“Let Barbara do her job,” was the text message received from the CIO.
We were in the middle of a major crisis. The network had a glitch of some kind, and while the old fashioned host connected machines were fine, the Chairman wasn’t able to retrieve his email.
The conference call had been running for hours. Barbara headed (voice and data) communications, and with a deep voice background was somewhat new to data.
Since the call had run for a lengthy period, frustrations were bleeding on to the conference call. It seemed everyone was now a data communications expert, especially the desktop support people responsible for the non-disconnected clients.
So while Barbara had been leading the call, Barbara’s manager felt compelled to “help” and began directing the call, hence the text message from the CIO lurking on the conference bridge.
This brings up a couple key points in Crisis Management.
Having clarity around leadership is key. Barbara is a very competent leader, and while new to data communications was more than capable of following a process to resolution. Barbara was trying to lead her team in a structured approach AND deal with the conference call of interested parties. A more effective approach would be to have two conference calls…a technical call and a management call. Barbara should have been leading the technical call, with someone else leading the management call.
Barbara’s manager should have coordinated with Barbara were a change needed in bridge leadership. Basically taking over the bridge on strength of personality cut Barbara off at the knees. Everyone saw this (Barbara, Barbara’s staff, and the support organizations. It was not a smooth handoff, it was grandstanding unnecessary during a crisis.
Knowing who is on the call is important as well. In this case, the CIO was silently lurking on the call. It was his organization, and he was on the hook to update management. While there was no reason to exclude him, obviously it was unknown he had joined. What if the company was publicly traded and the “lurking CIO” was a member of the media? One approach some companies use is to have each conference call established with unique calling IDs (although you need to be sure ex-staff aren’t still getting the text pages).
Another uses a gate keeper to answer a call in number, confirm identity, and then join the caller with the conference call already in process. While more overhead, it also gives a chance to update callers before they join a call (as often the first question is “what is going on”, inevitably disrupting the conference call flow.
Role clarity is key in any crisis, lest a free for all develop. Clarity around leadership, management updates, protocols are all important.
We are struck by the Christmas 2009 bombing attempt on Northwest Airlines flight 253 and whether Janet Napolitano would have benefited from these lessons as she uttered, “One thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked.” The system worked after the incident, arguably there were issues before. Ms. Napolitano’s words created a separate large preventable firestorm.