You're It

by Leonard J Marcus

  Prompt operational progress by asking yourself and your team action-oriented questions: What must we do differently in order to carry out this decision? Who needs to be involved or informed? What resources are required? When do we act? How will we measure impact? These questions orient the brain toward doing. The answers propel the team forward. You identify stakeholders and the anticipated impact. You perceive interdependencies and relationships that may prove critical to implementing your decisions by allowing and encouraging you to delegate effectively.

  There are many ways to go either right or wrong in the operationalize phase. Your best chance to get it right is to transition carefully through the four prior phases. Recall the significance of the Möbius loop structure: the steps are continual and sequential. Each step forward is dependent on your earlier POP-DOC efforts. You can progress either slowly and methodically or, in a crisis, you can traverse the loop in seconds.

  How might you get it wrong? There are dreamers, chargers, and bean counters. Dreamers reach for a compelling vision, ignoring the pragmatic constraints and situation at hand. They get people excited about the desirable yet impossible to achieve. Chargers overlook the analytic phase of the POP-DOC Loop. They generate a lot of activity with little productivity. What they lead and do has limited connection to the problems or opportunities at hand. Bean counters tally what they have done, though it lacks direction and purpose. They precisely catalog actions with little awareness of their impact on or relationship to the situation. From their perch, the numbers themselves signal success.

  There is a bit of dreamer, charger, and bean counter in every leader. Vision, action, and accountability are each essential to your effectiveness. The six steps of POP-DOC help you balance and temper your impulses and more accurately fit your actions and solutions to the contours of the situation at hand.

  Phase six of POP-DOC is communicate. When we interview leaders and their teams after a crisis, the most frequently cited theme for critique and improvement is communication. Getting everyone the information they need to know when they need to know it is difficult, particularly when an operation involves many people as well as multiple agencies and organizations.

  Communication is multidirectional: out and in. It includes both information out from leaders to followers and information in from the situation and followers to leaders. Master communication and it will be a powerful force for you; stumble and it can quickly become a daunting force working against you.

  Visualize two types of communication: waves and flows.

  Waves follow a regular schedule and rhythm. Think of a daily noon press conference or an end-of-day briefing during a crisis. It may be a weekly blog post by a CEO working to catalyze change in the organization. During a crisis, establish the rhythm of regular updates for key stakeholders at set times every day: 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., for example. Prime expectations and establish control of the communication parameters. Prepare carefully and forge a narrative of unity of effort to get people together on both message and means. This is how CDC leaders communicated with a worried public during the H1N1 crisis. The briefings were regular, and they were strategic.

  Flows, by contrast, are constant. Think of the continuous activity on social media or the fluctuations in stock prices. You cannot control the flow; you must swim in it. Information that truly cannot wait for regularly scheduled updates needs to make its way through the system. Debunk rumors. Provide critical updates that enable you and your followers to make nimble adaptations to your strategy and tactics. If you have established and engaged in effective waves, you’ll avoid being overwhelmed by information coming in and requests for news. You better manage the flow. For this reason, CDC leaders also accepted frequent requests for media interviews during the H1N1 crisis. In so doing, they maintained the information flow, mitigating the possibility of rumors and misinformation.

  In volatile situations, information can emerge slowly while decisions and announcements are expected quickly. It is best to be forthright about what is known and what is not. Have your announcements conform with risk communication best practice: This is what we know and what we are doing about it. This is what we don’t know and what we are doing to learn more. This is what you—the audience—should do. This was the CDC communication theme throughout the crisis. If you get it right, the people receiving your announcement will be calmed and feel directed. And in keeping with the meta-leadership definition, people follow you.

  Organizations have prewritten holding statements ready to issue to the media, including social media, when crisis hits. There are many variants. “Acme holdings has just learned that [X] has occurred. Our priority now is the well-being of our employees. As we learn more, we will provide information to family members and the public.” These at-the-ready communication statements are helpful when little is known and many are in the basement.

  The POP-DOC Loop heightens intentionality as you take action in the high-stakes situations in which your meta-leadership comes alive. People above, below, and alongside you pay particular attention when you act—your decisions, behaviors, communications, initiatives, and more—and when you propel them into action mode too. Your meta-leadership has its impact in the actions you take. It is also in how you take action and how you express what you’re doing.

  POP-DOC is not merely a tool for crisis leadership. It can become part of your everyday analysis and action. Use it to guide business decisions, military strategy, or personal dilemmas. As you embed it, you become more intentionally thoughtful and balanced in your thinking and actions. Use it routinely and it will be ready when it matters most.

  Meta-leading is fraught with risk. At one end of the spectrum, you could act impulsively. A miscalculation generates a new set of problems that can cascade out of control, with unfortunate outcomes. At the other end of the spectrum, you could hesitate to take action or make a decision out of concern that it might not go as planned. Such indecision creates its own consequences and implications, often adding to your troubles. Both extremes are basement behaviors.

