I was musing on the recent floods and my mind turned to the leadership challenges of dealing with an expectable yet unexpected event, one that has short-term impact and long-term effects…

I was particularly taken by this image of a river in flood, with both a direction sign and a Stop sign showing. The river was over 4metres above normal level at this stage and anyone who didn’t know what they were doing could quite easily be washed away – the direction signs and the Stop sign were no help at all, just like sometimes our well laid change plans turn out to be more of a hindrance than a help.

This is change leadership of a different type – crisis management – and one that needs a different set of tools to those typically used for transitions in ‘normal’ conditions. Residents of York, who had been prepared in advance by both previous experience and the blandishments of the Environment Agency knew what to do and many of them minimised the impact by taking and acting on the advice of those who had ‘been there, done that’. They relied on both external expertise and internal experience. The EA could no more be expected to give detailed advice to every single household that your change leaders can give individual advice to everyone affected by your change.

What they could and did do was to make every effort to inform as many households as possible of the broad risks AND of the specific impending hazard; advance publicity was extensive and every potentially affected households had a telephone hotline to keep them informed of the scale of the emergency and what they could do to help – that included encouragement to help others (neighbours). Actually IN the crisis the advice was simple – ‘stay away’ – well-meaning amateurs are more hindrance than help and this is where the professionals come into their own with the resources and expertise needed to deal with critical cases. The cleanup and recovery, where huge resources is needed, is where the ‘amateurs’ come in.

So, how might this apply to the crises that will inevitably arise during your change effort?

• Firstly, acknowledge that such crises are expected and unexpectable – they will happen but you don’t know when or what their nature will be.
• Learn from the past – the EA are good at transferring lessons from both local and wider history of flooding to their operational response. What can you learn from your own history of change or from others’ tales of woe?
• Prepare your ‘constituency’ – to give the impression that all will go smoothly is tantamount to telling your people an untruth, and that’s never a good idea. How can you prepare them for the inevitable ups and downs? They will need to rely on internal resilience as well as your leadership.
• Keep your eyes open for signs of a crisis emerging – it’s easy to figure out that several days’ rain in the upper catchments will eventually flood York, but what are the signs that you might expect to see if the **** is about to hit the fan on your change effort?
• Know when to ditch the ‘business as usual’ plan and invoke the crisis plan – good emergency planning is less about the type of emergency than about the impacts, so what impacts do you need to plan for?
• Keep Calm and Carry On – above all, as a leader you need to project calm, the impression that you know what is happening and how to handle it (even if behind the scenes you are getting the clean trousers out!). Your followers will take this calmness on board and work through the crisis with you.

I’m sure there are other lessons, just remember to be aware – as a change leader you need part of your attention on the past, part on the now and part on the future, that’s what makes it such grrrreat fun!