It’s one of the most exhilarating and rewarding things we do in pilot recurrency training. The instructor puts the plane into an “unusual attitude” while you are looking at the floor to induce a bit of mild vertigo. The instructor then takes the controls and purposely flies a disorienting maneuver and says, “Ok, you’ve got the airplane. Recover.”
The one thing you can count on happening when you look up is that you are going to need to do something: nose up, nose down, power in/power out, wings level and return to normal flight.
Why is it important for pilots to learn unusual attitudes? Well lots of reasons, but chief among them is to be able to do the right thing instinctively – when the stall horn is blaring, your body is telling you something different than the instruments and the engine is pulling hard. The pilot has one chance to do the right thing, and we are trained to do the diagnosis, take action and keep calm – reflexively. There is a specific pattern to righting an aircraft, and once trained, you could wake up from a deep sleep and get the job done.
Let’s talk about this same analogy in business.
When a firm’s leadership team find themselves having had a shock from the market, a supplier or key customer, they take one of two paths:
- The first path is the most common – it’s to take a step back and look up the org chart for guidance. The problem with this approach is that in truly disruptive moments, there is as much confusion in the C-suite as there is on the front lines. During times of turbulence, this results in very expensive middle managers hugging the wall and waiting for orders from the top. This is the equivalent of handing the airplane back over to the instructor.
- The second path is what we hope will happen. We hope that our winsome mid-senior leaders will begin to get oriented quickly and decide what needs to happen while knowing full well that this might be a new normal (and because they are intensely focused, that guidance from the C-suite will be in short supply for a while). This leader understands the fundamentals of serving a market, and can literally parachute in and get a new business up and running. This is the pilot that reads the instruments well and gets the plane back on track.
Why Talk About This Now?
In the last few days, I’ve had discussions w ith two firms that have huge disruption within their ranks. In both cases, it’s an existential crisis of mission and execution – and the kind of deep disorientation that lasts a while. The leadership is doing its best and offering early retirements while trying to engage their teams – but the truth is that the high-potential leaders they have invested so much in are waking up each day and wondering.
We’ve had a really good run in the economic cycle and the tide metaphorically has raised all the boats. With the shortage of talent, uncertainty in trade and hyper-competitive markets, that’s changed and decisions matter now (well they always did, but now we’ll have very visible winners and losers).
Path One – Passivity is Really Expensive
What I find in firms that struggle after upset is that they have been trained in one thing – optimizing the existing business model. They know every aspect of it and have spent time refining it endlessly.
When the core business model takes a hit, they do what they do best – optimize even harder.
Rather than arresting the slide, frequently this approach creates even bigger issues. There is a reason a firm slips from being at the top of a market into the fourth or fifth position after a market change…all the systems are set up to optimize – not do new.
Beyond the obvious costs of the business disruption, there are large, mostly hidden expenses incurred when the firm gets disoriented and the response is passive. Markets know who’s got it going on and who doesn’t – and it doesn’t take long for aggressive competition to take its toll on market share. Once that starts to happen, key sales and channel partners start to quietly shift their allegiance. It’s then that the equity comp begins to erode, and your key internal subject matter experts start to return those headhunter voicemails. Once the parade begins, it’s very hard to stem the bleeding.
People get into survival mode, which sucks the energy out of the firm and makes your whole ecosystem lethargic.
Path Two – Diagnosis and Pattern Recognition
Contrast this with firms that have taken a hit and come back well. They know how to work instinctively and take action to find the new normal. This allows them to build the new capacities needed to thrive.
When working with mid-senior teams in firms, we work hard at not only strengthening the core business model, but getting to the roots of why it works and just what we would do if we needed to make a fresh start.
There are two pieces of a framework that I teach that are absolutely fundamental in helping firms stay solidly grounded as they seek new value when the firm hits a speed bump: Compete Growth Leader and STRIDE.
Key to the Complete Growth Leader model are the core four leadership styles. How we select team members to design our recovery is critical to the ability of the team to create value.
One of the first things you need to do if you hit a market upset is to put precisely the right combination of leadership into a cross-functional team to restart growth.
The second pattern, called STRIDE, is accomplished at the team level. This framework rapidly drives discovery and scale and honors both areas of expertise. When the right combination of leadership styles is placed in a high-functioning team structure, value follows. The discipline of creating value-seeking teams is something high-performing firms take very seriously.
Taking Action
If things are running well in your core business, be thankful and blessed – for now. If you are in an upset and have not prepared, you are in for a bumpy ride indeed.
For those of you who can feel the turbulence ahead, it’s time to invest. It is remarkably efficient to build the disciplines to create cross-functional value, which always quickly return the investment you make in standing them up.
The most important part is to have the insight and courage to invest while the aircraft is right side up.
If you’d like to talk about how to put this work in place in your firm, you can reach me at 847-651-1014 or by setting up an appointment at this link.
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