In the midst of massive disruption, is it possible to find silver linings for businesses? Kristin Rivera and Andrew McPherson explore how to harness crisis-era urgency for the post-crisis period.
Kristin Rivera:
Welcome to our podcast series, “Emerge stronger through disruption.” I'm Kristen Rivera and I lead PwC’s global forensics practice as well as our Global Crisis Centre. I'm coming to you once again from my home office in Larkspur, California, which is just North of the Golden Gate Bridge outside San Francisco.
In each episode of this series, I speak with global leaders about the challenges facing businesses during disruption. I'm delighted to once again be joined by Andrew MacPherson. Today, we'll focus on how we can identify the silver linings from the highly disruptive COVID-19 pandemic.
Andrew, I'm a little bit jealous that it's summertime for you down there in Australia. In my experience, summer often brings fresh perspective and a little bit of optimism.
Andrew MacPherson:
Hi, Kristin. Great to be back with you today -- and it certainly does. I feel incredibly fortunate to have actually been able to travel-- only within my state and actually only once a shutdown window opened -- but during that time my family and I traveled through some of the huge areas of Australia that burned last year in the bushfires, an area as big as the UK.
But instead of that ash and black and burned, it's now absolutely vivacious and green again, and incredibly loud with insects and all of that sort of thing.
Everything's moving back in. And I think I feel a bit like that about 2021. We've been through that trauma and the crisis. We're really moving into that period of fantastic vivacious regrowth.
Kristin Rivera:
I have to say, I really love that idea of regrowth. Because I'm sitting here in Northern California where we also experience similar cycles where nature destroys and then nature regrows. Thinking about the pandemic, I feel like we've all had challenges over the past several months or even year, but now we've had a bit of a chance to catch our breath.
And in these periods of regrowth, it gives us a chance to focus, not just on how hard things have been, but also to look at how far we've come and what we've accomplished. And this, I think, presents an opportunity to reflect on how we can build on those accomplishments and also to maintain that momentum.
As we record this podcast, PwCs Global Crisis Centre is preparing to launch our 2021 Global Crisis Survey. And in it, we will take a fresh look at how businesses worldwide responded to the pandemic. I like to think of it as a sort of global after-action report.
One story that came out of our survey this year really resonated with me. It came from a chief compliance officer of a consumer products company who shared that they had long-planned to create a curbside pickup offering for their customers, but had never done it out of fear that it would be time-consuming and difficult to implement. As a result of the pandemic, they were able to implement the procedure over the course of a single weekend.
And for me, this really underscores our topic for today, which is: How can businesses capture -- or bottle, if you will -- those silver linings from the pandemic, and pay them forward?
Andrew MacPherson:
We can look at that in several ways, because the suffering's done -- we don't have a choice on that. Certainly on the human side, if I move to the individual, there's a real renewed focus in many of us through this on well being and taking care of ourselves. With remote work that you and I are doing today and many still are -- we've had our commutes -- we've got more time with our families.
And actually our environment is seeing cleaner scars as a direct result of that. So certainly at a personal level, we've been experiencing this. But across the business world, organisations are now really thinking about how do they emerge stronger from that crisis and tap into some of the muscles that they've built through this challenging 12 months prior. To creativity:
How do I harness that idea and that agility of, “I can solve any problem -- and some of them really fast. I can pursue opportunities quickly.” Your curbside pickup’s a fantastic practical example of exactly that that we’re seeing so many times. How do you keep that adrenaline and urgency that you face in a crisis, but in a sustainable way that doesn't fatigue the organization or expose it to risk?
That's a key thing organisations are thinking about -- how they do that. The other piece is clarity. I think it's a really interesting time to reflect on your strategy and your risks. Many organisations have experienced some gaps in their strategy or the risk mitigations over the last 12 months, where they have realized that certain things under certain circumstances have played out much bigger than their scenario planning and risk planning had laid out.
How do you deal with that? How do you build that learning forward as you think about what might come in the future and how you can take advantage of that?
Kristin Rivera:
This concept that you're describing -- effectively, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger -- isn't really revolutionary, but it still feels a little unorthodox to apply it in the context of business, partially because we've spent so much time from an enterprise risk management perspective, trying to prevent risk from happening.
It's also not all that different from Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest, or even from the concept of post-traumatic growth and the positive psychology movement.
So often it feels like we think of the aftermath of a crisis in terms of trauma. But if you look a little harder, I think there's just as much evidence, if not more, that trauma often leads to growth. The example I mentioned earlier, in that retailer mobilizing and transitioning to curbside pickup in a matter of days, demonstrates how people are getting creative and making things happen.
As you know, Andrew, I live and work here in Silicon Valley, and technology companies are known for being innovative and creative, but they're also known for being disruptive and for disrupting themselves.
They've learned how to harness the power of disruption. And, in fact, some might say it's almost become a core competency of these technology companies.
Andrew MacPherson:
And again, I think it's really true for individuals as organisations. I often think of that post-traumatic wisdom I’ve seen in people who've been through a tremendous health challenge -- survived a cancer diagnosis and so forth -- I've always found the person that emerges is just a little bit more reflective -- you're a bit more wise, a bit more empathetic, and have a broader perspective.
