S3, Ep.8 - Crisis Readiness Before the Crisis: The SPACE Framework + 30-Minute TRIAGE Huddle

Introduction

0:00Welcome to Organizational Sherlock's, the podcast where business meets psychology and your organizational puzzles meet their match. Join us for captivating stories and practical solutions to unravel your toughest challenges. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Fleming. And I'm Morgan Ashworth, Your Guides to a Prescription for Business Success. Let's dive in. Well, I'm excited for

0:33this meeting and recording today because I do feel like it tends to fall under my scope in work,

Crisis Management

0:42especially when I'm getting called in to other organizations as well. We're going to be talking a little bit about crisis management today. Yeah. Hey, this happens all the time in my life. Usually people will call for some help when things are going wrong and not always as proactively as maybe they would want to be. So I think this conversation is really important and one that is really kind of timely as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no matter where you're working in an organization, there are times

1:17when a crisis might come about. You know, there's so many different types of crisis that could happen. It does depend on the industries, but it could be, you know, HR instances like terminations and disciplinaries. It could be situations where you've had some resignations and now you have to do an org restructure. I'm trying to think of some other, you know, examples. You could be a manufacturing mishap. You could have a compliance-based organization come your way and try to do an

1:52audit on you. These are all types of crises that could occur. Yeah. I mean, I think you could even expand that out if you really wanted. The one that, of course, comes to mind for me is COVID. No one knew what to do. That was not a planned situation. Right. So I think really when you boil it down, it's, it's really about things that maybe are unplanned or kind of come out of left field from time to time. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you can have larger crises, like kind of like COVID. You

2:23have to reorganize, see if you can work remotely. You might have furloughs, layoffs, whatever might be happening. But you could also have, and that's a larger one, but you could have small ones such as weather, a weather situation, and you need to close down the office for that day. And how are you going to handle it? And how are you going to communicate with these people? Are they at work? Can you communicate with them ahead of the crisis and be proactive a little bit of insight of what we're getting into today? Or do you have to figure out how to notify them outside of office hours too?

2:54Yeah. Well, and here's the thing. And I, when I'm working with, you know, small business owners or

Pre Crisis Planning

2:58entrepreneurs who are starting a business, right. And maybe I'm kind of helping support that creation. I always talk to them about having somewhat of a crisis plan for various situations, right? I am going to just say it as it is. We can't plan for everything. We know that. Nothing is going to be perfect. But if we've thought about it ahead of time, it puts us in a better place to be able to navigate a crisis when it does arise, right? So like one of the examples I always give is

3:29like, I live in the Midwest, I don't have hurricanes. So I don't need to plan for hurricanes, right. But I should probably plan for massive amounts of snow, or tornadoes or something like that. And so I think there's also a little bit of, I know, we're using weather right now, what a Midwest thing to do. But I do think that there is a way to think through how might you handle something if it comes up, even if you don't have it planned to a T. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do, I would say like, there's lots of companies that have emergency

4:00action plans, depending on the situation. You know, we've heard code red, code green, code blue, even school systems have these. But then it can also be something that you don't necessarily have an emergency action plan for. But you have some sort of pre-crisis design ready to go, which will determine how your crisis management and overall crisis performance moves into the future, right. It's really important that you can plan for the unexpected in a way. I will argue that,

4:32you know, insurance companies are very good at this. They know the crises that you're going to handle. And sometimes they're able to write out certain crises that they can see coming that they know you might not have an action plan for. It is so important that you have some sort of pre-crisis design that helps you handle crises and know who to reach out to and what types of forms you might need or what types of documentation or communication methods you're going to have to be able to use. You know, I have some even recent thoughts of what I've had to do. You know, to an extent,

5:09there's a reason there's certain requirements towards compliance, whether that be filing or compliance with training, compliance with, you know, like I could think of like OSHA and the record, not just the record keeping there, but the trainings that your staff have to go through. And so within that, it's that they're trying to help you plan for crises and or prevent them from happening. Not to say that every compliance requirement is something that's going to be related to a crisis. Maybe it's overcompliant sometimes, but all in all, that's the purpose

