Making sense in times of crisis
VUCA framework for leading in times of crisis. Click HERE.
I attach a very helpful introduction to VUCA at the end of this page.
Decision making under pressure.
The TDODAR Decision Model. Click HERE.
Leading people in a period of significant change
McKinsey Four building blocks of change. Click HERE.
Envisioning the future
Scenario Analysis. Click HERE.
Thinking Strategically"None of us was taught how to lead in a pandemic. But what we can do as leaders is to show up, with optimism and resilience, to reach out and ask for help and, most of all, to do what is right and to stay true. Leadership is a task with humanity and authenticity at its heart. As one school leader tweeted: “We are solid! We will look after our colleagues, our kids and our communities. We feel privileged to be able to serve.” (Steve Munby, Visiting professor at UCL Institute of Education.)
Spotlight: The role of school leadership in challenging times, AITSL 2020.
Leadership in a VUCA world - 12 Critical competencies for leadership in the future
Human leadership in a time of crisis and uncertainty, CS&A Search and Conculting Group, June 2020.
Kevin Sneader & Shubham Singhal, Beyond Coronavirus: The path to the next normal, McKinsey & Company, March 2020: leaders need to demonstrate Resolve (determining the scale, pace and depth of action required) | Resilience (requiring leaders to make difficult decisions to keep their business afloat) | Return (requiring leaders to reassess their entire business as it opens to the new normal) | Reimagination (imagining new possibilities and ways of doing things) | Reform (modernising to integrate classroom and distance learning as well as social innovations such as working from home).
McKinsey & Company, Applying past leadership lessons to the coronavirus pandemic, March 2020
Andrea Alexander, Aaron De Smet & Leigh Weiss, Decision making in uncertain times, McKinsey & Company, March 2020
Tessa Basford & Bill Schaninger, The four building blocks of change. McKinsey & Company, 2016
Hanna Hart, What story will you tell about your response to coronavirus? 10 questions to guide your narrative, Forbes, 1 April 2020
Kevin Sneader & Shubham Singhal, The future is not what it used to be: Thoughts on the shape of the next normal, McKinsey & Company, April 2020.
Strategy meets the Coronavirus ~ Richard Rumelt, Strategy in a 'structural break',December 2008, McKinsey & Company
Jake Bryant, Li-Kai Chen, Emma Dorn, and Stephen Hall, School-system priorities in the age of coronavirus, McKinsey & Company, April 2020
Cheryl Boughton, Leading in a time of crisis, 24 April 2020 draws together advice from school psychologists. She suggests that school leaders need to be courageous | clear | candid | connected | empathetic.
Leading through times of crisis with Dr. Angela Terpstra - a good podcast to listen to.
10 keys for crisis leadership, Mark Smylie & Joseph Murphy
This is a very good summary of VUCA:
UNESCO have supplied a good range of resources, including a number of briefings:
UNESCO COVID-19 Education Response Education Sector issue notes, Crisis sensitive educational planning, Issue Note 2.4, April 2020.
UNESCO COVID-19 Education Response Education Sector issue notes, Distance learning strategies in response to COVID-19 school closures, Issue Note 2.1 April 2020. A helpful introduction to distance learning.
UNESCO COVID-19 Education Response Education Sector issue notes, Nurturing the social and emotional wellbeing of children and young people during crises, Issue Note 1.2 April 2020.
UNESCO COVID-19 Education Response Education Sector issue notes, COVID-19 Crisis and curriculum, Issue Note 4.2 April 2020.
UNESCO COVID-19 Education Response Education Sector issue notes, Supporting teachers and education personnel during times of crisis, Issue Note 2.2 April 2020): very good suggestions on supporting teacher professional development and well-being going forward.
UNESCO COVID-19 Education Response Education Sector issue notes, School Reopening, Issue Note 7.1 April 2020.