Turn Lemons into Lemonade

By Prof. Enrique Soriano

All of us are currently confronting an extremely unfolding and disruptive crisis. But for most of the baby boomers and the gen X’s, their experiences dealing with “black swans” dates back to the 70’s (martial law), 80’s (Aquino assassination and a series of coup de tat) 90’s (Asian financial crisis) and early 20’s (9/11, SARS and the global financial crisis). This means that they have already accumulated survival instinct “credits” in their DNAs. Having previously experienced their turnaround stories, “credits” are like bank deposits where they can draw their strengths, ideas and inject some form of resilience. Generations Y and Z have not experienced a crisis of this magnitude and therefore they will naturally struggle. Most of them will give up and some will move forward. In the end, it will all boil down to what they have learned from the crisis and the individual’s adversity quotient.

 

Why Leaders Thrive 

We have faced extreme challenges at some point in our lives . When I was still in the corporate world, two burnouts (one during the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the next one a decade after) due to excessive stress almost took the wind out of my system. It affected my health and by extension my life. From then on, I have constantly reminded myself that when faced with a major uncontrollable crisis, I must face it head on but embrace it in a subtle and accepting way. That mental attitude allowed me to decide quickly and confront issues rationally.

Looking at the health and economic crisis unfolding and the recent pronouncements of IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath that “it is very likely that this year the global economy will experience its worst recession since the Great Depression” of the 1930s,” this grim outlook can make anybody’s head spin. And basing on what we see, hear and read about the global recession making a hard landing, one would tend to conclude that this extraordinary event is probably one of the most challenging and disruptive episodes we have ever faced in our lifetimes. For business owners out there, it is a moment of truth and understandably, it is not surprising why so many of them have failed to act decisively on three fronts – preparing and activating a business continuity plan, managing the workforce and honest communication.

 

Why Leaders Fail   

In a HBR (Harvard Business Review) article on leadership, authors Kerrissey and Edmondson correctly pointed out that “when the situation is uncertain, human instinct and basic management training can cause leaders – out of fear of taking the wrong steps and unnecessarily making people anxious – to delay action and to downplay the threat until the situation becomes clearer. But behaving in this manner means failing the coronavirus leadership test, because by the time the dimensions of the threat are clear, you’re behind in trying to control the crisis.”

Your success as a key business leader and whether you survive and punch your way to the top, is highly influenced by your optimism, the desire to succeed and overcome adversity. When the pressure switch is on, the difference between succeeding and failing is resilience. Resilience is, was, and always will be crucial to high performance. It’s as important as ever. Some refer to that character trait as tenacity, others call it grit, while most would simply refer to it as personal resilience. As business owners, do you have resilience in your veins? According to Lane 4, a global consulting firm, personal resilience is an ability to perform at your best over a sustained period, even in the face of intense pressure. This includes the ability to recover fast after an adverse event. It further added that “resilience is most needed when your environment is difficult, especially over prolonged periods.

When life gives you lemons, do you have what it takes to make lemonade?