5:44of compliance is to help prepare for crises. Yeah, no, I completely agree. And I think that proactivity is so important, you know, because we just think about the kind of natural response when we are in crisis, right? Just as humans, there are certain things that we do and usually they're there to protect us or to defend us against a quote unquote attack, right? Or some, and that could be the crisis, right? And that's just a natural thing we do. And it's important

6:16and helpful. And it can also limit how we move forward, right? Like how does productivity continue? How does the manufacturing line continue when there's a safety issue? Like what, what do we do to make sure that our business continues to run in a way that helps us be successful while also managing some of those natural human reactions to crisis, right? When we feel we're under threat for whatever reason that may be. Yeah, no, I would agree. I think that is so important. You know, I'd love to go over

6:49some of the, you know, psychological reactions that we're already trying to make up for. And this is something we need to know about when we're doing a pre-crisis plan. Yeah. Well, the big one that comes to mind for me, in all honesty, is around just how we kind of put on blinders at times. Like you think about a horse walking through a parade and we put on the blinders so we can only see what's right in front of us. When we do that, we're, we're narrowing our focus so that we can get through this situation in the best way possible as quickly as we can, right? Because it is again,

7:22a threat kind of, or a reaction to some kind of threat, right? While it's understandable that we do that, and trust me, I've been there, I've done this myself, it limits us from seeing the entire context, right? And it impacts how we bring information in to inform the work that we're

Psychological Reactions

7:45doing. So it's that narrowing of our attention that is vital and can also have its own set of impacts or results. Now, one, now one point I would like to make there is it kind of gets into how you would build a plan around it. Well, it's to decrease the external non-crisis based pieces of detail that you might have on your plate. So just recently, you know, I was doing something that was crisis related. It was. And I said to my staff, oh, hey, just so you know, I am actually working on

8:20some like strategic plans right now. So please make like, just know that, you know, if you email me at the moment, I'm not going to see it. I'm not going to get to it. Like my focus is on this document that I am writing. They didn't need to know exactly what I was dealing with, but I gave them a sense of understanding of I'm not going to touch anything else. And I made sure that I was not spending time elsewhere because my full attention needed to be on this situation. And so our attention narrows and our, our attention to detail falters. And so because of that, where we can decrease the need to pay

8:58attention to other external factors, you should. So it's the ability to change, like to set aside non-crisis, non-urgent tasks right away and or delegate tasks that could be urgent, but aren't related to the crisis. Yeah. I want to point out something that like based on the example you just gave though, right? Like by telling the people around you that this is what I'm doing and I am not available by being transparent about what you're doing, you're kind of like putting it out into the

9:33ether a little bit. And I think that we don't often do that. Right. So it actually is really, in my mind, empowering for the people around you, because then they might be able to say, can I, I might be able to pick this up or I might be able to help with this thing or gosh, Morgan's really busy right now. So I'm going to pick this up, take care of it. So when she gets out of her strategic planning, you know, time, she's going to say, wow, thank you. Like that took something off my plate. So I also think it creates a scenario that allows people and empowers people to do more

10:08and to engage collaboratively simply because you're just kind of throwing it out there. Like, Hey, this is what's going on. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, back in the day, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have like made it clear that I needed focus time. I would have been, you know, kind of act like everything was okay. And I wasn't handling anything. And so instead I was transparent that I was handling something, but I wasn't a hundred percent transparent of the situation I was managing, obviously after the fact, once the situation was handled, they did see

10:39some insight onto the situation that occurred at the company. And so at that point, they had an understanding that there was a crisis, but instead of creating a, an emergency on their part for something that didn't necessarily affect them, I gave them insight on, I need time. Don't disrupt, please. Yes. It empowered them to handle their workload without me needing to be involved. But at the same time, it kept it from there being emergency across the board. You know, my, the crisis I'm handling does not need to be the crisis that everyone is handling. And I would argue

