What Crisis Leadership Looks Like

For the past seven years I’ve owned and managed a residential and commercial cleaning service in my hometown of Oak Park, IL.  I’ve run the business on three basic principles, take care of your clients, take care of your community, but take care of your staff first.  These principles have allowed us to grow to servicing over 350 clients a month while giving back to our staff and community.  Recently, in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic and shelter in place orders, we have seen 90% of our clients cancel or pause service.   As a result, I’ve seen my business go from growing and profitable, to barely breaking even, to running at a significant loss, in the course of about 13 days.  All of this has caused me to ask a lot of questions but the one I keep coming back to is, ‘How do I lead my company right now?’  Or better put, ‘What does leadership look like right now?’ 

On the one hand being a good leader right now means remaining open so that my staff can still generate income for their families.  On the other hand staying open means putting them at risk of potential exposure even with all the precautions we are taking (gloves, masks, shoe covers, etc).  And of course the burning question is, since the business is losing money, is it better to cut our losses, close our doors and lay everyone off?  

In 2018  I attended a Chicago Ideas Week event titled “Raising your Hand: What Leadership Looks Like in 2018”.    Among many powerful speakers that night a man named Jose Antonio Vargas spoke about his experience being an undocumented immigrant in America.  Jose is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist, a renowned author and former reporter at the Washington Post.  Jose discussed how he had navigated the workforce as an undocumented immigrant and used fake documents to get hired at the Washington Post. 

After he had been working there a while, his boss, managing editor Peter Perl, discovered the documents were illegitimate.  Peter had a decision to make, fire him or be silent and allow him to continue to work.  The correct legal decision in this case would have been to fire him since he was not authorized to work in the U.S.  However, Jose was an amazing writer, asset to the organization and had been moved to the U.S. as a child and had been paying taxes and contributing to social security for over 10 years.  Needless to say Peter was dealing with an internal and external crisis that could affect the reputation of the Washington Post.  “I had to make a decision and right on the spot: And I pretty quickly made the decision that his future was more important than the risks I was gonna take by remaining silent”.

In situations like this, true leadership may mean biting your tongue, it may mean putting yourself at risk and it may even mean doing something considered illegal.  Although I can’t advocate that anyone commit a crime, this line of thinking has led me to believe that before making any decision in a time of crisis a leader must ask themselves three questions.   Is this the best decision possible for the people I lead? Does this decision allow me to be true to myself?  Will this decision have a positive impact on my community?   If you are able to answer yes to these three questions and understand that every situation is unique, you are likely making a quality decision.  

Our firm OVP Management Consulting Group, helps guide organizations and leaders through quagmires like these in a time of crisis.  We use a systematic approach to identify the issues, reveal all possible outcomes and come to the best solution for everyone.  As you continue to work through these trying times we are here to assist and look forward to working with you.

Christian Harris is a Senior Consultant with OVP Management Consulting Group, Inc. His speciality focus includes non-profit leadership and equity, diversity & inclusion issues. He can be contacted at Christian.Harris@ovpmanagementconsulting.com.

Reflections On Violence in America

The natural question of why people are protesting and demonstrating using violence is a constant refrain when analyzing the genesis of the response from people following the murder of George Floyd. Many are incredulous about why a community would commit acts of violence upon itself and others.

Renowned author and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon offered an answer to the question that comes up every time we are confronted with violence in American cities following extra judicial killings of people of color by law enforcement.

Frantz Fanon

In one of the English translations of his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth Fanon opens his first chapter, entitled On Violence, as follows:

"National Liberation, national reawakening, restoration of the nation to the people or Commonwealth, whatever the name used, whatever the latest expression, decolonization is always a violent event. At whatever level we study it - individual encounters, a change of name of a sports club, the guest list at a cocktail party, members of a police force or the board of directors of a state or private bank - decolonization is quite simply the substitution of one "species" of mankind for another. The substitution is unconditional, absolute, total and seamless. We could go on to portray the rise of a new nation, the establishment of a new state, its diplomatic relations and its economic and political orientation. But instead we have decided to describe the tabula rasa which from the outset defines any decolonization. What is singularly important is that it starts from the very first day with the basic claim of the colonized."

This perspective on violence as expressed by colonized people rings true today. The marginalization of black people's rage - regardless of economic station - is a convenient way to limit discussion and debate about rudimentary causes of the spasms of violence we are living through.

Assuming the Enlightenment-era presumption that human kind's one great "superpower" is reasoned thought, then a simplistic characterization of protestors as "thugs" or "looters" misses the larger truth that systems of colonization (i.e. in the United States that takes the form of Jim Crow) intentionally construct and maintain racial cast systems that permanently keep many black people's lives in a constant state of violence (e.g. "underserved communities"). After all, the goals of rational humanity were considered to be knowledge, freedom and happiness. How surprising are violent responses to sustained violence meted out by state actors on singular communities?

Protesters in New Mexico following the death of George Floyd

The world has watched with curiosity the protests in Hong Kong in recent months. The concept of "one country, two systems" seems to chafe against the desires of many in the former British colony. Yet, casual observers of the happenings in Hong Kong often use terms like "democracy", "freedom" and "human rights" to describe their understanding of why protests are taking place.

Similarly, the resistance of black South Africans in the face of apartheid spanned decades of violent confrontations. While the intricacies of how freedom was won for all South Africans may not be well understood by most casual observers, what is clear is that the struggle there, which was originally framed by colonial masters as "terrorism", became recognized as a legitimate response to need for universal suffrage, equal liberty and justice under law.

Interestingly, in both circumstances the notion of violence was studied, debated and later acknowledged as having a role in the evolution of the discussion - and eventual achievement - of democratic freedoms.

