How many times has one felt anxious or appear worried at the eve of your exam result or cricket match!!! Now these are times which invokes anxiety, ambiguity and are certainly one of the most uncertain times. I believe these uncertain times give you insights about the character of an individual of his ability to deal with a situation which is different!!!
As an individual I’m a firm believer that, testing times challenges one’s ability to be in control of our emotions and rationale, be decisive, analytical and risk taking. As I discuss an instance, a real-life incident, and share my perspectives about the situation and as we reflect upon how it could have been handled even better. The instance intends to highlight how situations can be managed in one of the best possible ways. We as professionals come across lot of dilemmas throughout our career and many times it’s the previous experience or the standard operating procedures which determines how an asymmetric event is to be handled and concluded. However, many times, events defy the norm and turn untoward!!!
Few years back, Mr. Amit, an HR Manager at a MNC plans a Rewards and Recognition event for the celebration of an annual convention and for the same he and his team starts off with preparations preceding to the event and the activities involved memento distribution and issuing of appreciation notes / cards. The preparations were underway in a structured manner with various planning charts being prepared to monitor the updates and overall developments pertaining to the events.
With a lot of planning, mitigation, and anticipation for possibilities for appropriate execution of activities it seemed seamless. Overall, it appeared the preparations were going as per the plan and as per the laid timelines. Now as the event came closer, and as the mementos arrived on the eve of the event. The mementos were checked, and cross-verified with the stakeholders. It was discovered that the memento was not as per the expectations and that they appeared to be non-usable and non- relevant to the event. At this the overall team and operators started to panic, the event organizing team members went completely blank foreseeing a failure of the event or cancellation of the same. The situation appeared that there was a window of one day and the best possible scenario gave a span of 6-7 hours with very less options available! Even the vendor who had supplied the goods was not available for an immediate discussion. On this the manager summoned the vendor to discuss alternatives and the way forward. Upon deliberations with the vendor, it was discovered that the vendor had provided mementos or the product, which wasn’t in line with the quality and quantity standards which were laid down for this event.
As the discussions continued with the vendor and the organizing team the situation room went silent on weighing on possibilities feasible and as it appeared there didn’t appear to exist any considerate options and hence uncertainty creeped in!!!
As deliberations progressed, the vendor hints, that there can be a scope of something in terms of determining an alternate memento and replace it with a new product and branding etc. The manager in this situation stays calm, not panicking and deliberates the options for further eventuality. Since there was a change in the overall dynamics of products/goods and it also warranted new budgets as there had been product (memento) changes. The manager in this particular deviation shall re-require all the necessary approvals. Upon this the manager appraises the leadership teams, in a very transparent and candid fashion on the key developments as they had accrued. Upon further advising and convincing the management on the next steps, necessary approvals were granted from the leadership and as decided the memento/s were to be replaced with a different design and pattern, with same costing and branding. And when the D-Day finally ascended, everything was quite in its place with delivery of the goods as expected and seamless execution of the event as per the plan.
As we reflect upon, how this incident unfolded, it’s critical to understand that, in this situation how certain key turning points were addressed, handled and how human virtues were tested and how the overall solutioning was arrived at. There could have been many outcomes like, cancelling the event (one of the easiest outcome), postponement (potentially easy ), change the flow of the event (a possible option) and the last option could be to deliver what was aspired and deliver the same as expected by the stakeholders !!!
In these situations, it’s easy to justify any given outcome as all the options can be proclaimed and defended as right !!!, however an outcome is successful if the option chosen doesn’t deviate from the ultimate goal and doesn’t deviate from the norm.
Often, the ambiguity or rapid uncertainty surrounding a situation needs your best judgement, cognition and rationale for arriving at best solutions. I believe that as professionals, people come across a lot of ambiguous and aberrations (i.e. asymmetric events) and following are the few insights on how things can be managed in general or at workplace.
Do not react immediatelyto an overly complex situation (barring a SOS emergency), I mean no knee jerk reactions!!! Many times, smart managers invoke a 24 hr. / 36 hr. window to respond to critical mails, decisions, or a potentially volatile situation. I believe it’s best to buy time, a window to explore things, ponder upon possibilities and to determine the best way to react to an instance.Leverage all options,review insights, leverage experiential knowledge of SME and invoke analytics.- Invoke/Trigger a mental stage in oneself that comprises of
Patience and Calmness,wherein the forces of calmness can be inversely proportional to the potential gravity of its anxiety. - In an organizational context,
be absolutely transparent and candidin these (Complex) situations as the outcome can be equally ambiguous and in such instances, it’s imperative that if variables go unnoticed or adversely impact the process or outcome, the facilitator can safeguard himself / herself from being pinned if he/she has had been transparent . - The key thrust at this juncture is being
solution orientatedand one should have a perspective which is forward looking. At this stage, one can start determining the next steps rather than pondering as to why, how and who messed up the situation. - Keep the
communication channelscontinually active with all the stakeholders thereby reducing any kind of underlying assumptions or opinions and make the clarity of thoughts as specific as possible as at this stage, there won’t be a second chance to amend your plan.