11:13that that does help with some of the psychological effects that we have. For example, it decreases the likelihood of rumors in a crisis, rumors increased because of misinformation and or missing

Transparency and Communication

11:27information or gaps of information. So by giving them something to focus on that was not crisis-based, rumors decreased. I, they weren't trying to fill in the gaps of what I might be working on. Yeah. Especially if I hadn't been transparent, then they may have noticed I was clearly stressed about something. Right. And I wasn't sharing anything, but instead I gave them something to believe I was focusing on and had transparency that I'm in a current mode of like kind of the idea of I had my blinders

12:00on, like you said, a horse. Yeah. Yeah. Not to, you know, relate or to make you kind of whatever, like a horse, but I do think it's, I mean, it's a good example though. Right. Cause like they, you don't want all the extra noise. Right. Um, which that, that to me, that relates directly to the rumor, the rumor mill. That is, it absolutely happens. I will tell you in my experience, I have seen the rumor mill cause so many problems, more than

12:31executive teams have ever thought could be. Um, are you that the most crises you see in an organization are cultural? They truly are because, you know, you're facing, you know, organizational shifts and you're facing weather shifts and all that other stuff far less often than you're facing even small crises of culture. Yeah. Well, and here's the thing too, like if there is a crisis, that's not necessarily culture related, say, uh, you know, a big termination or, um, a pending like reorganization or something

13:04like that. If we keep that as leaders completely under wraps and cause, um, you know, but, but something gets out there here and there, right. The rumors are bound to increase. And if we continue keeping it under wraps or saying, no, no, no, nothing's going on. Right. Like as leaders, people are going to continue talking and then you're almost in essence, creating another crisis. So it's like a crisis upon a crisis. And I just don't, that's not, that's not great. Right. For

13:36any leader, but it's also not great for the organization because psychological safety is impacted trust, you know, like communication, all the things we just talk and talk and talk about on this podcast and probably what's happening in your organizations or the topics in your organizations. Like we don't want to create a scenario unintentionally, um, that leads us down that path. Right. And again, going back to what we started talking about, that is why being proactive is so, so important because you have an idea of how you're going to handle something. Yeah. And I

14:12would, I would say that, that it starts with transparency across the board, um, where it's not just you as the leader that understands what's going on, but it's your, your main stakeholders that understand where they fit into crisis management. Um, yes, something like a termination, for example, could affect culture. And so then it is important to be able to, you know, build that psychological safety. Even if you're a leader that feels that people might maybe should, you know, mind their own business or it doesn't affect them. Or you think, oh, this termination, like it's not affecting

14:43someone. It still is because there was a termination that occurred and someone's going to think, am I next? Or does this affect me? Or, Hey, I liked this person or I didn't work with this person, but I never heard anything bad about them. So that's where the rumor wheel starts. And so you have to be careful. Um, you know, our, obviously our crisis was not, um, termination related that I was referring to, but post crisis, obviously, like I said, my team could tell something happened, um, after the fact, you know, for the initial part, I was transparent in the sense I needed time. I wasn't quite transparent about what I was working on. Um, but it's again,

15:17cause I didn't want to cause an emergency for others that didn't, it wouldn't, it truly didn't affect them. But post crisis, I did send, we did send an email out to the team of, Hey, just as a heads up, this is what happened. It is handled, yada, yada. Um, and then said like, Hey, if you have concerns about your environment, please know that it is a safe environment to talk and give suggestions and bring situations up. And so, you know, building that psychological safety, despite the situation. And, um, it's actually interesting because a satisfaction survey went out shortly

15:48after and people were saying how, uh, now it's anonymous, but I can see the general consensus and people were saying, I feel cared about. I feel like I have a purpose. I feel like I can speak up. I feel like, um, you know, I am comfortable and I, I, and all in all, it was kind of pushing towards retention and overall psychological safety. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, it's not about giving every detail, um, right away, but I think even just stopping and saying, I am dealing with something right now that is requiring more of my attention, um, than typically

