Your monthly SHIFT – August 2024

At SHIFT, we are passionately focused on one thing: building better workplaces.

To achieve this, we require a partnership with people just like you – open minded thinkers who are ready to challenge old ways of thinking and doing, and taking a “time out” for reflection and learning.

It’s about embracing new perspectives and ideas. And this can be difficult.

Falling into old patterns is powerful. They are familiar. They have “worked” up until this point. They are comfortable. They are easy.

SHIFTing our mindset is just the opposite. It requires intention, self-awareness, patience and a commitment to question our own perception and beliefs. It pulls us out of our comfort zone and into the realm of uncertainty. But if we push through, it can also lead to a whole new world of possibility and impact.

Welcome to your monthly SHIFT.

It’s no secret that taking responsibility for the cause of a crisis is fundamental to effective crisis management. And a key part of taking responsibility is apologizing and demonstrating empathy.

Thus, like many others, I was surprised that in his initial apology, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz failed to do just that – apologize – instead placing his focus squarely on what happened. While that acknowledging what has occurred is crucial, successful crisis management requires an organization or leader to deliver on all three critical success factors, on not just one.

To get off on the right foot, Kurtz needed to:

1. Explain what happened (including why)
2. Take responsibility for it (insert apology here)
3. Share what steps CrowdStrike was taking to address the issue

Underlying all of this is the requisite speed of response, underpinned by clear, credible, consistent and concise messaging.

While Kurtz eventually got to the apology in a subsequent statement, in it, he also apologized to his company. That might be important for an internal audience but for the countless organizations impacted by this outage, I’m not sure they were really interested in how sorry Kurtz felt for how it affected his company.

As I often say, in crisis or not, communication isn’t about YOU!

All that said, I do think some of the follow up messaging was quite strong including this: “We’re not going to relent until we get every customer back to where they were,” as well as some of it from his letter to customers and partners including this:

“I want to sincerely apologise directly to all of you for today’s outage. All of CrowdStrike understands the gravity and impact of the situation…Nothing is more important to me than the trust and confidence that our customers and partners have put into CrowdStrike. As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again.”

Although I recognize that it’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback and deconstruct a crisis response, there were some foundational missteps in the management of this particular one and as such, significant lessons and reminders for all that are interested in learning from it.

In the end, a truly well managed crisis has all parts operating in a carefully (although quickly!) coordinated and communicated manner and that just did not happen here.

I’ve always been a strong advocate for measuring what matters. After all, how else do you know whether your work of that of your team is hitting the mark with the intended audience? Why not take the guesswork out of it and just find out?

On countless occasions and in several organizations, I have witnessed untold resources (time, money and effort) expended to launch programs, initiatives, campaigns, products etc. without any measurement attached to them to see if the “juice was worth the squeeze.”

Take for example corporate communications. Someone on the team creates a beautiful looking e-bulletin complete with multiple stories that had to be conceived of, researched, written, proofread, formatted and distributed. Suppose further that this bulletin is distributed to 10,000 employees. Wouldn’t you want to know if it was being read instead of just assuming it was? Maybe even by who and which stories mattered?

When we adopted a stringent measurement protocol in a global communications team I led, we gained such valuable insights based on what we learned, that these constantly informed and shaped both our content and strategy.

We knew what content was read or viewed and for how long. We knew the level of engagement with the content and in which countries our readers and viewers were from. Written and video communications were measured on open and read rates, click through rates, registration for events rates, participation rates…and the list goes on. And this was all for internally focused content. Imagine how much time organizations spend on their externally facing communications platforms and channels!

Measurement does not need to be difficult or tedious – only deliberate, structured, and comprehensive. Once you are clear on what you want to measure, get to it – I guarantee designing your measurement program will pay you back significantly.

Created in partnership with two Human Capital experts, the Management LAB is designed for new and established Managers needing to upskill their capabilities, build new core competencies and/or strengthen existing skills.

For more senior leaders, the APEX Leadership Development curriculum will help strengthen their strategic and organizational leadership capabilities, communication skills, and change management abilities.

In both programs, participants will leave with the mindset, approach and skills to navigate today’s dynamic and complex business and people landscape. Most importantly, it will give them the practical tools to begin applying the concepts immediately Learn more here

This segment of SHFT Happens focuses on building a culture of accountability.

SHIFT your thinking in 90 seconds or less by watching the video below.