What Box?

The pressure on leaders to ‘do something’ is intense and unrelenting.

"Change that language." "Have legal look at that first." "That approach won’t work anymore."

Running a company for 17 years before, during, and after the disintegration of the Soviet Union taught us a few things about navigating in a volatile climate.

Two coups. Tanks firing on the (Russian) White House. Recovering funds that vanished from bank accounts. Political retribution. Visits from all manner of security services.

Some of what we learned then can help leaders today reduce risk to themselves and to their organizations.

1.     When managing a critical situation with high risk and a short fuse, assume that the first information you receive has a greater than 50% chance of being wrong or incomplete. Do not ignore it. But verify its accuracy – and fast – before making a decision.

2.     Information abhors a vacuum. Don’t open up a difficult conversation and then exit if it becomes challenging. Unless you manage the space you created, bad information will surely flow into it.

3.     Remember that you don’t own your brand. You lease it from your customers and stakeholders. And they can change the terms remarkably quickly, revoking or limiting your license to operate. Tune your early-warning systems for this age of misinformation and  disruption. Make sure you can see around corners.

4.     Make sure your non-negotiables are clear and cover emerging risks. For example, if a member of your board, leadership team, or staff pops up in the millions of documents related to Epstein, what’s your plan? Prepare. Now.

After a meeting with a Fortune 100 company, a colleague came into my office with that smile we all know: something’s up, might be funny, might be unbelievable, but it’s going to be good. She was asked during the meeting to share a situation where she needed to act ‘outside the box.’ Breaking into laughter, she told me her response. “What box? In the Soviet union, everything was outside the box. There was no box.”