Skin in the Game: Leadership Lessons from two Crises in two Countries.
Leadership is associated with charismatic persons who have all the answers to all problems, know what to do, and ability to get things done. The reality is otherwise. No one has all the answers. Is Leadership therefore a meaningless word?
Leadership traits are in every person. They manifest in really tough situations where the person has skin in the game. A complex situation is where the stake of decision-making is high, the situation is evolving, and decisions are made with inadequate information.
Leaders managing a once-in-a-lifetime crisis like a pandemic, or a war need the mental toughness of a marathoner or marine, and the self-belief that they will achieve what they are setting out to do. They do not allow the present to bind their thinking. And can focus on the important filtering the ‘noise’ of irrelevant opinions and advice.
Some characteristics of leaders in a crisis.
They are really alone.
Leaders will be subject to scrutiny and get advice on what to do by persons on the sidelines, not unlike people who film a video of a person drowning for social media or shout out instructions on how to swim.
Leaders know that they own the problem and the way to get out of the quagmire.
I wrote this article to learn what a manager should do when no playbook is available to manage an unforeseen and unprecedented situation. Where the time frame of decision-making and implementation collapses from years to hours.
Two wars, both against invisible enemies, in the past 60 days have taught me some management (leadership) lessons. One battle is still being fought, and the other is now latent; India is tackling a declining second wave of the pandemic, and Israel and Hamas fought for eleven days.
Wars have a peculiar character. They overwhelm resources, even of a nation.
Wars in a social media world have another peculiarity. Social media (and journalism) creates a lot of real-time intellectual-sounding noise. The frenzy of opinion, generated in safe environments thousands of miles away from the scene of action, masquerading as fact, repeated ad nauseam is a real threat that can easily overwhelm leaders.
Running a country and fighting a war is one job that every journalist and commentator knows better than the person running the country or the men in the war room and on the frontlines.
Journalists and commentators have no lives to save. They have no stake in what they are covering. The social media platforms they use have no editorial control. And like Twitter, they bear no responsibility for the harmful consequences of their comments. They assess their work in momentary relevance by effectively generating controversies every day of the year to garner likes and shares.
The stakes of the two leaders in the two wars were vastly different.
One battle was being fought by the military, trained for the theatre of war. The war on the pandemic depended on the psychological commitment of the medical fraternity in hospitals and police on the streets across a populous and large country.
Why do I think about this?
The word crisis has two meanings:
· A time of intense difficulty or danger.
· A time when a difficult or important decision must be made.
I realized that leaders:
· Have to own the crisis even though things may seem outside their control, even if the resources of a country may seem momentarily inadequate.
· Have access to data for taking action, which others do not have.
· Have an accurate picture of what is happening (intelligence).
· Need to maintain mental balance, not fret, keeping emotions in check.
· Must correctly frame the problem. Identify what the boundaries of the problem are, what is in, to be managed, and what is outside and can be ignored.
· What is the immediate objective, e.g., is this about saving lives or beating the enemy?
Focus on the ‘boundaries’ of crisis.
A leader of a country has a bigger challenge. They are managing everything that happens in geography. The head of a country when managing a crisis is managing the country and the crisis. Their scope of responsibility is unlimited. A business leader manages a company, their area of control and influence circumscribed by the organization. In a crisis mode, they have to manage the company and the crisis/problem.
Time limitations
A leader cannot optimize time and effort in the middle of the war. They have 20 hours a day (assume they rest for 4 hours). They give all the time to managing the crisis. They cannot balance their time fighting the enemy, addressing the media, and handling the opposition in a democracy.
The heat of the battle is not a popularity contest. It is not the time to get social media/opinion on your side.
Make important choices.
Leaders make choices. They ignore and focus on what is essential.
Journalists, politicians, and celebrities from Los Angeles to Mumbai have opinions. They are chained to social media and react to emotive undercurrents on social media. Having never been in decision-making positions for a country, the complexities of war are options with simple impractical solutions that are to be disregarded.
