Among these leaders is Alice Laugher, the head of Committed to Good (CTG), a private company founded in Afghanistan and based in Dubai that provides specialist staffing and logistics to the humanitarian community. When we met Laugher in 2014, for example, CTG had just built out the medical and emergency services that the World Health Organization used in West Africa to address the emerging Ebola outbreak. Since the company’s founding in 2006, its clients have included most major humanitarian organizations; it now operates in 26 countries. In 2019 Laugher was awarded the prestigious Oslo Business for Peace Award.

We recently asked Alice Laugher what she and her team have learned about uncertainty through working in crisis zones, and how this might help managers new to the type of crisis leadership our tumultuous time requires. The conversation occurred in September 2021, right after Kabul fell to the Taliban and the United States withdrew from Afghanistan. Our meeting was punctuated by calls and messages from the members of Laugher’s team on the ground there and local staff members who continued their work of supporting humanitarian action. We later used email exchanges to ask follow-up questions. This conversation has been edited for clarity.

You’ve worked in Afghanistan for more than a decade. How are you handling the current uncertainty?

We navigate a new normal every day. The situation, the rules, the regulations, and the needs of the local population shift constantly. Can you imagine running a business in a place where banks are not operating? Or where corporate accounts are frozen? There is still active fighting and hostility in parts of Afghanistan where we have staff. How do you deliver salaries and make payroll to thousands of employees scattered across the country in such an environment? When the Taliban took over, we were forced to reevaluate our core objectives, achievements, and progress.

The United Nations has said it will “stay and deliver,” and so will CTG. We’re able to do it only because we already have battle-tested systems in place to make sure that payments get made to our employees on time. While nobody foresaw how quickly the Taliban would reach Kabul, we were perhaps able to react to the takeover better than other international businesses because we are so locally connected through our staff. We prepared for eventualities that seemed obvious to us, yet so many well-intentioned groups that simply weren’t paying attention to the situation on the ground were taken by surprise. And we had all hands on deck to assist our partners with urgent evacuations because we knew they would most likely need our help.

These kinds of crises — and Afghanistan is only the most recent example — test how strong our relationships with our staff, clients, and partners really are. We ride the waves together. It’s as simple as that. We share the same goal: to build humanitarian projects so that aid can get to the people who need it no matter the danger or challenge involved in getting it there.

Each country is radically different, but preparation goes a long way everywhere we operate. You have to navigate local laws, some of which may be unpublished. In one country, the tax law is from 1921, so it certainly cannot be found easily and downloaded from the internet! And meeting tax obligations — something that is considered a back-office task — has much more serious consequences in conflict zones. I have witnessed these obligations being enforced by unlawful detentions and on occasion by supposed officials armed with AK-47s.

That’s why it’s so important to have local staff members as part of your core team. They can help navigate the nuances and sensitivities of their country, and they have a deep understanding of their environments, a level of insight that can’t be matched by outsiders no matter how much research they do. CTG recognizes this, which is why we offer decent work opportunities that can otherwise be hard to come by in low-employment nations. We give people a sense of stability and financial security and create mutual respect with local community leaders, who, in turn, provide support when a crisis strikes. While conflict-affected regions do need international support for both humanitarian and development needs, you cannot arrive in a country as an outsider and solve all its problems. That’s not the path to sustainable recovery.

How does CTG’s corporate culture help you and your employees deal with the VUCA conditions you regularly face?

We have a culture that encourages people to go the extra mile because of the value of the work that we are enabling. We believe in what we are helping to deliver.

In Gaza, for example, our senior manager, who is Palestinian, once delivered food supplies to local and international staff while they were in their bunkers and moved people to safe locations while his own house was being destroyed by a rocket attack. He went beyond the call of duty amid his own crisis, which set the tone for his team. Many CTG employees have done similar things in similar circumstances. It’s actions like these that make our culture what it is, not statements on a website or in a press release.

Our people share a fundamental desire to make a difference and help those in need. Everyone trusts that we will jointly make the right decision for security and safety based on local knowledge and information, while still getting the job done. CTG is not a “look to the CEO for the answer” culture. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. Instead, we work together to find solutions to complex problems.