16:23would. Um, I, we will let you know what is going on. Um, but for right now, I just need a little bit of space to be able to work on this and think through it. Right. I think as humans, we are more likely to kind of say, Oh, well, that makes sense. Sometimes I need space too, to think about things and then maybe not engage in the rumor mill in a very negative way, because when that starts going, they might say, well, hold on. You know, Elizabeth just said, we just need a little bit of space. They're going to let us know it's coming. We know. And so it gives them kind of a,

16:56a, um, a guarantee that there will be clarity. And that guarantee of clarity, I think prevents people from going down paths that are not beneficial or helpful for them. And I would like to emphasize this fact. It's a history of giving that clarity too. So you have a history of not just saying, Oh, we'll let you know later, but you actually, you have a history of follow through with the giving of clarity. Um, now in a perfect world, proactively, we give

17:26ourselves, we don't run at capacity in an organization and we have room to plan when a crisis were to hit. So, you know, being able to have a pause list, but not have an effect overall, you know, workplace productivity needs, um, that's in the perfect world. Some companies do run with this slack. Other companies, especially, or certain positions may not run with this slack. And so that's the point by which I noted earlier of ensuring that you, if you have quote, urgent tasks, but

17:59aren't related to the crisis, you need to ensure there's other individuals who can take that over and perhaps their positions have the slack to get. They, they're working at 90% capacity instead of a hundred percent. So while you're working at a hundred percent capacity, very common for executives and, and high and senior managers, when you're working at capacity, you have certain items, certain tasks, you know, others are aware of how to do, or can figure out how to do. That's something

18:29I like to know with you being responsible for it. They may not know how to do it, but they could figure it out. Um, so giving it to someone who has the capacity to do so, there's always an importance to have some slack in the workplace. Absolutely. And I know you just mentioned a pause list and I just, if that's not a term that our listeners are familiar with, you know, pause list is really like what, what on my list, right? Could I drop or drop priorities, you know, for at any given time,

Pause List and Slack

19:00right? It's this, this idea that not everything on your list can be priority. Number one, there has to be a couple of things that if it's takes it a day longer or a week longer, that's okay. The impact or the consequence of that is not going to be so profound that it influences everyone and everything within the business. So I just wanted to clarify pause list. What can, what can you drop until a later date that isn't going to impact the functionality of the business or have a negative

19:30impact, I guess. Yeah. And I, and I would say that the pause list oftentimes with what's on it is something that is developmental to the organization yet not implemented or affecting at all. And so that's why you do see change management in like organizational developments take a while because there may be a backend software or a backend process that needs to be developed first before any change is made. And that's usually what's on your pause list. I'll be honest. Um, so I have a project that, you know, I I've had sitting, uh, not sitting, there's been slight pieces of prop of,

20:05um, you know, improvement and overall, uh, development over time, but it's been about a year of slowly moving in, um, slowly getting that, uh, that level of like, just getting it done. We're getting close, but it's taken a while because it is unfortunately the first thing on the pause list. Yeah. I mean, I think a good example I'll give is related to like data in organizations and, um, and I won't go on a really long thing here, but I will say that, you know, there are, there are

20:40organizations that say, well, we need a CRM system or we need to automate all of these things that we do, all of our customer emails, invoices, everything. I'm just making something up. Right. Um, all of that absolutely matters. And it's not something that I could say, I need that system. I'm going to deploy tomorrow. And it's not because the system doesn't exist or couldn't exist. Right. There are out of the box solutions. Do not give, get me wrong. Right. But before you get there, and this is me being like a data nerd, which for people who know me, no, I'm really nerdy when it

21:15comes to data. Like you have to have clean data. You have to trust your data. Otherwise, why would you put that data into a system? Right. That's going to automate something that is incorrect. So long story short, your system, the software may be put on a pause list so that you can spend the time you need to clean your data and make sure that it is trustworthy. Right. Like that's just an example that I think of, um, from a business analysis, change management lens. It's funny. That's, that's what's going on with, with my company. It's something that's supposed to be.

