Organizational responses in times of crisis
A crisis, especially one as unexpected and catastrophic as this one, can shake an organization’s foundations. However, every crisis presents an opportunity to influence what your company becomes. And how it is seen when it emerges from such a trying period. First of all, you need to keep a workplace like using hiring tools for hiring people or recruitment and diversity.
Political economy professor Steven Callander described how leaders may rethink their thinking to make the most of the difficulties posed by crises in a recent Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Education online course. He continues, “Our goal is to treat a crisis as a management challenge.” “We want to thrive in the spotlight,” rather than being trapped like a deer in the headlights.
Determining the Scope of a Crisis.
According to Callander, every organization’s leader will face a crisis at some point. No industry is unaffected. Given the current global economy’s interdependence, it’s also conceivable that every firm will feel the effects of a crisis that appears to be far away at some point.
So, how does a CEO recognize or characterize a crisis on a fundamental level? For starters, it’s an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence, as Callander points out. Organizational success is often founded on effective, efficient routines, which is one of the reasons why crises are so difficult to deal with. Second, because a crisis can have a major and immediate impact on an organization, it necessitates a quick reaction. If a crisis is not addressed quickly, it can have serious consequences for the company.
Taking Advantage of a Company’s Reputation.
People intuitively grasp the concept of reputation on a personal level since they are always attempting to evaluate and regulate how others see them. Corporate reputations, it turns out, aren’t all that dissimilar, according to Callander. People evaluate businesses in the same way they view people: as trustworthy, trendy, or unscrupulous.
Several research on business reputation has discovered that its different components may be boiled down to two words: competence and empathy. The perception of an organization’s competence is the degree to which others believe it is good at what it does. Is it trustworthy? Are the goods it makes of good quality? Empathy, on the other hand, is a more ambiguous term that refers to how sympathetic people believe a company to be. Is it concerned with and supportive of its stakeholders? Is it trustworthy?
Every organization, according to Callander, has a reputation that can be mapped along these two axes. And broad industry trends will influence where an organization lands. A huge tech corporation, for example, may score better on competence but lower on empathy. Whereas a small nonprofit is more likely to score the opposite. Of course, the goal for any company is to excel in both dimensions.
As an opportunity, a crisis.
In his regular interactions with business leaders, Callander has noted that many of them have the same gripe. “They have to repeat themselves over and over.” He claims that it comes with the territory. “Leaders are in charge of an organization’s mission, reputation, and culture. And getting the message out and having it stick requires a lot of repetition.”