Last weekend the east coast of the US was threatened with Hurricane Hanna. The weather people were in overdrive and our local news stations were getting ready to deliver wall to wall coverage. I admire and appreciate their dedication but there was a problem. Hanna didn’t cooperate. She didn’t become a Hurricane and only delivered some strong winds and heavy rain. Yes, there was some minor damage and flooding (certainly major if it happened to you) but thankfully the need for wall to wall TV coverage did not present itself.

But that didn’t stop the networks from going totally overboard. I admit they didn’t run 24/7 but they did have special 90 minute coverage and live updates etc etc. The problem was Hanna didn’t cooperate. In other words, there was little to report but they went on the air anyway wasting money and, in some cases, looking foolish.

So, they can do their daily routine or they can go to general quarters and over prepare. Is there nothing in between these two extremes? I see this in businesses too. All crises are treated equally. However, when you create a culture of over reacting to any old event as if it were the crisis of the century you numb your people. It is like the boy who cried wolf. Eventually you lose credibility as a manager if you are unable to help them understand the real situation and the context they are operating in.

I am not saying you shouldn’t be prepared and some situations do require an all-out all-hands approach. Some situations, not all of them. One of the best things you can do as a leader is maintain your composure and help people understand that this crisis is something we need to deal with but not something we need to over react to. And when the big crisis comes and you tell them, “this is the one”, they will more readily rise up to the challenge because they have not falsely risen many times in the past.

Things go wrong, bad things happen. But not all of them require you to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 1:59 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.