CHRO's Idea Incubator: Dealing with major disruptions

The unique circumstances of the pandemic forced individuals to manage and lead in unprecedented ways. In the past, evaluating someone's ability to handle crises or adapt to disruptive environments took several years of observation and development. However, the pandemic condensed this timeline to mere months, providing real-time insights into leadership capabilities.

According to Patrick Wright, Thomas C Vandiver Bicentennial Chair in Business at Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, talent leaders and chief HR officers learnt some surprising lessons during this disruption. Some individuals, initially considered high potentials and future leaders, struggled to cope with the situation. Their inability to communicate effectively with their teams, manage tasks and focus on achieving goals instead of physical presence in the office became evident. Consequently, these individuals were not the potential leaders organisations had predicted.

The pandemic also revealed unexpected leaders among those not previously considered high potentials. These individuals stepped up and demonstrated their ability to thrive in disruptive conditions. The pandemic acted as a test, objectively assessing leadership skills without the biases or subjectivity that might cloud judgments in normal circumstances.

Lessons from past disruptions can be applied to future ones, says Wright, and organisations should anticipate the occurrence of new disruptions as stability is no longer the norm. By actively expecting and preparing for disruptions, companies can navigate through uncertain times more effectively. While some disruptions may be unpredictable, being prepared to the best extent possible can mitigate their impact.

In this video, the first in our CHRO’s Idea Incubator series, Wright offers some lessons on how organisations can prepare and navigate disruptions more effectively.

Transcript

Why the pandemic became a leadership test

For all of the horrible things that happened through the pandemic a lot of companies, they found, I guess, the silver lining in that cloud is that it both helped them assess and develop leaders in organisations. Because what the pandemic did is it forced people to manage and lead in a way that they'd never had to manage and lead before. What we heard early on was that companies talked about the fact that to assess somebody in crisis mode or whether or not they can do a turnaround or handle some type of a negative event, it might have taken them three or four years of development and putting people in different positions and hoping to be able to see whether or not they can adapt to that kind of a disruptive environment. And what the pandemic did is it condensed that timeframe into months instead of years. 

When high potentials fail and unexpected leaders step up

And so what a lot of talent leaders and chief HR officers said is that they were able to see in almost real time how well someone could lead during a disruptive event. 

And what that did is it on one hand took people that they thought were high potentials and viewed as being leaders and potential future leaders of the organisation and essentially knocked them off the high potential list because as they saw it, their inability, maybe even paralysis of dealing with the situation, their inability to communicate well with their teams, their inability to manage teams through partly communication, but partly through defining deliverables and tasks and focusing more on the accomplishment of things as opposed to simply seeing people in the office and behaviourally viewing them on a day-to-day basis. 

Having seen that that was a difficult thing for some of the leaders it helped companies identify in a pretty transparent way that these probably may be fine in their positions and they may have some runway, but they're probably not going to reach the top of the organisation. What was even more surprising was that they talked about some of the people that were not high potentials that they really had thought were probably not the future leaders of the organisation who stepped up and really demonstrated an ability to work under a disruptive condition. So it was a kind of a transformation of high potential lists that came through that because some people failed the test. mean, they felt like a test. Some people failed the test and some people passed the test.

And one of the great things about tests is it tends to be an objective measure. So, you know, when I give an exam in class, it's a set of questions and it distinguishes who spent the time to learn the material and who has not. And what the pandemic acted as was a test for leaders to see who can step up and lead through a crisis and who's unable to there was, because of the nature of the business and the task environment, it tended to eliminate a lot of the subjectivity and friendships and so on that made cloud or biased judgments about leaders. And it made it a relatively more objective assessment. 

This won’t be the last disruption – be ready

So are there lessons to be learned from past disruptions that could be applied to future disruptions? Kind of hard to say, but I think the best first lesson is expect a new disruption. And that is that, you know, for a long time, you know, the idea was that organisations exist in this kind of relatively stable environment. Over the last 30 years that's been questioned, but it's kind of a dynamic environment. It is changing, but not necessarily in a traumatic way. And then, you know, again, from the financial crisis, particularly the pandemic, you saw these huge disruptions. And so I think the key is from a company standpoint or a leadership standpoint is to constantly be expecting that there's going to be another disruption. 

And then that leads to kind of trying to look around the corners and figure out what is that next disruption going to be? Again, if you just think over the last few years, what we've seen, particularly in the United States, is not just the COVID pandemic but then the George Floyd murder and the racial unrest, followed by an election and a political environment that's just gotten completely nasty. Now we're looking at the war in Ukraine and all of these different things that have taken place. Not sure that you could have predicted any of those. So at one level, just know that there's going to be a disruption and try and prepare your organisation for that. At another level, the extent that you can predict something and prepare for it, that's really helpful. 

Why care for employees builds trust in crisis

I think the second thing that we've tended to learn through this is that leaders who emphasise that they care about people will be more positively viewed than leaders who seem to only represent the interests of the shareholders. And it's not to say that shareholders are an unimportant stakeholder. They're an extremely important stakeholder. But to the extent that leaders can communicate that they value the employees, that they're sensitive to the needs of employees, that gives employees more confidence that they will be taken care of in some way. 

To give you an example, Boeing went through a layoff a few years ago and it wasn't necessarily the best process possible. And then it got a new CHRO in, had to go through another layoff. And one of the things that they focused on is that we won't leave these employees behind. So they're offering outplacement services until they find a job, rather than say, you'll have it for four weeks, and hopefully you'll be able to get something there. like, you're a Boeing employee. We're going to be committed to you until you land somewhere else. And so again, it is the economic disruption that they faced through the crisis and so on.

But it is that emphasis they've got that they care about employees that I think is extremely valuable. And then the third thing is, you we've talked about before, it's just communication, transparent communication, trying to, you know, as I've heard two CEOs talk about this, that the purpose of a leader or the task of a leader is to define reality and give hope.

And so in the midst of a disruption, it is imperative that they are transparent in defining the reality that the company faces. Good, bad, indifferent, even worst case scenarios. But more importantly, that in the context of that reality, they're able to communicate the hope that this is how we're going to get through this as an organization. And if leaders can do that, if they can define reality and give hope through that disruption, that is probably going to be more effective than anything else that they'll do. 

We've had this event that we're going to have three partners with. It'll be largely run at and by King's Business School. And then our Center for Executive Succession here at the University of South Carolina. And I think the Idea Incubator is that a lot of times you go to these conferences and it's 90 % talking heads talking at people. The way we're trying to structure this conference is to make it a real idea incubator. And that is that, you know, we'll have a couple of panelists that'll set up the discussion. They might take 15 minutes to kind of share their thoughts. And then the bulk of the time is going to be spent around tabletop discussions of, know, sharing ideas, sharing concerns, sharing best practices and then coming back to a debrief to say, what were the things that everybody learned at their tables? This is going to be a chance for everybody to be in a small group and have their input and share their thoughts.