Crisis Leadership

Bob Nahrstadt’s Blog, Out of My Mind, has an interesting discussion regarding Sybase and their reaction to the troubles they encountered from Oracle in the mid 90s. I think that his conclusions are really interesting:

The story of Sybase makes me belive that your attempts to “manage” your way through a crises will always be limitedly successful, you have to combine the “managment” of a crises, with “leadership” through the crises. The only way to succeed is to lead your team to victory, not manage them there. Leading through a crises means that you have to keep the cause in front of everyone on the team while you attend to the management of the details.

This reminds me of the Jim Collins book, Good to Great, wherein Jim discusses The Stockdale Paradox:

Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties.

AND at the same time

Confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

This is really what, according to Bob, the Sybase board truly missed – they lacked the faith in the vision of Sybase that Bob Epstien and Mark Hoffman created and infused into the company. Or, at the very least, they were looking at the bottom line rather than the finish line.

So, as a ministry or church leader, or simply as a volunteer in your church, where do you see difficulties or change that might stop your vision from being realized? How are you leading to the finish line, rather than the bottom line?

James

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