Respond, respond, respond... now what?

It’s a lovely thing about coaching that it gives you a little window into so many worlds. Of course, it is a private window, so I can’t let you look through it, but I can perhaps summarise some things that I’ve noticed after speaking to my coachees this week. It’s something that resonates with me as well, from my previous life in corporate affairs, when my role included crisis management.

When unexpected, significant events hit us (and our organisations) we go into a period of rapid response (Your email might be full of stop this, move that, cancel, cancel, cancel, postpone – or if you’re in an organisation that is part of the Covid19 response it may include a whole lot of rapid decision making and new structures and processes). We could be under the impression that this phase is going to be our life for the duration of the crisis. But sooner or later we hit a phase of ‘new normal’ – when we know what the situation is, how we are set up to manage it, and we need to shift into a different gear.
 

I’m starting to notice that for some of the organisations we work with, this ‘new normal’ is beginning to emerge. And here I see an opportunity. Now that ‘the way we do things around here’ is no longer the same, what new possibilities emerge? Despite the fact we can’t eat cake together (not the same cake, anyway), can we actually use this time to build stronger relationships in our teams? Does this new way of working give us an opportunity to review who does what, and get greater role clarity? Does it lead to more empowerment in decision-making? Can we reinvent how we do things – either internally or with our clients and customers – to actually enhance the services we offer in the future?
 

When this is over, there will be many lessons to be learned. Work (or at least how we work) may never be quite the same again. So a final lesson from crisis management – keep a list. The nature of a crisis is that things move quickly, and you make decisions and move on. But when this is over, and our teams sit down together (maybe in the same room!) to talk about returning to ‘business as usual’ – let’s make sure that the cool things you discovered, the new policies you implemented, the things you discovered about what makes your team tick – that they don’t get forgotten.

Hannah Fitzhardinge