All,

Based on a few conversations over the last week I thought it was worth sharing some thoughts on concepts to manage your personal psychology and outlook in times of prolonged stress and uncertainty.

I’ve always had opinions on the topic.. my personal theory of the world is based on the premise that in fast moving sectors the organisations that are best at “crisis” management will prevail in the long-term. A crisis could be a landmark project that starts to slip, a deep and complex infrastructure P1 that drags on for months and sucks in the whole organisation, or a response to an external shock like the BCP effort to migrate clients to WFH during a pandemic.

My thinking on the topic really crystallised in a different forum. For the last five years I’ve been involved in a health and fitness community run by folks who help manage the PT programs for all three branches of the US military. It combines a group of people like me with a general interest in health and fitness with ex-Navy seals, former professional athletes, world record holders and the like, plus young folks preparing for the infamous selection processes in the military and law enforcement, both in the US and globally.

The curious case of one young guy always stood out. He was probably the fittest and strongest in the group, could zip through a 10-mile run at five minute miles, do sets of 20 pull-ups with a 20kg weighted vest, etc., etc., every day of the week. Yet, despite some great coaching and the support of the community he failed at SWAT selection three times in a row and eventually gave up on his dream altogether and vanished.

The challenge that forced his VW every time was similar to the “beasting” on the popular SAS section show in the UK. The participants get brought to a football field, then do sprints, crawls, carries, and the like up and down for an undefined period of time, until a certain proportion drop out, or if they don’t make some unknown arbitrary but predefined time limit all drop out. People who don’t put in a minimum level of effort get culled immediately. It could be over in 30 mins, it could last 12 hours, nobody knew. The participants generally didn’t realise this was primarily an exercise in psychology rather than physical conditioning. Sports like football have a predefined time limit, whereas in the real-world things take as long as they take, which requires a completely different set of psychological skills. Lots of things in normal life are time bounded with natural progression people don’t even need to think about; school terms, exams, university, then career. People can get a long way in normal life without ever having to face an open-ended high stress situation and as such don’t have the tools to deal with it.

Not sure exactly when I got there but I realised that personally I’ve a pre-defined model, based on the rule of two… essentially, in trouble shooting a P1 or any other crisis situation with open ended uncertainty:

• assume that 99% get mopped up in an hour or two;
• however, if its two hours in and still running, assume it’s going to take four hours;
• at four hours, assume eight and so on;
• at one month assume two months, two months four, etc.

Sounds benign, but the important aspect is the implications for pacing and strategy:

• at the beginning, when a new P1 or challenge comes up, the moment you recognise the danger react with maximum aggression to snuff it out;
  • or as we say, focus on killing off the problem, not managing it;
  • it’s generally a good idea to just fix things in the first 30 mins rather than worrying too much about client management, etc;
  • those can be done after the fact.
• if the issue is still rumbling on after two hours, assume it will take four hours to fix it, so other priorities like customer communication, etc, become much more important;
• if you’re still on the bridge 18 hours in it makes sense to grab a few hours’ sleep as chances are it will take another 24 hours;
• at two days, ramp up the focus on strategic troubleshooting, instrumentation, Splunk analysis of logs, etc, because chances are it will take another two days;
• etc..

Having dealt with many tech crises over the years I can’t overemphasis how important these pacing and strategy changes are once things start to drag on. In Options, over eight years we’ve had two stanzas where we were managing a capacity induced crisis for a full 10 weeks, including personally having to work 10 weekends in a row both times, cancelling family holidays, and all that goes with it. In both cases once we hit a week, we had to take the big step of redesigning and rebuilding a section of the platform, as the analogy goes “rebuilding the aircraft engines while the plane is in the air”.

Reflecting on life, you notice this type of effect popping up everywhere once you become aware of it. For example, if you’ve ever been in a street fight (i.e. attacked on the street) you’ll appreciate that your odds of surviving increase dramatically if you make it through the first 30 seconds. The “Dictators Handbook” documents research that shows that 80% off would be dictators are “ousted” in their first three months at the top of the pile, meanwhile, if you can make it to two years odds are you’ll be in charge for 20.

So, what’s the point?

Applying the model, we hit four months into the COVID crisis at the end of April and it was still rumbling on. Applying the “rule of two” my assumption is now that it will take at least eight months for things to work through to a conclusion. Hence setting the expectation that the offices in London, Belfast and New York will be closed until the end of August. If they’re still closed in September, say because of a second wave, all of a sudden, the expectation doubles, and we’d be looking at the end of April 2021.

I’d go so far as to say that my expectation is that countries like Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand, who acted quickly with maximum aggression to kill off their outbreaks are probably out of the woods. They just need to stay vigilant and play a tight game at the borders. Whereas the UK and US, where we acted slowly to start with before opening too soon, will still be managing significant aftershocks 12 months from now (numbers in Texas* for example are accelerating and its almost 6 months in). The primary peaks may well be ahead of us.

From a psychological standpoint, you might be starting to get a feel for the power of the approach. First of all, once you get a few months into a crisis “expectation” starts to push out so fast that you’re almost guaranteed that the crisis will be over much earlier than you think. A sharp contrast to the folks gasping for an immediate resolution who will literally be melting their minds with anxiety every new day desperate for the pain to stop.. watching the proverbial kettle boil. It’s even worse in a politicised context where opposition parties, impacted constituencies, and vested interests are pumping out alarmist and conflicting messages day in and day out, creating maximum fear and confusion.

It also forces you to pace and plan for the long-term. For example, aside from the sales team who need to push to quarter end, there are probably few people in the management team who wouldn’t benefit from a couple of weeks off to re-energise at this juncture. It makes sense to factor in time for mindfulness, health and fitness, outdoor time, passions or hobbies, family, making sure your home setup is fit for purpose, that camera works etc., etc. If we expect to be in some form of a crisis situation until at least the end of August, or even April, what other measures can each of us take to look after ourselves and invest in the long-term? The same goes for coaching your reports to do the same.

Flipping back to my original premise – that the firms that are best at crisis management will prevail. This is a once in a lifetime crisis, so it offers a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to get a leg up on the competition if we pace ourselves and behave in a calm and controlled way. Not our primary motivation, but you can guarantee some of competitors are organisationally stressed to the eyeballs and poised to implode if things do drag on. We win by being patient and looking after ourselves and our teams.

Hope this helps. Long winded way to encourage everyone to take a bit of time off and invest in looking after themselves. We need to stay fresh and sane for the journey ahead.

Danny
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*This MEMO was drafted on June 12th.