A person taking decisions to manage complex situations knows that they need time to resolve. There is a phase of uncertainty when everything may seem out of control before enough knowledge is acquired to manage the uncertainty and disequilibrium. The time frame of a leader’s decision-making is a lot longer than what observers realize.
Lesson — ignore and focus on the important.
Realize that:
· The crisis cannot sidetrack the overall responsibility of the leader.
· Managing a company/country requires ensuring continuity.
· Solving the crisis cannot be allowed to overwhelm the greater responsibility.
Differentiate between ‘causes’ and ‘consequence.’
In the pandemic war, social behavior (distance and masking) is the cause of the second wave of the pandemic. Inadequate medical infrastructure is an alibi. Developed countries had challenges managed to control the pandemic. The nature of the disease (geometric progression) overwhelms hospital infrastructure. Imagine a hospital designed for 20 ICU beds with 50 % of patients (10 patients) needing assisted oxygen supply. And it gets 50 patients that need oxygen!
War in the Middle East was made visible by images/videos of the Iron Dome infrastructure intercepting missiles and injured children. A leader differentiates between the cause or source of the problem (input) and the consequences of the crisis (outcomes). Being philosophical and tackling the result as a cause can have disastrous consequences. The organization that started the rocket drizzle paid the price.
Leadership competency requires:
· Identifying the safety of the people is the only issue.
· Tackling the cause of the problem.
· Be aware that information is often incomplete in the middle of the crisis, and the situation changes by the hour every day.
· Patience and perseverance. Solutions are difficult to accelerate. Otherwise, a crisis is not a crisis. Realize that time is the only resource they do not have on their side.
· Ignoring people’s opinions that don’t have data and don’t have a stake (skin in the game). Interests and priorities of different stakeholders’ conflict. Politicians and media see an opportunity and are braying for your blood.
Lesson — prioritize
Leaders prioritize things that matter most, increasing their odds of success. They determine what matters and make decisions with conviction.
In the two wars, focusing on the visible manifestation of the war (death) would sidetrack thinking into concentrating on what is needed in a hospital. A better choice is putting all resources on managing the cause (enemy) by building resource capacity (oxygen and beds). Whereas the cause, progression of the disease, required lockdowns. In the case of the Middle East, degrading the infrastructure was important for depleting the enemy. It was not a frontline conflict. Collateral damage was implicit.
Embrace action in the present. Do not delay. Stop searching for an ideal solution.
Media frames issues for simple communication.
In the two battles, terms like ‘disproportionate’ response by Israel or ‘systemic’ failure in India were used. These have no practical meaning. Were the journalists suggesting that wars are fought ‘proportionately,’ and Israel should not have done what it takes to defeat the enemy? Systemic failure is jargon. It is used when the person has no clue about what is being managed.
The media preferred to show images of cemeteries and children hurt in battle while ignoring drizzling rockets. Indirectly suggesting that the leaders stop the war without reducing the cause of the problem?
In a crisis, discussions of historical wrongs and philosophical posturing delays action.
Lesson
The leader must:
- Tackle the cause, not the outcome.
- Identify few immediate priorities (oxygen and beds, and depleting the enemy’s ability to start another war).
- Do only the urgent and the important.
- Deciding what not to do is often more important
- Ignore irrelevant stakeholders’ opinions.
· Not be philosophical during a war.
Leadership qualities
· Mental toughness ( like an ability to run a marathon, persist with confidence, capable of bearing all odds, whatever situation may arise).
· Strong self-belief that they can achieve.
· Presence of mind (ability to combine new inputs/signals to the current condition and respond thoughtfully).
· The present does not bind the mindset of a leader. More focused on what can happen. Leaders focus on underlying causes to assess whether they have been mitigated or maybe a risk. Visualize potential worst-case situations (treat current data as current and not an indicator of the future).
· Plan resources if things go wrong. Practice during peacetime makes the army stronger to manage any eventuality.
