How to Lead in A Crisis: A Combat Veteran’s 5 Tips for Early Stage Startup Founders
I was a freshman cadet at West Point when 9/11 hit and following graduation I deployed to a combat zone in Iraq for 15 months in charge of over 100 Soldiers. I’ve found myself in multiple undesirable situations where I had to make quick tough decisions that impacted actual lives. A lot of those experiences not only shaped me as the leader I am today, but also prepared me for situations like the COVID-19 crisis.
My company, Otso, launched last month. Great timing, right? We launched our company and then the entire world felt like it stopped. Just like every other industry, the COVID-19 crisis has put a pause or killed multiple startup businesses around the world. There are founders struggling to find funding or have lost customers, revenue, or in some cases any path to success with their business model.
For me, the most important factor in successfully leading through a crisis is your own mindset. Here are some tips for founders, especially CEOs, on how to foster the mindset required to effectively lead in our current crisis.
#1 Accept The New Reality.
When a crisis hits, it’s normal to go through emotions similar to the stages of grief. We start with the denial which turns to anger and then depression. As important as it is to process these emotions one needs to eventually get to the acceptance stage and move forward. In the military, we were trained to pretty much skip those initial stages and get to the acceptance to survive and lead. After all, without quick decisive actions, more lives could be lost in those situations — there simply is no room for error or hesitation.
I believe exemplary leaders in crisis are the ones that get out of denial and arrive at acceptance faster than others. Panicking or doing nothing would do no benefit to my teammates, investors, or customers. I gave myself a whole Saturday to be angry and depressed for my company, but that was it. I woke up the next day and put it all behind me to accept and better understand the new reality of our situation.
#2 Kill The Fear
Fear can cause panic, paralysis, and may prevent execution. It is important to recognize when fear starts to take over your thoughts. As founders, we are always running various situations through our heads and have to plan for worst-case scenarios. However, when a crisis happens our minds maybe even more consumed with increased thoughts of threats to the success of our company. Having an increased amount of uncertainty and loss of control can cause a big downward spiral. There’s a difference between awareness and obsessiveness. Operating off of constant fear may negatively impact the decisions you make for your company. Ask yourself, “Am I thinking of thoughts that can be proven to be true today?” or “Does this serve me right now?” If your mindset is in constant fear you may make the wrong decisions. Fear does not serve you well and is a waste of energy. Most importantly, you do not want to pass that vibe to your teammates or people that look up to you.
#3 Overcome Set Backs
Nobody likes taking steps backward after making progress. In 2006, I deployed to Iraq thinking I’d be there for 12 months. Once our boots hit the ground, we were already counting the days until our return home. Everybody gets two weeks off called “mid-tour” leave where they can go home or travel. I purposely scheduled my two-weeks off towards the end of the deployment knowing we’d be packing when I returned. While I was on my leave President Bush got on the television to tell everyone that deployments would be extended to 15 months. So, instead of coming back from my leave with three months left, I had SIX months — that’s half a year! I was depressed thinking I would spend two birthdays and two of each holiday away from home. This was an extremely difficult mental hurdle to overcome, but we had a duty to serve so we reset our mindset and re-evaluated plans to accommodate our deployment extension.
It’s certainly not life or death in the business world, but survival mode may mean you need to take a few steps back from progress as well. Some founders may have to re-evaluate product-market fit while others need to find an alternate revenue channel to survive. You may need to cut variable costs or certain roles on your team — these are hard decisions but necessary to survive in a world of more uncertainty. For some founders, the crisis may have made your product less relevant in the current market so you may need to go back to a super lean budget until you can figure out your next step. Plan for the worst — double or triple the numbers of whatever you ‘think’ maybe the timeline or budget to recover. Taking steps backward is extremely difficult for anyone, but in cases like these, it can be necessary to stay alive as a business.
#4 Open Up To New Possibilities
Once you can shift your mindset to embrace the crisis, some new opportunities or creation may appear. Priorities may most likely change for you in these scenarios as well. I was in Iraq during the Surge of 2007 which made my fueling and arming operation extremely important. Before the surge, nobody cared how fast our system could fuel a helicopter. However, in anticipation of the increased business that was about to arrive, we saw an opportunity to re-configure our system to make it faster. This re-configuration did not follow the training manuals the Army set for the system, but we were able to convince our leadership to think outside the box and allow us to design a more creative solution. Long story short, leadership started caring about how fast we can fuel because we went from servicing 20 helicopters on a busy day to 100+ a day during the Surge. Since we re-configured the system we increased our service speed by over 900% — my team won awards for running the fastest operation in Iraq at the time.
In relation to the current crisis, we had to shift priorities a bit as well. All of our sales content was developed, but when the quarantine began we tossed that out and had to develop entirely new content. Also, since there currently aren’t a lot of commercial real estate deals happening we re-focused priority on increasing production of helpful and relevant content via blogs, email campaigns, etc. Also, our target customers are out of the office so we are currently targeting and testing with other segments.
#5 Stay Engaged
The frequency and speed of communication are even more essential during a crisis. The environment is constantly changing along with your decisions. In the military, we already had set routines for status updates and meetings, but when a crisis happened there was a set amount of hours you had to report a situation from the time it happened and leadership engagement increased with requiring more status updates in a day. As a leader, it was extremely important to gauge the morale of your Soldiers and keep them informed and motivated. Everybody handles stress differently so overall engagement with teammates is vital to ensuring everyone remains safe and continues to execute.
As founders, it is important to stay engaged with investors, teammates, and customers during this time. You will never have all the answers, especially with so much more uncertainty, but be transparent about how you plan to move forward. Identify the risks and set expectations that decisions and outcomes may rapidly change, but that you will remain engaged if anything does change. They want to know you have a plan, but also want to make sure you are realistic. There is a constant fear of layoffs so ensure you are engaged to either be reassuring if that is the case or upfront about how things may change in the next 30–60–90 days. During a crisis, remember that no news only makes people more nervous and scared.
With the right mindset, times like these can still offer a lot of opportunities for companies. For my team, we discovered Otso can play a pivotal role during COVID-19 as critical financial aid to businesses and landlords. They need us now more than ever. The last economic recession expanded the gig economy via Uber and Airbnb and downturns birthed companies like Trulia. Stay open and do what us founders do best: continue to create and problem solve. The market still has a lot of space for unicorns and new disruptions.
