For eight months, in 2015-2016, I worked in Sierra Leone as a part of the British Government effort to help the country overcome its deadly Ebola virus outbreak. My specific job was to work with their Office of National Security, to help them build capacity to manage their own disaster operations. This meant that I spent most days working to, or in, the National Ebola Response Centre, the NERC, which ran the $1 billion response operation.
Coronavirus and Ebola are not the same, yet there are some similarities about the approach which should be adopted by businesses and organizations within the UK right now. Here’s six considerations which, as leaders, should be occupying your thoughts right now.
It is not just a Medical problem – It’s your problem
Within the United Kingdom, up until now, the response to the coronavirus has been a medical one. Virus control specialists, the Chief Medical Officer and all medical agencies have rightly been at the forefront of the national response so far. They will continue to be essential to dealing with the outbreak, but they cannot do everything.
In Sierra Leone, local leaders, the police and military, those who managed the airport and Freetown dockyard, head teachers and the leaders of every other organization had to play a full role in the response. The response by the International Community and the Government was massive but they could not be on every street corner, in every office or village, and so leaders at all levels needed to step up.
You, and your whole leadership team, must now step up. You will have the challenge of leading your organizations in a period of huge uncertainty. Don’t let yourself be the reason why your organization is forced to close unnecessarily.
Get the Bosses Involved
You need to get the very top people in your business thinking about your contingency scenarios. They need to understand, and own, the potential scale of the challenges which will be hitting you every day. Without their involvement, your organization will lack clear focus, it will be difficult to access resources and to make decisions in a timely manner.
The Ebola outbreak was very quick to highlight leaders who were unable to cope with a highly challenging dynamic situation. Numbers of leaders had to give way to others who were better equipped to lead in chaotic circumstances.
The temptation for some senior leaders will be that they will continue to think in a broad strategic manner, where they are comfortable. This, depending upon your organization, will be insufficient. Executive leaders must be prepared to get involved in some very difficult detail. They will probably face a number of challenges in which there will be only the best, worst case scenario.
At this stage you don’t need to be thinking about coronavirus as the key problem, you need to be thinking about potential business failure for a variety of reasons, including loss of customers, failed cash flow and many others.
Conduct Contingency Planning
We have all participated in contingency planning for the sake of being able to say we have done it. Were we confident in what we had done? Probably not, and right now that is not good enough.
For several years pre 2014, the Sierra Leonean department responsible for disaster management had gone through the motions of being prepared without putting in place real capability. The outcome was that it failed completely at the start of the Ebola outbreak. It needed to be replaced by a brand new system, with all the implications that had for time, expense and further spread of the virus.
All organizations should now be conducting proper contingency planning. There are plenty of guides out there for how that should occur. Give me a call if you need any help. A number of key questions you will be seeking to answer will be:
- How vulnerable are you to a failure by your suppliers?
- How vulnerable are you to a drop in demand by clients?
- How vulnerable are you if you cannot gain access to a client’s location and lose associated work?
- Who are your essential people?
- Who has the skills/access/delegated responsibilities to replace these people if needed?
- If, through a positive test to one of your staff, you lose access to an area for cleaning requirements, what will be the effect?
- Do you need to keep doing everything you normally do?
- What do you need to start doing?
These are just a few of your first order questions, there will be many more. Around each of these you should be identifying critical assumptions which have allowed you to make decisions. Note these and be prepared to review them, possibly on a daily basis.
The annual rains in Sierra Leone run for several months and can cause major flooding. In September 2015, six hours of rainfall washed away the homes of approximately 8,000 of some of the poorest people in Freetown. They needed to be accommodated in two sports stadia for two months. The floods had been greater than normal, but nevertheless were relatively predictable as a worst case scenario. This planning had not been completed and so resources were not available and people were forced to live in very close proximity to one another during an active Ebola outbreak. We were lucky that this never caught hold in either stadium.
Succession Planning
It is a common trait to believe that it will never happen to you. It may happen to others, but not you, and so this flawed logic can lead to inherent weaknesses in succession planning across your organization. Remember, hope is not a method. Ensure you have in place a detailed succession plan for your business. This will need to include the means to pass on delegated authorities and access rights if required.
Prepare your Premises
Think about the physical state of your premises. Is it fit enough to enable you to survive any prolonged outbreak and constraints being placed on you?
Are there parts of the building which are critical and others which are less so? For the former, make sure you have put in place all of the possible preparations to limit access to essential personnel. This may include actions such as relocating some of your meeting rooms to be able to control, as much as possible, who is working in which area.
How do you receive deliveries or send out any product? These physical places will be where people from other organizations enter your premises. Control their access. If you are in the habit of allowing food deliveries, consider stopping that practice. If it’s not essential why do it?
Make hand sanitizer readily available at entrances, both to the building and departments. Think about how they do it in hospitals with sanitizer at every ward entrance.
Test your Communications
The NERC met every day to discuss the Ebola situation. Most days it met morning and evening. Around that timetable, leaders had to meet with their own teams and functional pillar stakeholders. A massive part of the response effort was placed on making communications effective.
It is absolutely essentially that communications across your organization and with all stakeholders works well. Whatever you are doing right now will probably be insufficient and may not meet your needs. There will be a lot of information and advice that everybody needs to know.
If, for example, you were only to involve people in briefings and communication when problems have occurred, you cannot be surprised when they do not have a full comprehension of what is going on. , or for your intentions about how to respond. If people need to step up into more senior roles to help the business you want them to have a clear picture from the outset.
Run a communications test exercise now to see how good you are, or are not.
Final Thoughts
Nobody knows how long the coronavirus outbreak will go on for. The Ebola outbreak ran for about 18 months, affecting the whole country. Had organisations and the population made some of their changes in behaviour earlier, some of the nearly 4,000 deaths would have been avoided.
The time to conduct contingency planning and make changes is now. Mentally prepare your business for a long term challenge, question your operating assumptions and where possible find opportunity in uncertainty.