Of course, these concepts continue to evolve. One cannot draw a direct line between violent uprising and expansion of liberties. Yet, one can reasonably ask the question: What role, if any, does violence have in the discussion of achievement of greater democratic ideals?

Fanon's controversial writings on the subject were confronting a different era with different imagined potential outcomes in the larger discussion of decolonization. He likely didn't envision the specific manner in which violence and violent response would continue to reflect the difficulty of throwing off the yoke of colonialism. But, I think his work on how human beings come to violence (through trauma), and how we are made to feel about violence is sobering.

Today, the world is grappling with the reality that the most powerful nation on earth is being dragged to the river’s edge and forced to look at its collective reflection. And like the character from Greek mythology Narcissus, the United States of America appears to be so enamored with itself and its own image that it risks melting away from the passions burning inside it.

I don't pretend to have the answer(s) that would help get American society on a path towards truthful confrontation of the systems that permanently oppress many. But, I would encourage folks to read (or reread) The Wretched of the Earth, as it feels very prescient at this moment.

Alejandro Bodipo-Memba is Founder & CEO of OVP Management Consulting Group, Inc.

Optimizing Remote Learning in a COVID Environment

As businesses worldwide postpone and cancel in-person training and meetings in response to COVID19, workplace learning is emerging as one of the earliest and hardest-hit casualties of business operations. Based on OVP Management Consulting’s engagement with a cross-section of clients in the months leading up to and during the pandemic, we are seeing for-profits and non-profits alike increasingly pushing the pause button on talent development and capability building.

Organizations, however, cannot afford to put critical workplace learning on hold indefinitely. Whether an entity’s focus is to re-tool business unit skills or engage in organization-wide transformation, businesses need the ability to develop employees while also prioritizing workforce safety.  Remote and digital learning platforms, already a channel for employee learning prior to COVID19, are even more vital now.  

Three areas, in particular, stand out as strategic opportunities for digitally engaging employees during the rapid pivot towards social-distancing: talent development, virtual-adaptive training and employee learning.

Talent Development :Performance management and talent development can be a powerful way to engage your workforce during the COVID19 crisis, signaling that you are investing in your people during this challenging period while also moving your operations forward. When moving to a virtual platform, however, it is vital that you work by design rather than default.  Team and one-on-one coaching over the phone or online, for instance, do not offer the same breadth of body language cues and intimacy that in-person meetings deliver.  As such, during OVP’s coaching sessions with clients, we leverage the constraints of physical distancing to listen even more closely to clients and use customized online materials both during and after sessions to increase engagement. 

Targeted virtual offerings: To create a comprehensive arrays of virtual learning offerings, build a cross-functional response team comprising members from relevant stakeholder groups. These include business partners, IT and training personnel, and customer and community counterparts.  Evaluate existing virtual offerings against critical business operations to prioritize scarce vendor and design resources.  For instance, must-have activities like employee onboarding will require a combination of live and on-demand programs to ensure both legacy requirements like performance expectations and new requirements like remote working skills, are communicated consistently.

Employee learning: A substantial increase in the use of digital delivery to enhance employee learning is under way across all segments of the workforce, from frontline employees to senior leaders. While digitally-enabled environments have been implemented by many organizations out of necessity rather than choice, virtual platforms also provide a strengthened collective focus and sense of community for employee, customer and community stakeholders.  Organizations that previously had very little interaction, due to functional or regional boundaries for instance, are increasing collaboration through videoconferencing, instant messaging and other forms of digital engagement. 

While it is far too soon to determine the ultimate impact that COVID19 will have on employee learning, it is clear that the adoption of digital venues has clearly accelerated, providing with it the opportunity to promote a culture of ongoing engagement both within and outside of organizational walls. 

Pam Hill is a a Senior Consultant with OVP Management Consulting Group, Inc. and can be contacted at pam.hill@ovpmanagementconsulting.com.

Leadership in Crisis

Leadership in the midst of the global pandemic of COVID-19 is essential for survival of the societies and systems we have assumed would always be here. With uncertainty comes fear and anxiety. It is the role of a leader - any leader - to address these tensions by seeking credible information from primary sources, synthesizing that information and sharing with people they are responsible for, in one way or another.

It has become all too clear that there is a dearth of transformational leadership in the public arena, at the moment. But, you can change that in your own way and in your own organizations.

Emergency Operations Center at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

I was recently asked to provide some tips on how best to confront the reality that people will lose their jobs as a result of the rapidly growing novel coronavirus outbreak. How do you tell people that they may lose their jobs because of sheltering-in-place orders, for example?While no one solution fits every situation, my advice was to focus on four things - Trust, Compassion, Stability & Hope - in order to effectively communicate difficult news about people's future with an organization.

• Lean into the concept of establishing trust with your employees and colleagues. Now is not the time to harbor hidden agendas. Speak the truth about the situation you are facing. It may not be nice to hear, but it will be appreciated.

• Remember that we are ALL human. We all have feelings, fears and insecurities that could be particularly frayed at this moment. Extend a bit of grace, and show the basic human compassion that we all need when facing difficult circumstances that threaten our livelihood.

• Share your intentions about the future and how you propose to move forward with the business, department or organization. Maybe that means creating some kind of 90-day re-entry plan that outlines your intentions for the business after things begin to settle. Show that you are trying to create a level of stability, even in the midst of crisis.

• Speak about your hopes for the future with your people, and include them in that vision. Offering a sense of hope that things will get better is what transformational leaders do. You can't promise people what you don't have. But, you can promise to work hard to achieve your goals. Giving people hope is what can motivate people to accomplish extraordinary things.

Leadership is not easy. Particularly when it requires you to make difficult decisions about the future of people that you work with. I believe that if you do your best to create a human connection with folks and you tell them the truth as you know it, you are modeling the best of our transformational leaders. You are the kind of leader we need now.