How to survive and prosper in times of crisis

[WORLD] Organizations face unprecedented challenges that can make or break their success. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a stark reminder of how quickly the world can change, forcing companies to adapt or risk falling behind. But what separates the companies that merely survive from those that thrive during times of crisis? The answer lies in a concept known as "radical adaptability."

Radical adaptability is more than just a buzzword; it's a fundamental shift in how organizations approach change and uncertainty. Keith Ferrazzi, founder of the consulting firm Ferrazzi Greenlight, conducted extensive research involving 2,000 executives to uncover the secrets of companies that excelled during the pandemic. His findings reveal that success in turbulent times requires a new level of agility and resilience at both the team and organizational levels.

The Power of Team Resilience

One of the key insights from Ferrazzi's research is that resilience is not an individual sport but a team effort. Companies that thrived during the crisis recognized the importance of collective resilience:

"What we identified in the research was that resilience was thought of as an individual sport. It was, I am resilient. What we saw though were that the organizations that thrived and had better engagement scores, less reported mental stress, stronger mental resilience, these organizations recognized that resilience was actually a team sport, where the team adopted a commitment to raise each other's energy, to identify each other's energy."

Implementing Energy Checks

A simple yet effective practice that emerged from the research is the monthly energy check. Team leaders can gauge the well-being of their members by asking them to rate their energy levels on a scale. This practice not only identifies potential issues but also fosters empathy and strengthens team bonds:

"I'll give you another very simple nugget or a practice that came out of the chapter around resilience, which is a leader doing a monthly energy check. I just did it this morning, actually, with a client, where you just go to the chat room and you say to your team, 'How is your energy these days? From a scale of zero, I'm lying in the mud puddle, all the way to a five, which is I'm skipping on rainbows with unicorns. Put your energy level in the chat room.'"

Developing Active Foresight

Another crucial aspect of radical adaptability is the ability to anticipate and prepare for future challenges. Ferrazzi emphasizes the importance of active foresight:

"Two of the most important elements to a team's radical adaptability are agility and foresight, as you've suggested. Now, those two are beautiful as bookends to each other. The foresight is identifying and gaining the insights of where should we be going, looking around corners, seeing the risks, seeing the opportunities. The agility married with that is the accompaniment that allows us to get there."

The Lockheed Aerospace Example

Ferrazzi shares a compelling example of how Lockheed Aerospace implemented a simple yet effective foresight process:

"Rick Ambrose was the president of Lockheed Aerospace. He as a team leader brought a simple elegant process, basically put on a five minute agenda item on his executive team agenda. And every member of the executive team came to the table prepared to announce risk or opportunity that they saw from their vantage point."

This practice allowed Lockheed Aerospace to identify potential risks early, including the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling them to transition to remote work well before many other organizations.

Embracing Asynchronous Collaboration

The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of remote work, but it has also highlighted the limitations of traditional meeting-centric collaboration. Ferrazzi introduces the concept of asynchronous collaboration as a powerful alternative:

"Now, there was a type of collaboration, which we saw emerge as a real extraordinary competitive advantage for teams and organizations that if they mastered had a lot less fatigue and a lot more innovation than their peers who did not. And it's called asynchronous collaboration."

The Cruise Example

Ferrazzi shares an example from Cruise, the self-driving car company:

"We start collaborating in the cloud. We put an assumption out. We invite dozens perhaps of people to opine, so that they could all visibly debate in a shared Google Doc or a SharePoint document or something. And from that debate in the cloud, which could take several days or a week, there is a discernment of what meetings we actually have to have and who would be in part of them."

This approach reduces meeting fatigue and allows for more inclusive and thoughtful collaboration.

The Lego Block Workforce

The pandemic has also accelerated changes in the employer-employee relationship. Ferrazzi introduces the concept of a "Lego block workforce":

"So we now have what we call Lego block workforce. We need to think about our employee base like a customer base. And increasingly, as you know, the gig working community is thriving. Individuals choosing to work on their own hours and plug and play into sometimes multiple companies or multiple projects at any given time."

This shift requires organizations to rethink how they assemble and manage their workforce, creating both challenges and opportunities for those who can adapt.

Supercharging Purpose

In times of crisis, a strong sense of purpose can guide decision-making and empower employees at all levels. Ferrazzi explains:

"What I mean by that is, I remember speaking to one of the senior executives at a large telecoms company. And she was saying one of the great things about the way their guidance around purpose was we knew that up and down the organization at the time of crisis, we could drive decision-making further down into the organization, closest to the crisis, closest to the customer, closest to operations."

This purpose-driven approach allows for more distributed decision-making and risk-taking, which can be crucial during times of rapid change.

Practical Steps for Individuals and Teams

For those looking to embrace radical adaptability in their own organizations, Ferrazzi offers some practical advice:

"What I might suggest is convening your team with a simple question. The question that was the basis of the book's research two years ago. What have we seen? And what are we proud of that we did over the last two years that we do not want to go back to old ways of working, but we want to sustain them, hold onto them, celebrate them, institutionalize them, and go forward with those principles?"

This reflection can help teams identify and maintain the positive changes they've made during challenging times.

As we navigate an increasingly uncertain business landscape, the principles of radical adaptability offer a roadmap for success. By fostering team resilience, developing active foresight, embracing new forms of collaboration, and supercharging purpose, organizations can not only survive but thrive during times of crisis.

The companies that will lead in the future are those that can continually adapt, innovate, and empower their workforce. As Ferrazzi concludes:

"Open up your team. Open up your team to create the future of how it works in a radically volatile world with radical adaptability."

By embracing these principles, organizations can build the agility and resilience needed to face whatever challenges the future may hold.