Bulldozer00's Blog

The other day, I heard a song on Pandora from one of my fave albums of the 70s (yes, they were called albums back then); Supertramp‘s “Crisis?, What Crisis“. The album title reminded me of orgs that emotionally panic “under the covers” when a crisis occurs, but outwardly behave as if there is no crisis. By “behaving like no crisis is occurring“, I mean that the SCOLs in charge apply whatever band aids they can in the short term to get through the crisis but don’t do anything of substance to stave off, or better handle, future crises.

When the crisis at hand passes, the heroes are congratulated and: the org structure stays the same, the people in the top roles stay the same, the operational business processes remain the same, and most ominously, the patriarchal CCH mindsets stay the same. It’s back to the same-old, same-old, business as usual.

The figure below shows what maybe should happen when crises occur and learning takes place? Someone or some group willingly steps up to positively change the structures and behaviors so that the org can smoothly navigate through, and even thrive within, future crises. In the example below, it took 2 crises to stave off  self destruction, right the course, and excel in the future. Alas, the problem with the previous sentence is the “someone or some group” phrase at the beginning.