“All hands on deck!”
“Emergency meeting!”
“Everyone into the conference room, PRONTO!”
These shrill calls can create tremendous urgency, even excitement in an organization. The military calls this DEFCON 1, the highest alert level in the armed forces.
But the best leaders I’ve known keep these emergency calls to a bare minimum. Because they know that, overdone, keeping such a shrill tone in the organization can lead to five severe consequences.
An actual emergency is not given proper urgency
This is a “never cry wolf” scenario at its worst. When everything is an emergency, eventually nothing is seen as an emergency.
The leader loses credibility
Teams count on the leader to distinguish between minor problems and full-blown crises. A leader not making those distinctions will eventually lose the team’s respect.
The organization loses focus
In an atmosphere of constant emergencies, teams will soon abandon the strategic plan. “After all,” the thinking will go, “Why bother with the plan when it will have to be abandoned during the next inevitable emergency?”
The culture becomes one of detachment and disengagement
I’ve seen this happen in several organizations. Teams simply can’t remain emotionally engaged when there is a seemingly constant state of panic in the air. For self-preservation people will simply tune out.
Roles become murky
When the team is following the gameplan, each person should know their assigned role. In an emergency state people tend to abandon their role in order to help resolve the latest crisis. When this happens the wheels of the organization can begin to turn very slowly and sluggishly.
You’ll never eliminate emergencies from your organization, nor should you. When a genuine crisis hits, the leader must be able to sound a genuine call to arms and “up” the level of urgency.
But remember- if you keep things at DEFCON 1 too often you’ll be inflicting long-term harm.
And that would be a crisis indeed.
How do you keep emergencies to a minimum in your organization?
