Strategies of Hope

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
                                                                                                              --Winston Churchill

Challenges can be wonderful opportunities for growth and success.  They can also be catalysts of impending failure.  On the road to one or the other, people often act or react in ways given to emotion or discipline when faced with personal or professional difficulties. 

A common human condition is to hope for the best.  I would not suggest that is not good.  But hoping for the best without planning for the worst is usually flawed.  As is often and correctly said in many circles, hope is not a strategy.  Yet in many crises there is no apparent planning for the worst case scenario.  Too many boards, corporation or company executives, business owners, or even line managers rely on strategies of hope to see them through, e.g. I hope that does not happen to me, I hope we find our way out of this, I hope the government bails us out...you get the idea.  In my experience, this mode of thinking is a recipe for failure. 

As a career military man for more than thirty years, I grew up with modern western acceptance of the Latin adage Si vis pacem, para bellum ... "If you wish for peace, prepare for war."  This notion has guided our Nation in its national security direction for years both as a prescription for deterrence and as a solution for results our Presidents have applied many times.  As a fighter pilot, I had to plan for the worst and be prepared at all times for catastrophe like my aircraft catches fire, my plane loses an engine, I have a total electrical failure, I've lost control of the aircraft, I've been hit--I have had all of these and more in the air.  And yet I not only survived but thrived.  

This did not happen by accident or even extraordinary skill on my part but because of a mindset, training and set of rules that got me through those challenges.

 

In aviation, we built a culture of managing risk.  There is no doubt flying jet fighters on and off aircraft carriers at sea in all conditions or going into battle is risky business.  We even adopted a formal system for addressing this known as Operational Risk Management, or ORM, with principles that also apply in business.  But even in a risk managed environment things still go wrong.

As a military pilot, Naval Aviator, I participated in my share of investigating aircraft mishaps to determine what went wrong and made recommendations to prevent future like occurrences.  In every case, and those of many others, we found a chain of events that led up to the a mishap that if had been broken in almost any link of that chain would have prevented the accident.  But few can recognize one of those links without prior planning, practice and recognition--training.

The same thinking applies to everything in life I have found.  Whether a business decision, a crisis, a risky opportunity, personal or professional issue, even a drive to the store, the mindset is the same. That is:

1.   Acknowledge  [the risk]
2.  Think  [how to avoid]
3.  Plan  [for the unexpected, e.g. don't ever be surprised]
4.  Practice  [even if only thinking it through for muscle memory]
5.  Recognize  [the indicators that tell you something could or is about to happen]. 


It works.  I used it as a military professional, in my personal life, and now in business.  To get to this mindset, concrete steps have to be taken.

Here's what works:

1.  Acknowledge crisis management as a cultural facet of life; incorporate it into your organization--make everyone believe in it and not just relegated to a few

2.  Pick a team and team leader to be the instant response force--the first responders; don't leave it to your PR or legal experts

3.  Have cogent steps -- certainly the initial steps -- ingrained in the team to take action, e.g. ORM is one method and I have detailed others - see 3 Steps to Handling Adversity.
Note - ORM is best suited to pre-crisis planning and training than after the problem has hit

4.  Practice the team in responding to various worst case scenarios; apply lessons learned from the sessions to pre-planned response and improved tactics

Strategies of hope are known losers.  

Some argue luck has an element that has to be accounted for as well. That constantly reminds me of the well-told tale of Gary Player, the professional golfer, at a tournament. Once heckled by someone in the gallery "lucky shot Gary!" he reportedly said to his caddie "yeah, the more I practice the luckier I get."

Crisis management must be part of your culture and organizations.  If not, well, just look at the huge number of examples around us where it isn't and luck did not fall in favor of hope; then ask yourself would you ever want to be where he, she, or they are?

The fix -- hope for the best, but plan for the worst.