The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan: How to Take Charge, Build Your Team, and Get Immediate Results, 3rd Edition

APPENDIX IX

Leading through a Crisis

A 100-HOUR ACTION PLAN

The main body of this book lays out a sequential methodology for leaders and their teams to get done in 100 days what normally takes 6 to 12 months. In a crisis or disaster, this time frame is woefully inadequate as teams need a way to get done in 100 hours what normally takes weeks or months. This requires an iterative instead of sequential approach. That way follows.¹

Start with the basic premise that leadership is about inspiring and enabling others. Enhance that with Leonard Lodish's idea that “It is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong.”² Then add Darwin's point that, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”³ Add it all up and you get leading through a crisis being about inspiring and enabling others to get things vaguely right quickly, and then adapt along the way—with clarity around direction, leadership, and roles.

This plays out in three steps of a disciplined iteration in line with the overall purpose:

1. Prepare in advance. The better you have anticipated possible scenarios, the more prepared you are, the more confidence you will have when crises strike.
2. React to events. The reason you prepared is so that you all can react quickly and flexibly to the situation you face. Don't over-think this. Do what you prepared to do.

3. Bridge the gaps. In a crisis, there is inevitably a gap between the desired and current state of affairs. ...