This article is part of a series Leadership in a crisis: Responding to the coronavirus outbreak and future challenges. It draws together McKinsey’s collective thinking and expertise on five behaviors to help leaders navigate the pandemic and recovery. Separate articles describe organizing via a network of teams; displaying deliberate calm and bounded optimism; demonstrating empathy; and communicating effectively.

Leaders know that making good, fast decisions is challenging under the best of circumstances. But the trickiest are those we call “big bets”—unfamiliar, high-stakes decisions. When you have a crisis of uncertainty such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which arrived at overwhelming speed and enormous scale, organizations face a potentially paralyzing volume of these big-bet decisions.

The typical approach of many companies, big and small, will be far too slow to keep up in such turbulence. Postponing decisions to wait for more information might make sense during business as usual. But when the environment is uncertain—and defined by urgency and imperfect information—waiting to decide is a decision in itself. For instance, delaying the decision to cancel noncritical surgeries can mean not freeing up physician and hospital capacity now and potentially exposing or infecting more people.

To make bold decisions quickly in these uncertain times, leaders can follow these five principles.

[Here are the first two that are recommended.]

1. Take a breath

Pause and take a breath—literally. Giving yourself a moment to step back, take stock, anticipate, and prioritize may seem counterintuitive, but it’s essential now.

When asked what makes a great hockey player, Wayne Gretzky is said to have answered, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” That is easier said than done. In a crisis atmosphere, it is tempting to jump from one urgent task to the next, to take charge of what’s right in front of you—to just execute. Yet this can be a tragic mistake. Research shows that the simple act of pausing, even for as little as 50 to 100 milliseconds, allows the brain to focus on the most relevant information.¹

A dramatic example of a leader who paused during a landscape-scale crisis is Captain Chesley Sullenberger. After a bird strike caused both of his plane’s engines to fail shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in January 2009, he had very little time to decide whether to try to land at a nearby airport, as the control tower was urging, or to aim for a water landing. With no training for such a scenario, he stopped and reflected for a matter of seconds—all that he could afford—to determine if he could get to the airport safely and instead pivoted to the Hudson River for landing. ² All 155 people on board survived.

There are several ways decision makers can take a breath:

• After telling your team you need a moment to think, try to gain a broader perspective.
• Imagine yourself above the fray, observing the landscape from above. This is what leadership expert Ronald Heifetz calls a “balcony” perspective. Despite the “fog of war” that might obscure much of the current state of play, do your best to take a broader view.
• Ask yourself and your team these questions: What is most important right now? What might we be missing? How might things unfold from here, and what could we influence now that could pay off later?

This ability to anticipate how things might unfold—and to begin to act accordingly—can help avoid knee-jerk reactions that lead to poor outcomes.

In the coronavirus context, if you are a leader of a grocery-store chain, you are seeing a drastic increase in purchases. You must think about your supply chains, whether to ration items, and how to put safety protocols in place for customers. In addition, there are the questions of whether to modify store hours, whether to limit service to curbside pickup and delivery only, and how to handle staffing. All of these decisions are related, so you must pause and prioritize the most pressing issues first. That also means having the discipline to ignore distractions.

2. Involve more people

Amid uncertainty generated by a crisis, leaders often feel an urge to limit authority to those at the top, with a small team making the big decisions while huddled behind closed doors. They should reject the hierarchical model that they might be more comfortable with in normal times and instead involve many more stakeholders and encourage different views and debate. This approach can lead to smarter decisions without sacrificing speed.

Specifically, leaders can use a so-called fishbowl model in which decision makers and key experts sit around a table—or virtual table—to make a decision (exhibit). At the table are one or two decision makers, multiple experts, and one or two “empty seats” for other relevant stakeholders in the gallery to rotate in as they have points to share. A majority of stakeholders observes the meeting, which builds understanding without having to make an extra communication step afterward.

In an in-person meeting, stakeholders watching the fishbowl can contribute information and ideas by temporarily taking one of the empty seats, briefly participating in the meeting, and then returning to the gallery. In a virtual meeting, the stakeholders are on mute but can participate by “raising their hand,” with a moderator inviting them in and unmuting them.

There are several steps leaders can take to involve more people:

1. Clarify the decisions to be made.
2. Identify a small number of decision makers.
3. Identify who should have a voice, including relevant stakeholders and experts, and those who will implement decisions.
4. Create a forum for rapid debate to take place. Be clear that everyone has a voice but not a vote.

When following this approach, it is possible to involve a large number of stakeholders and experts without sacrificing speed. Especially when things are unfamiliar and the decisions you are considering are bold, you need many points of view to make sure the decision makers aren’t missing something.

Once decisions are made, you can quickly pivot and speak to those who will be executing the decisions to clarify the actions to be taken, timelines, and accountabilities and answer any questions they have about what comes next. This not only saves time, by removing a communication step, but it can also enhance the potency of the message itself.

In today’s crisis atmosphere, waste-management leaders are likely experiencing a big shift in demand for their services. There is more household waste that needs pickup and less waste from office buildings and restaurants. How can these companies better accommodate the shift in demand? This decision should include a wide range of stakeholders, including representatives of the frontline employees (who may have good ideas about routes and which employees to deploy for which shifts) and the customers.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Andrea Alexander is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Houston office, where Aaron De Smet is a senior partner; Leigh Weiss is a senior expert in the Boston office.

The authors wish to thank Chris Gagnon, David Mendelsohn, and Vanessa Monasterio for their contributions to this article.