21:49Oh, sorry. Oh, that's okay. That's not to say we don't have small pieces of automation getting implemented because we do have CRM and, um, and a bookkeeping system that are together. So, you know, that's working great. And there's little pieces of automation we can constantly do to it, which, you know, hint, hint, build slack too in your amount of tasks that you're doing, but there is a very large project regarding automation and or self-service for customers. But that's taking longer because all the data needs to be correct. Yeah. Which I can tell you as someone who cleans a

22:24lot of data, um, that it can take time and it does take time. And it, to your point about slack, it is not something that I could do, you know, 50 hours a week. Like you, you got to stand up and walk away for a little bit. So having that slack is really important and almost kind of time boxing as well. This is how much time we can spend on this. Um, you know, whatever. So I'm now I'm getting down on a different rabbit hole, but I think that's an example that I see come up. And I just would share that because I imagine it maybe feels familiar to some of our listeners.

22:58Yeah. And I would argue that that is where your slack comes from. It's usually some sort of project, you know, even in my, in my day-to-day team members, they have some data entry that they usually will help with. And it's the project that sits behind all of their, you know, regular interactive type work, the, the work that they're collaborating with them, customers and other team members on that comes first, but then they might have an independent project of data entry, something else that kind of sits behind what they do. Um, whether that'd be like product photos or product photo photo entry or, you know, lead entry, things like that. Yeah. But, um, I kind of,

23:32I feel like this kind of transitions into one of the other steps or tactics you might use to help with crisis management against the pre-planning before it. Um, not only I talked about transparency, but we're talking about knowing what individuals are working on and knowing what can be passed off, but the ability to make work visible so you can reroute it fast. So having that transparency of who's responsible for what, and then making it visible to others, obviously in that transparency so that you can then build slack where you need to. Um, so because, you know, hit the hidden work is oftentimes

24:08what becomes dropped during like some sort of disruption, but we don't want it to be dropped entirely. We want it to put on that, be put on that pause list. And so there needs to be an understanding and, or maybe something that needs to be reassigned. Um, I'm trying to think of some examples, maybe like a work in progress limit, for example, like there's two active projects for a person limited to a time or some sort of tracking sheet, uh, becomes very helpful to making sure there's an, a knowledge of who's doing what. Um, like for example, I mean, a crisis could be as simple

24:41as we have a thousand deadlines, but this person's out sick. I don't know what they're working on. Right. You know, I have a client that uses, they use like a project management system for this reason. Um, and they use monday.com, but there's a lot of different ones that are out there. A lot of, you know, I, I, in a previous company I would use, um, the, oh man, the name is escaping me. It's a Microsoft solution where it has all of the task lists and all of that. But I will say too, that in order to delegate and in order to kind of shift, if there is some kind of disruption, you need to

25:16make sure that there's not one single point person that, that is the only person that knows the information, right? You have to include cross training, um, especially for some of those really critical tasks, right? Like I'll just give a random example. If payroll is coming up and something bad happens and that payroll person has to go deal with it, you probably should have somebody on the back end to back them up because you're going to have a really unhappy company if they do not get paid. Yeah. You need to have some sort of redundancy, um, which plays it. So redundancies are super

25:49important. Um, you know, funny enough, I was just looking at a system and I'm like, wait a second, there's only one person on the system. I'm like, that should not be the case ever because we only had one admin on the system. I'm like, okay, can you please add myself and to this person? I go, can you please add myself and add this person as well? Because we want that redundancy. It's your responsibility, but I know I can go in if you were to have something happen or you couldn't work on it and I can go in and check it for you, or I can go in and do that work for you. You know, it's one task a month that this person does within the system, but it is a very important task at the same time.