  Apply the POP-DOC Loop as a tool and continuous process to find just the right measure and balance. Test an idea by launching it modestly at first, then assessing the impact. You can perceive, orient, and predict the next steps based on your experience. If you achieve the intended effects, take it up a notch, implementing on a wider scale and with greater certitude. If not, recalibrate. Take small iterations through a number of loops before fully committing. Each cycle deepens your understanding and impact.

  Engage others and involve them in your actions. Gather supporters, respond to concerns, and build larger constituencies, thus reducing the risks in moving forward. For followers, there is meaning, purpose, hope, and accomplishment in what you and the enterprise achieve. Together, you and your followers make a difference. This is why you are being followed. With each cycle through the POP-DOC Loop, you move closer to your overall meta-leadership purposes and intentions.

  You may be wondering why we have yet to highlight the “how to” of a topic central to much of the discussion on leadership: vision. When our students discuss the great leader/lousy leader exercise, “having a vision” or being “visionary” are always on the “great leader” list.

  It’s hard to craft a compelling vision for where you are and where you want to go until you first get your bearings. The POP-DOC Loop is your tool for doing just that. As you systematically go through its steps, you grasp what was, what is, and what your direction will be. This is your vision. In POP, the process connects your vision to the strategy and tactics necessary to realize it in DOC. Beyond the inspiration itself, a vision untethered to the complexities of implementation breeds frustration.

  Repetitively traversing the questions of the Möbius loop will connect POP and DOC into a feedback cycle that guides the evolution of your vision and actions. As you go through the figure-8, you continuously learn and refine to get closer to your goal. You adapt your vision to the realities in your situation, be it ad
justing to market signals, responding to political shifts, or transforming your organization to better fulfill its mission.

  In the Chapter 3 story of FEMA’s transformation, Rich Serino and his boss, Administrator Craig Fugate, perceived disconnects throughout the disaster response system. Fugate had come from the state level, and Serino from a local agency; both now had federal-level responsibilities. Analyzing the patterns of gaps and overlaps, they predicted that a system that better integrated state, local, and federal agencies—along with private and nonprofit organizations—would improve outcomes and more effectively use resources. Their POP vision: a “whole of community” disaster response.

  In their DOC actions, FEMA decided to call those other players “partners” and rather than supplant them, to operate in support of and in coordination with them. Inclusive communications emphasized the new approach. From the 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri, to Super Storm Sandy in 2012, to the hurricanes of 2017 and 2018 that came after Serino and Fugate left FEMA, that legacy iterated forward. The system was never perfect, yet FEMA, operating from vision to reality, continued to learn from its experiences.

  Life’s Pivots

  In the years following Survivor: Africa, Ethan Zohn became a widely known and inspirational figure. Through media appearances and speaking engagements, as well as a large Web presence, he demonstrably changed lives through his charitable activities. Zohn made the most of a great situation.

  Then, in 2009, he confronted a bad situation, an unexpected personal pivot. He was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer, CD20-positive Hodgkin’s lymphoma. His situation was a medical one. But it was also a psychological situation, a public situation, a family situation, and an organizational situation for Grassroot Soccer.

  Zohn faced a deeply personal, and possibly fatal, situation that was as bad as it could be. It was an existential crisis and the potential loss of everything. But, like every situation, it also had the potential to be transformative through greater self-understanding.

  “After getting that call from the doctor, I immediately thought, I’m going to die,” Zohn told us. “And then I made a pact with myself to stay positive and fight like hell.” After three initial months of intensive chemotherapy, the cancer returned. Zohn’s life shifted into a cycle of bad news, more treatment, remission, hope, and then disappointment with the return of the disease. With each round, he underwent another and even more intensive intervention. During one of those bouts, he wrote on his blog: “The cancer is back. It’s entered my body. It’s trying to destroy me. The stem cell transplant they gave me was like hitting the reset button on my body—the entire journey of cancer is like a triathlon.” This was the POP side of his analysis: perceiving his situation, orienting to the patterns, and predicting that his attitude would affect his fate. And then he pivoted forward.

  Zohn decided to become the person he needed to be to fight the disease. In November 2011, he told People magazine, “I don’t want fear or cancer to define me, but it’s always in the back of your mind.” He went on to say, “Cancer isn’t going to slow me down. I want people to know that you can still live a fulfilled life and move forward. I will get better, but it’s going to take a while.” This was the DOC side of his persona: he decided to fight, he put the plan into practice, and then he communicated his mission. In his many media appearances, he turned himself into another kind of hero, Survivor: Cancer. It was a choice that reflected his perception of the situation, what it meant for him, and for the many others who depended on him as well as the many more for whom he served as a role model. Though he did not ask for it, this new situation became for him another leadership opportunity.

