It is amazing to me that in most business environments, as well as in life in general, the manner in which people speak is often parallel to their level of knowledge and responsibility. Often times, as people attain positions of greater responsibility, they know more facts, they have influence over greater numbers of individuals, and have greater potential to effect the outcome of various situations. However, these same people rarely recognize their position of potential and end up producing exactly the opposite of what they are capable of producing. What exactly does this mean??? Consider this example…
A company has three “classes” of employees: general laborers, local management, and executive management. Because of tough economic conditions encountered by the company, the CEO releases three memos, one to each class.
The memo to the general laborers says, “Due to current conditions, our company has come under some difficult times. We request that all employees pay close attention to the amount of money they spend in their department. There is to be no overtime, and parts and materials are to be used wisely. Please conserve resources whenever possible. As soon as we can, we will restore normal operations. Know that by participating with your effort to do what has been requested, we are confident that we will succeed. Thanks for your support.”
The memo to local management says, “Due to current conditions, we acknowledge that you have a budget from which your business unit operates, but we are requesting that you spend no money whatsoever unless it is absolutely necessary to sustain the operations of the business. We are temporarily freezing wages until recovery is achieved. Additionally, to overcome this crisis, executive management will be focused on recovery efforts and will be spending the bulk of their time on these issues. In the interim, while we all are dealing with this situation, understand that they [executive management] are not ignoring you, but instead expect that you will operate as we have trained you to do over the past several years while we all work together to restore normal operations as soon as possible.”
The memo to executive management says, “You are all aware of our current financial crisis. As of today, we have an operational deficit of $750,000 and we must recover within the next six months, or the business and our employees will be in jeopardy. I am asking each of you to do everything within your power to assist in resolving this crisis, as I know that you are all aware of the seriousness of this situation. I have complete confidence that we can work together to restore a stable position for our company.”
Although the three memos are worded differently, they all convey the same message –
1.) The company has a serious situation
2.) Everyone should pitch in to do their part to assist in the resolution of the situation
3.) Once the situation is resolved, things will return to normal.
The reaction, based on position and level of knowledge always seems to be interesting…
The general laborers respond by saying, “Here they go again…making our jobs difficult because they want to maintain their fancy lifestyle, meanwhile I’ve got to do more with less. Seriously, what do they expect from me? Do they want me to make bricks with more clay and less straw??? Oh well, I need this job, so I guess I’ll do what they say until I find something better.”
Some of the local management responds by saying, “I’ve been with this company for five years, and I should have seen this coming all along. I know what’s happening here. The CEO made some really bad decisions and now he’s asking us to stick with him while they try to bail us out. If I was the CEO, I certainly wouldn’t be operating the way he chooses to operate. I wouldn’t be that stupid. And on top of that, he thinks he’s going to try to smooth over the fact that now the executive management team is going to spend their time working on stuff that they can’t fix. Meanwhile, I’m going to end up doing all of the work, and for what… we’ll probably close up shop anyway. I’d better make sure that I tell all of my coworkers that we’d better start looking for new jobs. Time to go somewhere where we’re appreciated and where our opinion counts. As soon as I get a better offer, I may be outta here!”
The remainder of the local management says, “I’ve been with this company for the past five years, and although this is one of the worst crises I’ve seen, we’ve been through challenges before. I don’t like them and they’re definitely not easy to deal with. When they’re over, we come out wounded, but we’ve always come out of them. Several times, we’ve learned valuable lessons in these situations that we probably would not have learned had we not had the situation in the first place. I’m going to rally the troops and make sure they know that we’re going to do this as a team, and since the executive management team is busy dealing with this issue, I’m going to make sure that my coworkers know that if they need my assistance in any of the areas where I’m strong, I’ll be more than happy to lend my assistance. That’s the only way that I can see making it through this crisis.”
The executive management responds by saying, “We’re in a real mess here, we certainly acknowledge that. Normally we operate with strategy and lots of planning, and now we’re in a situation where everything is going to have to be dealt with on a day-by-day basis. We have a lot at stake, and potentially a lot to lose. It would be easy to leave, but that just wouldn’t be fair to the people who work with and for us on a daily basis, and on top of that, we trust the CEO. It’s difficult to see what the future brings, but we’ll stay onboard for now. We sure hope that the people who we’ve trained for all of these years understand the severity of what we’re facing and can work without our normal level of oversight while we tend to this problem. We really have provided them with the tools that they need, but now it is time for them to walk this out without our continuous assistance. The outcome depends as much on their performance as it does on our decisions.”
The real differentiating factor here is how the local management responds to the situation. Whereas the executives are often invested into the company that they are solving issues for, local management sits on the teeter totter and can either rely on their long-term experience and training to help get them through the situation, or they can use it to get out of the situation by moving elsewhere. This is really the key position to affect change and through participation, or lack of it, all other people will “dig in” or “bail”.
In the Bible, these situations parallel that of Job. As the executive management of his world (Job was very well-off), the CEO (God) made him aware of a crisis period that he would be participating in. We know that this was Job’s “test”. His outcomes were to either curse God and die or to withstand the test and in the end, we know that he ended up with twice as much as he started with. Job’s local management (his friends), made assumptions and chose to speak things that weren’t the truth about the CEO. In the end, Job was restored, and so were his friends, but only after he prayed for them. The Bible says that after Job was restored, all of his brothers and sisters and everyone who knew him brought him silver and gold because of what he had been through. It also appears to be clear that Job came through his situation with a better understanding of God, as well as his friends.
In your organization, it is important to understand the various responses to crisis. It’s also important to know that the people who should know how to respond properly sometimes make very poor assumptions, rely on their own experience/inexperience, and their lack of ability to trust leadership’s commitment and dedication to the vision. In those situations, we have to be very careful that we understand their position without allowing it to further impact any negative conditions of the crisis at hand. Crisis can be a good opportunity to determine who understands and supports the overall vision, regardless of the obstacles faced while achieving it; it can also be a good opportunity to correctly “discard” those who do not support anything more than their own needs and/or agenda.
Make sure you know where your knowledge comes from!
DoingHisBusiness 
Really, really good!