Leadership in

Times of
CRISES!

Ankit Sanghi – 44
Rohan Sharma – 46
Swapnil Madali – 22
Vinit Ambat - 2
 CRISIS!!
• In the wake of the July 16, 2005 floods
in Mumbai, the administrative
machinery completely broke down.
People had only each other for help.
• On Sep 11, 2001, Morgan Stanley’s
offices at the WTC in New York
suffered an almost direct hit when the
planes crashed into them.
• 1962, the world came frighteningly
close to nuclear warfare, when the US
found nuclear ballistic missiles being
developed by the Soviet Union, just
an hour away from the cost of Florida.
 Leadership under test
• A crisis puts the leadership qualities
of a leader under test and
magnifies both the light and
shadows of a person as a leader.
– Leadership in a crisis involves
rising above the pressure to
secure our own short term
survival/gain and to serve the
long term mission driven needs
of others.
• True leaders in a crisis situation use
 Crisis???
• Modern crisis are no longer confined
to the site of origin due to
globalization.
• Crisis are extended periods of high
threats, high uncertainty and high
politics that disrupt a wide range of
social, political and organizational
processes.
• Ultimately, a leader is not
recognized by how well he or
 Failed expectations
• The six public expectations that
leaders in crisis often fail to meet
are:-
– 1-leaders should put public safety
first.
– 2-leaders should prepare for worst
case scenarios.
– 3-leaders should heed warnings about
future crisis.
– 4-during a crisis, a leader should take
charge and provide clear direction
to crisis management operations.
– 5-leaders should be compassionate
T h e G ro w th C risis –
a n d H o w to
E sca p e it
A fte r La yo ffs, W h a t
N ext?
H o w R e silie n ce
W o rks
C u ttin g C o sts
W ith o u t D ra w in g
B lo o d
 How Resilience Works
• More than education, more than
experience, more than training, a
person’s level of resilience will
determine who succeeds and who
fails.
– Resilient people have very sober and
down-to-earth views of those parts of
reality that matter for survival.
• The 2nd building block of resilience is
the propensity to make meaning of
terrible times. Resilient people devise
• Values also contribute a great deal to
resilience.
– Values, positive or negative are
actually more important for
organisational resilience than
having resilient people on the
payroll.
• Resilience is neither ethically good nor
bad. It is merely the skill and the
capacity to be robust under conditions
of enormous stress and change.
• The third building block of resilience is
the ability to make do with whatever
is at hand.
 Cutting costs without drawing
blood
• When looking for ways to cut costs,
companies usually reach for the
head count hatchet and the
markets roar with approval.
– But a company can always create
more value by seriously
evaluating the small ticket
capital item that get rubber
stamped.
• Because cutting the capital budget
increases cash flow, the author
argues that
 Step-by-Step Guide
• Requesting the right information
– Is this your investment to make?
– Does it really have to be new?
– How are our competitors meeting
compliance needs?
• Reviewing the budget proposal
– Is the left hand proposal duplicating
investments already made by the right?
– Are the trade offs between profits and
capital well understood?
– Are there any signs of budget massage?
• Revisit Business Processes
– Are we using shared assets fully?
– How fine grained are our capacity
measures?
• Conducting a post-mortem
– Be inclusive
 The growth crisis and how to
escape it
• Even through the 90s when the US economy
boomed, few companies enjoyed
consistent double digit revenue growth,
and those that did, achieved it short term
measures such as mergers and inflated
price increases.
• The sheer number of products has
exploded, which has already diced already
saturated markets into ever smaller
segments. E.g. in the United States, the
number of food product SKUs grew
fivefold, to nearly 11000 from 1980 to
1998 according to the Federal Reserve
Bank of Texas.
– Companies should really try focusing on
Company 1995-2000 International Acquisitions2 Price Estimated
Overall growth1 (%) (%) increases3 core growth
compound (%) (%)
annual
revenue
growth (%)

J.P. Morgan 31.3 9.4 12.3 4.5 5.1

Chase
Boeing 21.1 4.8 6.7 1.7 7.9
Disney 15.9 1.3 6.3 1.6 6.7
ExxonMobil 13.4 6.9 3.0 10.5 -7.0

1. This column measures the growth from base international

revenues in 1995, along with any international acquisitions.
2. This column measures the net change in revenue caused by
domestic acquisitions and divestitures.
3. This column measures the change in price of the underlying
commodity or industry segment (as measures by the consumer price
index or the product price index.)
 Analysis of
Questionnaire
“ B e in g th e le a d
co m m u n ica to r is
p ro b a b ly o n e o f the most
important things a
leader can do in a
crisis” ---Judy Hoffman
 Please assign a numerical value of 1-5
for the following Crisis leadership traits
Traits Mean Rating
( 5 Point
Scale )
Communicator 4.6
Adaptable 4.6
Attitude 4.5
Relation Building 4.1
Disciplined/Committe 4.1
dVision 4.0
Structured/Organised 4.0
Passion 4.0
 Please assign a numerical value of 1-5
for the following Crisis leadership traits

T ra its M ean
R a tin g
In n o va tive (35. 8 Point
In te g rity S3 .ca
7 le )
A n a lytica l 3 .7
C o u ra g e / B ra ve ry 3 .6
C h a rism a 3 .6
C o m p a ssio n a te 3 .5
In te llig e n ce 3 .4
In flu e n ce 3 .2
 When you personally face a business
situation with an uncertain outcome, do you
imagine, anticipate, and prepare for at least
three possible outcomes so that you are not
surprised by what actually happens.
 The employees at your organization are
loyal, fulfilled, hard working, passionate, and
do not experience conflicts between their
own personal self-interest and the interest of
the company
 When faced with complex and seemingly
overwhelming problems, you are personally able to
quickly and smoothly get things under control by
focussing on key areas of importance and following
a disciplined plan of action
 with employees so the appropriate
messages are received as they were
intended and not distorted by gossip,
communication break-downs or message
“fade out”.
When faced with cost-reduction challenges,
you personally perform a careful
examination to ensure that costs you cut do
not undermine the value that is delivered to
your customers (whether internal or
external)
 Your organisation effectively manages its
knowledge assets and ensures that people in
the organization have the appropriate
information they need to excel at their jobs.
Thank
You!