Peter Senge’s seminal 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline, identified five disciplines that are the basis for developing systems thinking in individuals and in building learning organizations:
- Personal mastery: continually clarifying and deepening personal vision, focusing energy, developing patience, and seeing reality objectively.
- Mental models: deeply ingrained assumptions and approaches that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.
- Building shared vision: co-creating images of the future that foster genuine commitment and alignment.
- Team learning: starting with dialogue, the members of a team suspend assumptions and authentically think and learn together.
- Systems thinking: looking at the whole picture rather than individual and disconnected parts.
James+Wooten Effective Crisis Leadership Framework
6 Effective Crisis Leadership Orientations
- Belief that it is possible to emerge significantly better off after the crisis.
- Expectation of mutual trust and respect.
- Commitment to reflect, learn, and adapt.
- Openness to scanning and seeking possibilities, new experiences and acceptable risks.
- Assumption that high-payoff outcomes are possible and can be attained.
- Willingness to make quick and ethical decisions.
9 Supporting Competencies
- Sense-making is the ability to take in a broad set of information and synthesize it into meaningful and relevant action. Sense-making includes being able to see systemic inequities and imbalances that can lead to a crisis.
- Perspective Taking requires being able to hear and incorporate into your thinking other peoples’ viewpoints and perspectives.
- Influence often includes being able to express ideas and requests effectively to multiple groups and stakeholders; to be inspiring; and to be creative in analyzing and solving problems.
- Organizational Agility starts with boundary-spanning knowledge of how things are being done coupled with the ability to get a system or organization to respond to new situations and quickly change course.
- Creativity, in this context, is the ability to recognize vulnerabilities to a crisis and plan for multiple contingencies in ways that go beyond traditional planning.
- Communicating Effectively is the ability to relate to multiple stakeholders, convey strength of purpose, inspire confidence and connect to the emotional needs of people.
- Risk Taking is the ability to take action and try new things during times of extreme uncertainty.
- Promoting Resilience is one of the defining characteristics that determines survival and successful adaption versus failure.
- Individual and Systemic Learning work together to realize potential opportunities. At its core, learning generally involves acquiring new skills and information and implementing a change as a result. These changes may be individual or systemic. Effective crisis leadership requires the integration of the two.
CRISES AND SYSTEMS CHANGE
Sudden crises – unexpected disruptive events where the organization has virtually no control and is not seen as being at fault
Smoldering crises – smaller internal problems that escalate over time because of systemic inattention
Strategic crises – where there is a need for a turnaround or significant organizational change often due to a shift in the industry or business environment
Crises often reveal long-standing issues that systems resist changing. It can take the urgency of crisis to drive transformation. For example, the COVID-19 data and advice from experts was building as a smoldering crisis, but the magnitude of the virus had to become urgent for countries to address the global pandemic. The scope of the crisis forced changes that systems had been resisting for years, for example the ability for a broader range of people to work from home. Developing the competencies and perspectives outlined in the James+Wooten Effective Crisis Leadership Framework and gaining an understanding of system thinking helps prepare leaders to engage in systemic change. Crises offer opportunities to adapt and fundamentally transform existing systems – whether the system is within our organization or our global society.
SEE THE SYSTEM, CHANGE THE SYSTEM
People naturally think in systems. Using systems thinking helps leaders, teams and organizations effectively respond to crises and effect change.
- Tap into a holistic approach to seeing and understanding a crisis and not just focusing on separate parts.
- Pay attention to the smoldering crises that indicate systemic inequities and imbalances, for example discrimination-related class action lawsuits occurred frequently enough and across enough different kinds of organizations that they were an indication of systemic failure to change.
- Short-term crisis solutions may be necessary, but by focusing on the broader system, we can see opportunities for more long-term change.
- Accessing and developing real-time, dynamic visual tools using a broad range of reliable data and stakeholder inputs will strengthen quick and ethical decision making. Attention to relevant feedback is essential, it is a vehicle for finding diverse solutions.
- Data is not always enough to change deeply ingrained attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Bringing together diverse stakeholders and generating public awareness to create collaborative systemic change can make the difference.
- Think beyond a reaction to the immediate crisis and see the consequences of actions. We are often inadvertently the architects of our own future crises.
- Systemic learning is rare as learning often occurs through experience. Capture and capitalize on the systemic learning of crisis to effect real change.