  Zohn was resilient. Resilience is the capacity to face anxiety and setback and then bounce forward to overcome it. Sometimes you become what you were before. In the best case, however, what you learn in the process transforms you into someone stronger and even more resilient.

  “I think in the cancer world, the general perception is that there are winners and losers,” Zohn told People. “[That] you either beat cancer and you win—or you don’t and you die. But the reality of my situation is, I did everything in my power to beat cancer, and I did. But it came back. And that’s okay, too… I’m not a failure. There are millions of people out there living with cancer and you can still have a fulfilled life. You can go to work, raise a family, and charge forward. That’s what I’m doing here.” He constantly honed his perception of his situation. He did not delude himself with false hope, nor did he resign himself to collapse.

  Zohn told us, “Focusing on the plight of another human being helps you heal. There is scientific research that proves this. So I made a conscious choice to make the details of my life public. It helped me to help others. It was selfish and selfless at the same time. If I can effect change in the middle of my own crisis, that’s a good thing.”

  With an accurate picture of the situation, he was able to fortify himself to fight and fight some more. He survives to this day.

  Leaders often describe leadership as lonely, especially when the situation is bad. The worse the situation is, the lonelier it can feel. When the situation is really bad, you can be overcome with feelings of isolation.

  Should you find yourself experiencing the profound loneliness of a bad situation, know that it can be also be an opportunity to discover your greatest personal resilience. That resilience is critical to the resilience of the larger operation—or in a very broad situation, the overall population. Your followers are far less likely to be resilient if you cannot find that quality within yourself.

  This is the lesson of Ethan Zohn. Cultivating your resilience is critical to mastering the many situations you face. Life is not linear, it’s complex. It is full of unexpected pivots. Should you simply dispense with planning because you know that you will face many situations, large and small, every day? Not at all. Remember, plans are directional, not deterministic. Context is dynamic. Be attuned to the world around you—and the world within yourself. Without this awareness, you will miss opportunities or needlessly succumb to setbacks.

  Embrace a mind-set of striving to fully perceive, orient to, and understand the situations that surround you. Only then can you truly engage the enterprise of the people to whom you connect and who look to you for guidance and direction: those down, up, across, and beyond your organization. Connectivity—this is the topic we turn to in the next chapters.

  Questions for Journaling

  Engage in practice runs with the POP-DOC Loop in routine situations such as during a staff meeting, a night out with friends, or a walk through airport security and check-in. What do you perceive? What do you later realize you failed to perceive? How accurate were your orientation and predictions? Were your decisions sound? How did you make things happen and communicate your intentions? How were your actions influenced by this exercise?

  Then apply POP-DOC to a crisis situation. It could be a personal crisis or a major organizational crisis. How comprehensive were your perceptions? Did your orientation reap useful patterns? And how accurate were your predictions? Turning to DOC, did your decisions achieve the intended effects? Were they operationalized as planned? And your communication efforts: did they work?

  Remember a time when you were called upon to pivot, in either your professional or personal life. What happened? What encouraged the pivot? What discouraged it? And did your pivot help or complicate your situation?

  EIGHT

  DIMENSION THREE

  Building Connectivity

  By now, we hope you fully understand that meta-leadership is not simply a tool set for when you lead. It is actually a systematic way of thinking and acting that informs both those grand meta-moments of crisis and change and the more routine decisions you have to make.

  Ultimately, this is a story about you, both singular and plural. You are always ready to pivot quickly. And when you do, others must be ready to pivot with you.

  Meta-leadership connectivity is a social exercise for cultiva
ting, nurturing, and building person-to-person value directed toward linked objectives. Leveraging those relationships accomplishes more together than anyone could do on their own.

  Why Connectivity?

  When you lead on the meta-level, many people and entities become involved—whether it’s bosses, employees, customers, bystanders, the media, or investors—and they all have some connection or stake in what happens.

  One option is that everyone is in it for themselves. Each person goes off on their own, in separate, competitive, and disorganized ways. Chaos erupts, organizational silos become rigid, and resistance to change increases. The disjointed jumble adds to the disarray and magnifies gaps and overlaps. There is no coordination, collaboration, or cohesion and few checks and balances. The resulting mayhem only exacerbates the chaos and disorder.

  A different option is to properly deploy the third dimension of meta-leadership—connectivity—so that all stakeholders become invested in a shared purpose. They come together, sharing what they know, what they are doing, and what they hope to achieve. There is order and unity of mission, and people engage one another with mutual cooperation. Everyone has a job to do and helps others succeed in theirs. There is mutual respect and good behavior. People trust both one another and the process that brought them together. The resulting goodwill bolsters productivity and fortifies the investment in the collective effort and accomplishment.

  Assembling that connectivity of effort—or being a part of it—is your role as meta-leader.