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Excel in any crisis

A 20-min micro-course developed from my Situational Awareness workshop. Read it over lunch, impress your boss & team members in the next hour. 😉

👇 Start by clicking the toggles below

🤔What is situational awareness?

A quick Google search will tell you that situational awareness comprises these three phases:

Perception
Comprehension
Projection

At a glance, these phases are straightforward, but effective application requires a nuanced understanding.

Leaders and teams collapse in crisis because in high-pressure situations, people and other variable factors become unpredictable.

Situational awareness

✔️enhances adaptability and agility,

✔️improves decision-making and resilience; and

✔️positively impacts how we interact with each other.

& it is immediately applicable to everyone, in any role, in any job scope.

*all definitions of terms here are specific to this context.

** this is an extract of the actual 1 hour workshop.

🕵️Stage 1: Perception

Gather meaningful information from the correct perspective

Here's the terrible thing about the world we live in today.

There's lots of information.

Here's what a poorly trained team does.

Step 1: Gather all the information (that's easily accessible)

Step 2: Dump it all on their leader / decision maker

Step 3: Twiddle their thumbs in anxiety while waiting for a decision

It's a horrible situation for everyone because

☠️ With too much information, leaders make poorer decisions

☠️ Decisions have less time to be validated

☠️ Team members feel anxious, helpless and undervalued

In contrast, here's what a team with good situational awareness does to get the right Perception.

Step 1: Gather all the information.

Step 2: Question the missing gaps and gather additional information.

Step 3: Organise that information using pre-determined categories and/or a common perspective

Bad information delivery:

Good information delivery:

Image credits: Sketchplanations

Perception helps shape how we process, analyse and respond to information.

P.S. 👆 Love what you've read so far? Enquire here to book my time for a workshop.

💡Stage 2: Comprehension

Understand the implications and identify ownership

When my 9-yo does reading comprehension in school, it's quite literal. She reads, comprehends and answers the questions.

However, when it comes to situational awareness - there's a "situation" we are "aware" of as we comprehend the information that is presented to us. Hence, we need to ask these questions:

Who should be in ownership of this information?

What are the implications of this information?

Let's use an extreme example.

The emergency alert system in a hospital is down.
Nurses and doctors are no longer notified when a patient pulls the emergency bell for assistance. They need to manually patrol the wards to check on them.

A nutritionist walks past a ward. Oh, a patient fell.
It's not her department. Not her patient.
She walks on and doesn't convey the information to anyone else.

👆🏻 Did she comprehend and respond the situation appropriately?

~30% of situational awareness errors occurred when information was left unattended.

Sometimes, we hesitate because we don't understand what the information means, or what the solution is. That's ok! It's more important that the information ends up in the right hands.

Within the team itself, it's essential to

✔️ Clearly designate roles and responsibilities

✔️ Have a clear understanding of your team's role within the organization

✔️ Do internal checks to ensure there are no overlaps or gaps with zero ownership

This ensures that the team is clear on what to do with their responsibilities and the information that is entrusted to them - what is their role? What is expected? Who should drive action?

Here's an example of a team playbook to outline ownership of shared team objectives:

Instructions:
Each individual fills up the first three rows

Their team members who work with them, fill up the last row.

Ask:
👉 Are there expectations others have of me, that I have not acknowledged?
👉 Reviewing the team's shared responsibilities (in relation to its role in the organization), are there any gaps that have not been assigned ownership?
👉 Is the team allocating sufficient resources its most critical responsibilities?

👉 Are we leveraging on each individual team members' strengths?

P.S. At this point in my workshops, we break into groups to start testing the playbooks and discuss which ones they'll like to play with after the workshop.

➡️Stage 3: Projection

Designing an agile response plan

A crisis is a situation where 💩 hits the fan.

How can we avoid overstepping hierarchy while nurturing teams who can be relied on to make good decisions?

Decision-making frameworks need to be familiar.

Leaders need to be super clear on their priorities and key considerations.

If you're a leader, make it a habit in your daily interactions to:

🌟 Challenge your team members to explain and validate their decision-making.

🌟 Clearly define the team's overall definition of "success".

🌟 Encourage meaningful contributions.

If you're a team member, stand out by:

🌟 Analysing precedents and past decisions.

🌟 Proposing solutions in alignment with your understanding of team objectives.

🌟 Taking note of key considerations/priorities and using that to inform future decisions.

P.S. You can start doing them today!

The more familiar that teams are with decision-making frameworks, the more reliable they will be when decisions need to be made in high-pressure situations, especially when unpredictable variables come into play.

We need to make response plans accessible.

While response plans need to be confidential, they shouldn't be hidden so deeply that time and effort (both physical and mental) is wasted to retrieve said plans.

✔️Use simple, straightforward language.

✔️Avoid too many disclaimers or variables within the plan.

✔️Provide context - when would this response plan be appropriate; and why?

A response plan is only good when people can understand and execute it. Often, response plans are designed and planned ahead of time - missing context, ambiguous language and too many variables will only add confusion, not clarity.

😎Stand out as a valuable contributor, at any level.

As a leader...

✅ Review these team metrics using Atlassian's free Team Playbook here.

✅ Be clear on your preferred communication style, to enhance your decision-making

✅ Establish a common understanding of priorities for the team as a whole, so that individual players can adjust accordingly.

As a team player...

🌟Look beyond your bubble - keep updated on the industry and what's going on in the company

🌟Network internally - be aware of the teams that are co-dependent and what ripple effects may occur if one team collapses.

🌟Support - How does your leader / team member process information best? Optimise to reduce their mental load and enhance their decision-making.

As an individual..

🙋Elevate your thinking as often as you can.
👉🏻 Seek & learn from mentors
👉🏻 Instead of games, try brain training apps
👉🏻 Aim for bespoke - how could solutions be even better?

🙋Advocate for yourself!
👉🏻 Take the initiative to propose solutions
👉🏻 Seek guidance and clarification when things don't add up

Feel you need more? I give more specific guidance in a facilitated workshop.

✔️That one skill you need...

(in the actual workshop, we'll use a real case study in this section)

Let's learn from professionals who are consistently delivering in high-pressure, high-stakes environments.

What's one skill they have in common?

It's their ability to triage.

Medical professionals in the ER triage by conducting a preliminary assessment of patients to determine

(1) The urgency; and

(2) Most appropriate treatment

Similarly, leaders and teams should work on developing a system where they can perform a preliminary assessment of projects and problems, to determine

✔️ The urgency of the matter

✔️ How the team should best respond

✔️ What resources the team will need to commit

✔️ Its overall impact on the team's role within the organization

We cannot do anything, everything, all at once.

I deliver workshops that get people excited to deliver! Enquire here

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