26:24Um, and so building that redundancy, building that second level of defense and having that cross training, again, it plays into the next one. It's the clarification of rules and the decision rights before you make them. So can someone else make this decision? Can, is someone else the, the cross trainer is someone else, the redundancy. Um, funny enough, I actually, I'm, I'm going to be leaving for a trip soon and I'm going to be gone for a while. I'm going to have a significant time difference. So I am not going to be reachable unless they decide they're trying to wake me up in the

26:55middle of my sleep when it's their day. Um, right. So because of that, it's already been noted before I leave days in advance, that one, I'm going to be heading, I'm going to be out of the country for a little while, but two, it's also the fact that I've noted who's responsible for what roles. Like, right. So as I was right now, I'm the interim sales manager. So who's going to take over that? Well, I already decided it's going to be one of our senior account managers and they are going to be that point person working with my business operations supervisor who has my other level

27:27of knowledge that the account manager doesn't. So they can work collaboratively, but if sales need something in a pinch, this person is who to go to. And same thing for the rest of the departments as COO. Absolutely. Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think having like reducing the ambiguity overall, just it, it, it also invites calm when there is crisis, right? Like I already know what's going to happen already. You know, I mean, this is a big thing for entrepreneurs too, or, or small companies, like having the conversation, even if it's hard, which I can tell you personally,

28:03as a business owner, it's not an easy conversation to have, but should something happen to me or should something happen to my business partner? What happens to my company, right? What happens to the clients I serve? Like all of those things are really important. And it's even more important as if you're a solo kind of solopreneur, right. To know what happens to ensure that, you know, your clients and the company, let's say you're passing it on. I don't know that it's taken care of because we don't know what's going to happen all the time, but we can plan for it. Yeah. Yeah,

28:38exactly. You can plan for it. There's a reason, even personally, there's trusts and there's like, there's, there's a reason that those things exist. It's because it is managing. It's preparing for crisis before it happens, even though you hope it doesn't happen. It's still making sure we're okay. And that there is a will, or I say trust, because that is typically the way I see is the most, I guess, responsible way to go about it. But a will is all you really need. A trust just usually speeds it up for your beneficiaries, but I'm not giving advice. That's okay. I got them all.

29:13Not at all. I got everything for my business. Yeah. I got a buy sell agreement for my business and it outlines everything around like, if I'm, if I become permanently inability or unable to work, what would happen? If I die, what happened? Like all of the things, again, not an easy conversation to have, but one that I am happy that I did have, because I feel really confident that if something happens to me or something happens to my business partner, we will be okay. We will still be able to

29:44serve our clients. And we can still continue kind of building this legacy that we're creating. So it's important. The what? I said, and I'd argue that your family's protected in that way too. Oh yes. My family are named in that. Yeah. No, they're definitely named in all of that and kind of where it goes. So maybe that's another episode too. We can talk about what all those lovely documents are. If you are starting a business or have one and don't have all the documents. Um, but yeah, I want to continue on if you're okay with that. Um, so, you know, I did,

30:19there is another step that, you know, Elizabeth clearly alluded to, which is like pre-writing that communication, um, cadence is like what, where, where things go, but it's not just that it's also, um, pre-writing of what we know, what we don't know, what we're doing, you know, next, where, sorry, I'm reading from a list here. Cause I, I use this checklist, um, what you should do right now and when the next update is right. But it's not just the communication cadence there. It's also the, the planning on the, on the backend for really bad crises

30:51of what's going to happen where, um, and then, you know, another step being something I alluded to earlier, which is normalized speaking up and building that psychological safety because it is an asset towards crisis management. It really is. And even if you think it's not, um, and you know, some people will say, you know, psychological safety sometimes is protected too much. And I will, I will say that I hear that from executive team members. I hear that from owners, but ultimately when they're in a crisis, they're kind of thankful that they have that in their

