3 Tips for Aligning Divergences in a Project in Crisis

In this week's episode, Ricardo shares three tips that can help align disagreements and accelerate action when a project is in crisis.

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Episode transcript

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Ricardo: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Five Minutes Podcast today. I like to talk about how do we align divergent thinking when you have a project that is in crisis. And first I need to explain to you one more time, that crisis is quite different from a challenging project, every single project, no matter the matter do you use, or the approach you use, is a challenge, and this is something like part of the DNA of a project. So every single project has this taste and feels that is very close to the edge.

However, a crisis is when you are facing a situation in your project that is so dramatic, that it could jeopardize and could kill the project, or even commit in very big terms the company that is sponsoring in reputation, or I would say financial losses or a massive accident. So you need to understand that a crisis requires a very fast and different approach.

If during this very complex time, your team starts getting crazy, you know, getting conflict on the top of conflict's your squad or your team becomes fight club in. This is the things that you want to really avoid that at all cost, because you, you know, imagine you are in a crisis in an aircraft, in a flight, where there is a problem with the aircraft. And then the crew members, our fighting in the cockpit, this is the worst possible scenario.

At least the crew must be united and together two face that challenge. So how do you do that? I would share with you three things that I would recommend you doing based on my experience, embrace it on several challenges I faced that during my work with a project, the first one gives power to those, with the knowledge to handle the topic. Let me be specific here. If you have a problem that is involving, I would say security or cybersecurity who should lead the effort to get out of the crisis.

If someone knows how to handle cyberattacks, it's not the boss, it's not the CEO of that company. It's someone that has the knowledge to do that. It's for example, if you have a patient in a critical situation in a hospital, it's not the bars of the hospital. It's the Dr. Who has the best way possible skill two handle the crisis. So this is for me, the first assumption. So every time I have a challenge of a crisis who has the knowledge if it's a crisis coming from an engineering perspective, who has the knowledge to avoid the bridge, to collapse, who can do that?

The second is to reinforce the cost of not moving or the cost of doing nothing or the cost of this alignment. A lot of people think that if they are just, you know, sit and wait, they are not spending money or they are not creating trouble. Yes, they are. Because in a crisis situation, you need to act fast in every single minute could mean lives, could mean financial losses could be increasing reputational risk.

It's not free. It's not something that I'm doing nothing. So I'm free. There is no cost associated. So you need to be very clear that the act of not acting has a massive cost has a massive, people need to align because otherwise, the plane would crash, the boat will sink, the fire will destroy your project aside. Its very important to be mindful of that. And third, and this is before it's to plan, and why I'm saying planning it's before you face a crisis, you need that simulate potential crisis.

For example, if you're doing an update in your system and this update will, I would say open some flaws or some breaches of insecurity, you need to have a team that will be able to, I would say, simulate an attack, to see how the system will behave, to see which kind of response can you give in a controlled environment. For example, the fire brigade. Why do all companies, basically they have these fire brigades because the fire brigade is a group of people that are training to evacuate the building, to evacuate the factory in case of a crisis.

So during the crisis, you don't, you start running you no, to the other side, there is so someone that will say: this is the safe direction, these is that our action, you should drive a, you should go. But the problem is that many people think that prevention is very expensive because we don't have time to lose on that. And then when that crisis hits you, you don't know what to do, and then that cost is massive. So if you see what is happening with COVID-19 global, so it's this so many times you see people that do not have the knowledge trying to make decisions, or people said, no, let's do nothing.

And there is a massive cost associated with do nothing. And one thing that I do, I want to wrap up this podcast is that keeping mind one thing, a crisis is not good. For example, if I ask any of you, would you prefer a word with COVID or without COVID of course every single normal human being would say, I prefer without COVID and this is obvious. However, these option does not exist. So every time you were in a crisis, there are two possible outcomes, the bad and the worst.

And that's it. There is no good, oh, everybody's because not no there is bad and awful, terrible exit them. So when you are in a crisis is you need to give the power, you need to plan, and you need to reinforce this cost of doing nothing to move towards the bad and avoid a tragedy. And this is exactly what is your duty of care when you are facing a crisis in a project.

Think about that. And let's talk again next week with another five Minutes Podcast.

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