Good News- We Have a Crisis!
I have been a member of the Center for Creative Leadership community for over 10 years. With their 
permission, I am reposting a recent article by David Hurst from the CCL Leading Effectively e-Newsletter.
The recession isn’t over and, even if it is, the recovery won’t be pretty.
That’s the general consensus, so even if you are starting to breathe easy, you could benefit from some fresh thinking about how to survive and succeed in tough times.
If you’ve managed not to panic, you’ve already taken David Hurst‘s first lesson on surviving economic crisis. Hurst, a writer and consultant who spent 25 years in the corporate world, shared his ideas with the CCL community earlier this year. His thoughts for finding opportunity in adversity include:
It’s for real. A sense of urgency is the most important ingredient for personal and organizational change — now we’ve got it!
Fear can be useful. The relationship between reason and emotion is like that between a jockey and a powerful horse. Fear can be harnessed if it can be focused on coordinated action.
The unthinkable is possible. In times like these, you can do things that were unthinkable before because people are listening and conventional wisdom no longer supplies the answers.
Don’t look for stability. There is no choice between stability and change: It’s change on your scale and timetable versus change on someone else’s schedule.
Don’t rely on current success. The seeds of destruction are in the fruits of success: Large scale and homogeneity lead to a lack of resilience. Be small and mobile for quick experimentation and rapid prototyping where feedback is specific and fast.
Seek out edges and open patches. Change takes place on the edges of systems and in open patches where variety and diversity can flourish. Look for opportunities on disturbed ground, such as in turbulent markets where information is poor.
Control and release. The management/leadership challenge during a recession is to execute a simultaneous centralization of everything to do with cash and spending, while decentralizing responsibility for focused innovation and learning.
Say “no” to turf protectors. If they can’t play on the team, then they can’t stay on the team.Understand what’s going on.
A storyteller is essential to every team: We need narratives to make sense of what’s happening.
Learn more about Hurst and his Seven Pointers to Finding Opportunity in Adversity at www.davidkhurst.com.