31:21organization. They're very thankful that people are okay speaking up. Um, and if they weren't, and they didn't have psychological safety quite built, then you notice there was more of an after effect, which made those owners or managers want to build psychological safety a little bit more than they had prior due to a crisis. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think ultimately what it boils down to in the end is all of this kind of preparation or being proactive. It leads to a place where people

31:51can be more resilient. Um, and people can, you know, people and the business, I guess, um, kind of personalize the business, but can be resilient, can move through these because it's not a question of, um, you know, if something will happen, a crisis will happen. It's when a crisis will happen. It happens in all businesses. It happens in all lives. It to, to different levels. And I just think that's an important call out. So even though it may feel like something that is so far out of reach,

32:22it is something to still consider and still plan for. Yeah. And not every crisis is large. A lot of them are small. So you have these small fire drills that actually also garner practice for if a larger crisis was to come about. Um, all in all, I tend to try to shorten it to an acronym. I love my acronyms. No, I do not remember all of them always, but I usually have a list of them to go by and not everyone is great with acronyms. I actually was just having a conversation on this

32:53recently, funny enough, but I'm like, okay, well, what can we do to build that in practice so that it is more, you know, retractable from you, like to grab out of your mind. Right. But anyhow, that acronym I tend to use is space. So really easy. Um, Elizabeth, you want to take us through what space is. Sure. I'd love to, cause it's something that you and I have talked about quite a lot. Um, yeah, so space. So what does it stand for? All the things we've talked about today.

33:24Um, S is slack capacity, right? What do you have for slack in your day? Um, priority visibility is the P, right? Is there a single source of truth? Um, authority clarity is the A. This is all about having, um, roles and decision rights kind of already planned out and discussed should something happen to the primary point person. Um, C is the communication cadence. So just like we, we talked about how will you communicate and when will you communicate it? And the E is around

33:57exercises. So going through drills, just like we go through fire drills during elementary school, right? How can you use exercises to help you be more prepared should something come about? So all in all, I, if you're cool with it, Morgan, I would love to have a part two in this conversation

Conclusion and Next Steps

34:16where we talk about maybe executives, leaders, managers that are already at a hundred percent capacity and dive a little bit more into this topic. I think let's keep it here. Think about the prepared space and then put help our listeners kind of jump into what happens when you're already at capacity or beyond. Yeah. And so we, I actually have a guest in mind for this. So we're hoping to bring them on. Um, part two is probably not going to come right after this. I'm going to warn you guys, you might have to wait a couple episodes because we are not going to go in a synchronous fashion right

34:50now. Um, but I'm excited to bring them on because they're going to give some great feedback on what it looks like to be running at a hundred percent capacity and how do they handle those situations when they hit a crisis. Um, all in all though, crisis readiness isn't about having a binder on a shelf for emergency programs. No, it's a set of everyday design choices of what your capacity is, where clarity is, the voice and routines, making sure that there's transparency to make it to all in all, make it much easier for humans and the team all overall to think and coordinate when stakes rise.

35:25Yeah. Okay. So I have to say one last thing before we close, because I, it came into my mind. We use the space acronym and then I said beyond, and it makes me think of toy story. And in my head, I'm thinking about like to infinity and beyond. So let's prepare listeners for the things that may come up because that's, what's going to propel us to infinity and beyond. You can tell that I am a mom of young children. I was going to say, so, uh, Elizabeth, when you're in a crisis, you're going to have to change your like email icon to Buzz Lightyear, I think. Oh, I'm going to do it. That's

36:00a, that's a sure thing that's going to happen. So, all right. Well, we are crisis mascot. Yes. There you go. I love it. All right. Well, listeners, this concludes another intriguing episode of Organizational Sherlocks. I'm Elizabeth Fleming. And I'm Morgan Ashworth reminding you that the journey to success is an ongoing investigation. Stay curious, stay strategic, and keep utilizing insights to decode your business mysteries. Join us every Friday for your next whodunit. This is Organizational Sherlocks closing today's case. We will see you next time.

36:48Organizational Sherlocks closing today's case. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. Bye.