Here is an excerpt from an article written by Morten T. Hansen for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.
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Recall the terrorist attack in Oslo, Norway, a year ago, when a lone terrorist first bombed a government building (killing eight people), then drove to an island where he murdered 69 mostly young people on a summer camp. The newly released report analyzing that day slams the police and the government for ineptitude, much like the infamous 9/11 report in the U.S.
How do you lead in a world full of crises, shocks, terror and disruptions? This question is relevant for CEOs and government leaders alike.Jim Collins and I studied this question in our book Great by Choice in which we analyzed CEOs and companies that led successfully in such a world. From this and other research we know a few things that ought to be in place for leaders to successfully anticipate and respond to crises, turbulence, and disruptive change.
1. Leaders need to be productively paranoid.
The successful CEOs in our study displayed an odd behavior that we labeled “productive paranoia.” Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines predicted eleven out of the last three recessions. As Bill Gates said, “Fear should guide you.” The successful CEOs in our study were hyper-vigilant about threats around them (the paranoia part) and also took action to mitigate those threats, whether in the form of building buffers or hedging (the productive part).
Prior to the Oslo terrorist attack, we saw the exact opposite of productive paranoia — a leisurely attitude. The government was supposed to build a security perimeter around the building, but just didn’t get around to it. It did have a fast-response helicopter stationed in case of a terrorist attack, but this could not be used, because the staff was on vacation in July, like most Norwegians. (Did they believe that terrorists too take vacation in July?) The key here is for leaders to be hyper-vigilant, and especially when things are calm — because it could be the calm before the storm.
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To read the complete article, please click here.
Morten T. Hansen is a management professor at University of California, Berkeley, School of Information, and at INSEAD, France. He was previously a professor at Harvard Business School. Prior to joining Harvard University, Hansen obtained his Ph.D. from the graduate school of business at Stanford University. He has also been a senior management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. His research on collaboration has won several prestigious awards, including the best article award from Sloan Management Review. His Harvard Business Review articles have been bestsellers for a number of years. He is also the author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, published by Harvard Business School Press (2009). You are cordially invited to visit Morten Hansen’s webpage.
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