20 August 2011

Simultaneous Strategies ~ Chile Mine Rescue Rx

Sloan Management Review has a great piece by Michael Useem, Rodrigo Jordán and Matko Koljatic on How to Lead During a Crisis: Lessons From the Rescue of the Chilean Miners...
"When 33 Chilean miners were rescued after being trapped underground for 69 days, the world cheered. Here’s [lessons] from key leadership decisions made during the mine cave-in crisis. [...] The executive decisions of [Chilean Mining Minister] Laurence Golborne during the rescue of the 33 miners thus offers an unusual opportunity, since he and his top team members agreed in interviews to describe the decisions they made during the rescue."
There are many interesting elements to the story but I find this a particular nugget of gold...
"In the aftermath of his decisions to take charge and to create the top team, Golborne turned his attention to the final goal of locating and then extracting the lost miners. Here he adopted a practice of redundancy, pursuing two or more simultaneous strategies so that if one faltered or failed, time would not have been lost in developing the other options. This is a practice found in other fast-moving management environments. For locating the miners, Golborne created two drilling teams. One would seek to drill a hole down to a ventilation shaft not too far above the miners’ location. The second would work to drill an opening all the way to where the miners were trapped. [...] With both gains and setbacks anticipated, Golborne embraced a policy of fully disclosing not only the drillings’ successes but also their failures. On the premise that openness must be complete and consistent for his own leadership to be credible with the key stakeholders, every time a drilling problem emerged, Golborne made a point of candidly informing the relatives and the media. “The decision of transparency was a conscious decision made early on. There were too many people, we could not hide anything,” he explained. “If we did, we would lose their confidence.”
The bottom line...
"Several final implications for crisis leadership become evident. First, an unequivocal focus on the objective of resolving the crisis serves to energize and motivate the team. Second, disciplining the team’s decisions around achieving that goal can be vital when there is little room for error. Third, given the press of time and uncertainties of outcome, creating multiple alternative paths for resolution of the crisis optimizes the likelihood that one will ultimately succeed. And fourth, the full and timely disclosure of all vital information serves to help ensure that the crisis leader retains legitimacy in the minds of all stakeholders."

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