And I think that's a really useful thing for businesses to think about: How do we take this to the next level in the way that we're planning and running our businesses?
How do we create environments in our organisations where teams can tap into the creativity and the perspective they've gained from crisis and trauma -- the current one and future ones? How do we put that together -- collaborate, reflect, let creativity flow and use that agility going forward?
Kristin Rivera:
That brings up the concept of being anti-fragile, which takes it, I think, one step further beyond agility. The concept of anti-fragility is really about focusing less on how to avoid or prevent crisis, and instead putting the energy and focus on the idea that agility is about learning from the crisis -- and then using it as a springboard to actually become better.
And that also raises this concept which you've mentioned -- of the sense of urgency. So many of us have or probably are still experiencing pandemic fatigue. We know that it's simply not sustainable to operate in a heightened sense of frenetic energy because of the level of stress that that causes over time.
So how do we take advantage of that energy that we've experienced and rechannel it in a positive way?
Andrew MacPherson:
That’s interesting -- as I've been talking about this with our clients and indeed our partners across PwC, you know a couple of times I’ve been hit with the reaction to, “How do we sustain some of these good things for the pandemic?” And the response has been, “Look, I really don't want to sustain anything from what I've experienced in the last little while -- it's been really hard.”
And again, let's take the human analogy of that. Adrenaline's an amazing thing. In a human body, you know, a mother can lift a car off a child. The bones and ligaments have got the strength. It's just that doing so is completely exhausting and not sustainable. So Kristin, in your practice, you really focus on -- how do we get those benefits of post-traumatic learning growth?
How do we build our organizations more resilient or anti-fragile, in a way that doesn't need a crisis to come along to cause us to do so and pull that out?
Kristin Rivera:
Andrew, the first step is to take stock after the crisis, to reflect back on what happened, what you did well, what you could have done better. And sometimes that goes against the natural inclination to just say, “Phew, crisis is over. Let's go back to business as usual and try to forget that this ever happened.”
There's a very natural inclination to do that, especially when you're exhausted. But in our work with companies, we found that it's absolutely critical as a first step to stop and reflect and to do that after-action assessment -- because it's those learnings that you need to capture while they're fresh, that will inform what you need to do to really build the muscle that you need in order to be stronger for the next time.
So after you've had a chance to take stock and reflect those lessons, then it's about periodically creating scenarios that recreate the desirable aspects of being in a crisis -- that sense of urgency, that sense of teamwork, that sense that you need to move fast or you may not survive.
And so if you can recreate that in a simulation for your leadership team on a periodic basis, that really gives you a lot of the benefit of living through a crisis without actually having to go through one. And our teams often set up these exact types of activities. In fact, we find that it doesn't really matter what you simulate, what the actual crisis that you use to engender that kind of experience.
It's really about going through the motions and experiencing those feelings and that sense of urgency that pays the dividends.
Andrew MacPherson:
I think that's right. That's very much the experience that our clients have and that we talk with them -- is the power of a debrief. Ask any astronaut or fighter pilot.
They'll tell you the power of a debrief. They're very good at it. But also then the power of using simulation. So you're not having to debrief after something traumatic -- you're generating that. Because look, in many things in life, I find this is about building muscle. In an executive group, it's about having them know what the tone from the top is as they go through these things, and understand how they work together.
It's quite personal to an executive group and an organisation, and it's something that does really benefit from practice and a little bit of development. That's to me, what builds real resilience -- and that anti-fragility is that playfulness in between the tough times with how you might respond differently.
In some cases the simulations are really quite bizarre potential events. And that's terrific because it really does build that muscle.
Kristin Rivera:
We know from our crisis survey work, that if you give people enough distance from a crisis, they often remember the camaraderie and the hard work and the accomplishments very favorably.
They view it as a coming together of a team and accomplishing something really important in the face of adversity. And so, even through these simulations you can recreate some of that sense of teamwork, and it can be a bit of a boost to your team morale -- even though you're theoretically focusing on something that might seem on paper, somewhat negative, the feelings that those exercises can create can actually be quite positive.
Andrew MacPherson:
And that's what we want our clients and organisations to not miss out on here: As the clouds part, let's not forget to grab the silver linings and really understand how we might use them in the future, going forward. I think that's central to our message here in this podcast.
Andrew MacPherson:
Kristin, thanks for having me along today, to explore the concepts of post-traumatic growth, antifragile and so forth. I think this is a really fascinating time in human and many organisations’ history, and a great time for organisations to think about how they move ahead. So I really appreciate you having me along today for the discussion.
Kristin Rivera:
Thanks, Andrew, for joining us. It's been a really enjoyable series of conversations. For those listeners who would like to learn more, please connect with Andrew or myself on LinkedIn, and we'd be more than happy to continue the conversation. Remember to subscribe to the podcast series, “Emerge stronger through disruption,” wherever you get your podcasts.
Next time I'll be joined by our US crisis leader to discuss the importance of investing in resilience. Until then, thanks for joining us.