Early this summer in Tokyo, I had the opportunity to hear an
insightful presentation on the media and social responses to the March 2011 earthquake,
tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor meltdown. The session was part of a Berlin School of
Creative Leadership Executive MBA module in Asia and the presenter was an
alumnus of that program, Yukio Nakayama, who serves as Executive Creative
Director at the Dentsu advertising agency.
After providing general background on the events, Yukio’s account
focused on how Dentsu adapted the Internavi system, which provided everyday
on-demand traffic information to individual drivers in Honda vehicles, to
generate public mapping of road usage and access through Twitter and Google in
the early days of the crisis. Extending
the Internavi system and data on 311 is an inspiring example of how creative
solutions to crises can emerge with the right leadership.
Before sketching out possible broader leadership lessons of
the episode, we should be clear about what we mean by “crisis.” Helpful here is Herman “Dutch” Leonard’s call
to distinguish routine from novelty. We
can’t, Harvard professor Leonard believes, treat a true crisis as simply an
“overgrown routine situation.” This problem
of misperception occurs even in conscientious crisis preparation and planning
efforts, when the underlying approach is to deploy more of the same kinds of
resources (like police, medical, and food, reconstruction, data management) as
during normal, non-crisis times.
We need also to take care to differentiate crises of the
order of what happened in Japan in 2011 from crises faced by many
organizational and business leaders. As
important, even existential, as the latter may be for some firms, their crises
lack the social, cultural and economic scale and sweeping life-and-death risks
of 311. That said, in assessing such an
immense event, we might nevertheless extract some principles that bear on the
still complex decision-making and communications challenges faced by business
leaders.
Explaining how Dentsu adapted Internavi’s capabilities
within 20 hours for public benefit, Yukio illuminated several key tenets of successful
leadership. These began with a
situational awareness that enabled his colleagues to recognize the difference
between the exceptional character of 311 and routine accidents or congestion. Also necessary was an understanding of how to
build sudden collaborative structures across diverse institutions and
constituencies. Preparation was
essential, but, again, had to be of the appropriate type: while simulations and
scenarios were fine, developing and testing capabilities for cooperation across
organizations and with the public proved more helpful once the nuclear disaster
occurred. Those capabilities, more
specifically, included how to enable improvisation and, in this case, address and
communicate quickly the problem of producing accurate traffic and road
information.
The development of Internavi is a great example of
decentralized intelligent adaptation at a societal level. Structurally, that decentralization involved
non-hierarchical or top-down relationships among multiple public and private
institutions enabled by technology. The
intelligent adaptation was likewise marked by an ongoing and effective process
of inquiry that facilitated collaborative problem-solving and communications.
Such tenets and tendencies are hardly unique to the Japanese
experience, of course. In the 2013 Boston
Marathon Bombing Response [MBR], analysts found the successes of a variety of
responders benefited from similar values of situational, collaborative, improvisational
and inquiring leadership. In fact, the preliminary findings of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative,
released in April 2014, identified five foundations of the intelligence and
leadership that shaped the Boston MBR:
1) An overriding objective that:
forges unity of mission and connectivity of action; is compelling enough to
override standard practices as needed; and obviates bureaucratic obstructions,
distractions or bickering.
2) A spirit of generosity that
rallies groups and individuals to assist one another and overcome constraints
of resources, know-how or tools to achieve the paramount mission, expressed as
“Whaddya got? Whaddaya need?”
3) Respect for the responsibilities
and authorities of others, described as “staying in one’s lane” while assisting
others to succeed in their lane to accomplish mission-critical duties and
tasks.
4) Neither taking undue credit nor
pointing blame among key players, oftentimes portrayed as “checking your ego at
the door.”
5) Genuine inter-personal trust and
respect developed well before the event so that existing and dependable
leadership relationships, integrity, and camaraderie can be leveraged during
the event, often described as “don’t wait for an emergency to exchange business
cards.
The preliminary report discussed these findings as a
positive instance of “swarm intelligence,” which is more generally understood
as the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems. The concept initially arose with efforts to
analyze and explain complexity in multi-agent systems, from bacterial growth, ant
colonies and fish schooling to robot interactions and artificial intelligence. Among the usual precepts of swarm
intelligence are diversity, independence and decentralization. In contrast to other approaches to group
interactions and behavior, the concept also recognizes that too much internal communication
can make the group as a whole less intelligent.
Analyses of responses to 311 in Japan and the Boston
Marathon bombing offer valuable insights for leaders about how to work
effectively in complex, decentralized systems dealing with novel and
fast-changing situations. Yet their
lessons, important as they are, tend to focus on the macro-level of
institutional relationships or group dynamics and on the resulting
decision-making, action and communications.
While they recognize how essential are collaborative and trusting interpersonal
relationships, in other words, it was beyond the scope of the analyses to
examine more closely how individual leaders should behave to ensure the best
collective decision-making and actions.
That research is ongoing elsewhere, perhaps most notably at
the Center for Collective Intelligence at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Among the key factors of collective
intelligence that have been identified there thus far is “social perception,”
that is, the ability to discern someone else’s thinking and emotions. “When it comes to the effectiveness of
groups,” said Thomas Malone, head of CCI, in a recent interview, “we are what
we see in each other.” Beyond empathy,
this social perceptiveness involves discernment of others as well as a kind of
ongoing awareness of, and commitment to, the versatility of thinking and
equality of contributions across the group.
A final level of leadership to be addressed in coping with
crises involves the leader himself or herself.
Not surprisingly, perhaps the best guidance in this regard comes from
Bill George, the former Medtronic CEO and current Harvard Business School
professor of management practice who wrote Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis in 2009. While much of the
book addresses larger aspects of crises, it does so from the leader’s
perspective (e.g., “dig deep for the root cause” or “blending internal and
external communications”). However, at
least two of George’s lessons, including the first, concern the leader’s own
self-understanding: “Face reality, starting with yourself” and “You’re in the
spotlight; Follow True North.”
Recognizing one’s strengths and weaknesses and remaining
true to one’s values and purpose are enablers of leadership success in all situations. However, in crises, such self-understanding
and authenticity in decisions and actions are vital. George goes on to ask, “Will you stay focused
on your True North or will you succumb to pressure?” The pressure and stress of crises derives
from many causes, notably the novelty, complexity, and urgency of the dynamic situations
they present. Retaining the presence of
mind to think, act and work with others according to one’s own values while
responding to those situations is a consummate leadership challenge.
Whether they are at the scale of 311 and the Boston Marathon
Bombing or of a single organization whose local world has been turned upside
down, crises are crucible experiences that define leaders. Yet perhaps counter-intuitively, an abiding lesson
of the responses to these massive events is that more effective leadership
resulted from individuals ceding control, sharing responsibilities, and openly
collaborating and communicating with others.
Rather than relying on a single authoritative leader taking unilateral
actions and decisions, success emerged from individuals humbly willing to
contribute to decentralized leadership and decision-making, to work
collectively with a common purpose, and to learn together to solve novel
problems.
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