This week, I was grateful for the opportunity to meet with Douglas Chiu and the awesome team at Hammerco Lawyers LLP in Vancouver to present my thoughts and lessons on how to 'swing at curveballs' in the course of crisis leadership.
In thinking about my experiences in leading different organizations through various crises, I appreciated emphasizing the importance of planning, but expecting things to not go perfectly to plan and to respond accordingly; to consider context, as different crises play out differently depending on where they might occur (an earthquake in desolate tundra very different from one in a populated urban area, for example); and also, the importance of regularly evaluating decisions in light of new information or shifts in context.
I also underlined the critical key to success in trusting in your team, empowering them to move past barriers, and focusing on what went wrong instead of who went wrong when faced with setbacks.
The cross-pollination of learning about the firm's navigating various provincial policy and regulatory changes in British Columbia also made for excellent learning. Thanks for the insightful dialogue!
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Lawrence Loh is a public health physician, speaker, and writer based in Toronto, posting reflections on his experiences in health and leadership.
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