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Results -Driven And Crisis Turnaround Leadership For Business Continuity

(Part I of V)

“When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. When the weather got rough, the titanic got into the sea. So, in a perfect storm, only the fittest of the fittest will survive.” Professor KC Chan illustrates in a five-part series that leadership today will have to be integrated with crisis management in order to keep even the fittest afloat.

Crisis turnaround leadership cannot be developed over-night. It has to be groomed and nurtured over the years through a conscientious effort to transform results-driven leadership to crisis turnaround leadership, i.e. The Ultimate Human Capital. The transition change management needs to pass through three stages of intensive and purposeful development:

Level I Crisis
Individual/organisation is publicly embarrassed and mission-critical success is threatened.

Level II Crisis
Personal injury, some property loss, possible loss of life, potential for serious damage to the company’s reputation, or a combination of these and other types of adversity.

Level III Crisis
Loss of life, significant property damage, a perceived threat to the survival of the company, or a combination of these and other types of adversity.

The purpose of developing results-driven leadership is to build a pool of talented leaders who can turnaround different types of crisis through to recovery with the minimum amount of cost and pain. The turnaround strategy is to manage the transition from crisis to recovery through transparency in communications, caring and sharing relationships and clarity of values and vision. See figure below.

Strategy advantage can only be achieved through action advantage. Therefore, it is imperative for the leader to understand the following in order to manage the affected people to get the organisation out from the crisis:

• ‘Who am I?’ (Self-Awareness)
• ‘What do I know?’ (Self-Development)
• ‘What do I do?’ (Self-Confidence)

As such, results-driven leadership can only satisfy Level I and Level II types of Crisis. For Level III Crisis, the situation demands Integrative Leadership, which can only be developed through a conscientious effort to leverage on three types of thinking skills, i.e.:

• Holistic Thinking (for integration of People, Process and Tools)
• Systems Thinking (for implementation of process with effective control)
• Critical Thinking (for innovation, resulting in effective decision making)

The results-driven and crisis turnaround leader needs to address three key success drivers:

1. Self-Awareness:
Individual Learning Styles (Activist; Theorist; Pragmatist; Reflector)

2. Self-Alignment:
Team Roles (Thinker-Innovator; Resource Investigator; Coordinator; Shaper; Monitor Evaluator; Team Worker; Implementer; Complete-Finisher; Specialist)

3. Self-Development:
Project Leadership (Setting Direction; Aligning People; Motivating and Inspiring; Leading Team; Communicating; Building Relationships; Facilitating Ethical Conduct; Negotiating; Leading Change)

The results-driven and crisis turnaround leader needs to address three key success drivers:

Lightweight
Test coordination capability.

Medium-weight
Effective and efficient execution.

Heavyweight
Integration capabilities of effective leadership to turnaround a crisis.

The integrated communication process of managing the transition from crisis to recovery demands minute attention to creating awareness, ensuring alignment, engaging action, encouraging adoption, enabling assurance and envisaging risk throughout the communication cycle. This is to ensure that the transition change management is done with minimum casualties and maximum support.

The figure below captures the three barriers to crisis turnaround strategy:

Crisis Denial caused by managerial complacency
“Crisis only happens to others”

Hidden Crisis as crisis is explained away
“Crises happen, but their impact on our organisation will be small”

Disintegration of Organisation because of limited action
“We are so big and powerful that we will be protected from crisis”

To be sure, crisis turnaround leaders are not just transformation leaders or charismatic leaders. They are the integrative leaders who require a new blend of learning, un-learning re-learning skills.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Professor/Dr K C Chan has had over 25 years of senior management experience covering agricultural, industrial as well as commercial products and services.

Specifically, Dr Chan led the turnover project in one of the largest conglomerates in Indonesia during the economical crisis beginning 1997. With a debt of US$14 billion in 1998, Sinar Mas Group’s Agribusiness Division came out of the reds to achieve total revenue of US$1 billion by 2004. Its banking and insurance, pulp and paper, agriculture and real estate businesses then posted annual revenue of US$6 billion. This project was co-piloted with McKinsey consultants. Dr Chan was appointed Director of Organisational Development and Head of Internal Management Consulting Division.

Prior to switching to the commercial-services arena, he was the Regional General Manager of Husky Injection Molding Systems (S) Pte Ltd. There, his role was to develop the Southeast Asian and Chinese markets for Japanese and Canadian high-tech equipment. He led the company to increase sales revenue from US$2 million to US$30 million within two years after setting up the Husky’s Centre of Excellence in key Southeast Asian markets.

Dr Chan is also a corporate trainer. He has been actively teaching for the past 20 years on a part-time basis. About a decade ago, he decided to focus on this full-time and transformed it into his own business. He is today the Founding Director at the Centre for Professional Training and Development Pte Ltd.

Dr Chan is also a visiting Professor to Southeast Asian universities for their EMBA degree and senior executive programmes. He was a visiting Professor to the University of Glasglow, Department of Business & Management, for a tenure of five years before being conferred a Distinguished Professor in Action Learning in 2003 by IMCA (UK) for the original and pragmatic concept of the ‘Management by Olympic System through Integrative Leadership’.