Case Studies in Crisis

Examples from education, religion, small business, and non-profits

Oct 12, 2021

It can be as expansive as a global pandemic shutting down your company's primary service for a season. It can also be as narrow as realizing a key leader in your organization needs to be fired by the end of the day.

Crisis.

Sooner or later, every leader at every scope of leadership faces a crisis. It's not just massive organizations. In fact, their massiveness itself shields such organizations from some events "the rest of us" feel are crisis-response-worthy. For the small business owner, the loss of just one shift manager can be an "I've got to cancel my long-planned family vacation" kind of crisis. And most any parent might be able to tell you how a child with croup or even just the loss of the last pacifier in the home can all feel like a crisis at 2 am.

Below are four different examples of leaders facing a crisis, how they responded to the situation, and the decisions they needed to make. Perhaps they can help you sort out some of your own crisis decision-making:

Education

Phil is the superintendent of a school district in the suburbs of a mid-western city. Negotiations have broken down with the union representing 130 of their teachers. They have walked out of the meetings and now plan to go on strike in the next few days. Wages, resources, and program protection are all on the list of negotiations, as they often are, but this negotiation included two new challenges related to Covid19: mask-wearing and vaccination.

Phil and his team enter an emergency meeting to determine what to do in the short term and long term as a result. He starts the meeting with a review of all they have done to prevent this moment from coming, but then he puts a four-quadrant chart on the whiteboard labeled Redefine & Seize on the top two and Avoid & Delay on the bottom two. After a discussion of the top two areas (more desired) he then moves to Avoid and Delay (less desired).

"We are painted into a corner on these, everyone," Phil says to his 3 key staff and 6 principals gathered. "We cannot dictate what the union will do, but we can think through our response to this crisis. What are the actions we don't want to take, but we have to do eventually, the Delay category?"

An experienced principal speaks up first:

"Yes, and we should add to that list a timeline that includes the very last moment we think we will have to do those actions, including the delay."

"Exactly," Phil says while tossing a marker to the Principal on his right, "Lisa, here's the marker, write your ideas in that box first, and then we'll all add to your starting list."

Church

Janet is the denominational leader of 108 churches in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico. Some of her peers facetiously call her region the "desert district." Janet has called an emergency Zoom meeting of a local church elder board, made up of lay leaders from a church as well as the associate pastor as a non-voting member. This church is the second-largest in her district, and the pastor has been accused of embezzling funds. This local elder board has already met without her, while also notifying the police. Janet starts the meeting for the emergency elder board, letting them know they need to determine the next steps, and that includes everything from that coming Sunday's preaching to the long-term direction of the church.

Janet shares her screen showing a slide with four squares on it (roughly the same one Phil used with the school district team) and she explains each quadrant. After brainstorming the Seize section with the board Janet says,

"So, now that we know the top priority items that we most want to do and must do, let's talk about the tricky matter of things we don't have to do, but we would like to do now."

Janet surveys the room, to feel out how ready these people are for this discussion before diving in.

"I understand we all have a mix of anger and outrage at the actions of our form Pastor. However, we are in these places of leadership for these hard decisions. I'll be honest with you and share that I was worried about the direction of this church in recent years, even apart from these more egregious revelations about the Pastor. Could now be the time to execute some of the changes we're looking for in this church? Could we implement some of those as a redefined 'in the crisis' change?"

Janet leaves this comment hanging in the air for a long moment. One of the young business leaders thoughtfully engages,

"Yes, we have a window here where some change is not only forgiven, it might even be expected. I don't want to be a vulture swooping in on this traumatic change too quickly, but we should be responsible and build that list of what we might like to do now."

Small Business

Leo is the owner of a small hair salon with a 7-employee F.T.E. They just learned they will be required to shut down again due to an outbreak of Covid-19 in their county. In the last year, they have had some success in launching their cosmetologists out to provide "mobile salon" services in people's homes. Now Leo needs to figure out how to go back into that business again and cancel their current plans to reopen. While opening up had many restrictions and new policies, they were eager to get back to "normal." But now that is out the window. Leo and his wife, Barb, are there alone, late at night, looking at the depressing decor they put up for their new "grand reopening" the next day. After a long session bemoaning the situation, and wondering if this is even possible, Leo grabs a marker and puts a four-quadrant chart on the mirror in front of his styling chair.

"I learned this chart about six months ago from a business friend of mine. Maybe it'll help us sort this out."

After explaining each of the quadrants to Barb, they launch into the hardest of the four, Avoid. Barb says,

"Well, top of that list is laying off our stylists. I know we said we have to lay off Roberta again because we don't need a receptionist if we're not open, but can we at least avoid layoffs by re-engaging our mobile service again?"

After thinking a bit, Leo says,

"For some time I've been wondering about moving to less of a commission-based pay for our stylists. Is this a season where they would actually prefer more stability to their pay, and we can go ahead and make a change that is closer to a 60/40 commission then pay them a standard amount per hour to make them whole each week? I'm hearing about a lot of salons whose workers didn't come back after reopening. I worry this could be the last straw for them. If we don't have stylists, we don't have a business, so let's invest some money now into a new structure, and if it works out long-term we'll actually have a better business model once we're running in person again."

Barb nods slowly, saying,

"Okay, I think in this crisis the stylists might actually consider that change to be a good thing. They might even choose it if you offered a choice. But wouldn't that make this a Redefine category, not Avoid?"

Leo wipes off "Layoffs" from the Avoid quadrant and adds, "New commission and wages arrangement" under Redefine as he nods in agreement.

Non-profit

Lyn is the CEO of a local non-profit that serves people experiencing homelessness in a large city. Everyone in her organization just learned that a new policy in local city ordinances means their core program will have to end by January. Simultaneously the federal grants that came in to subsidize the rest of their overhead because of that program will also go away 6 months later. First thing Monday morning she gathers her small executive team, including the Vice-President of Partnerships, Vice-President of Programs, the Chief Financial Officer, and her executive assistant.

"We all know the massive challenge ahead of us, and while I know this feels a little like the sky is falling, I think we can do some big re-thinking today, and I want to do it before we talk to all our employees tomorrow."

Lyn reminds them of the already planned org-wide meeting the next day,

"They heard the news the same time we did on Thursday, and some of them are no doubt jumping on LinkedIn right now to update their profiles. We don't need to plan everything out, but we need to find some hope for them tomorrow."

Jim, the VP of Programs, interjects,

"Actually, I think we in this room need a little hope today too!"

After a nervous chuckle, Lyn gets up and turns over a flip chart. It reveals a four-quadrant chart she drew out before the meeting.

"We are in these positions for a reason, team, and I've felt for a long time that you four are the best in the world and there's nobody I'd rather tackle such a massive challenge with. Remember, we're not doing this to save our jobs, or even the jobs of those wonderful social workers and other employees we'll meet with on Tuesday. We're doing this for those who experience homelessness in our city. That challenge remains regardless of the grants and public policy shifts. In fact, the challenge is even greater because of that shift. Perhaps there is an opportunity for us to do even more for them in such a time as this. Let's get creative, and fill this chart out together!"

Everyone in the room leans in, remembering why they've loved working with Lyn in the first place.

So, what's your story, and how are you making decisions during a crisis?

DruGroup

Discussion about this post