The Paradox of Decision Making in Crisis
Part 1 of 5 of a series of short essays on the decision-making process for leaders across business, sport, and education.
Steve Mesler is an Olympic gold medalist and 3-time Olympian in the sport of Bobsled, a member of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee Board of Directors, and is the co-founder of the international award-winning non-profit education organization Classroom Champions.
It was March 4th, 2020 — the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic outbreak. I sent a series of text messages to one of my Classroom Champions board members, Andrew Rotherham, as we exchanged information about the emerging threat to the world.
Andy, despite having an incredible portfolio of experience at the intersection of business, education, and government for three decades, had never seen anything like what was unfolding in early March. And neither had I.
Like many people in leadership, I was trying to get a read on what to do next.
Classroom Champions had thousands of dollars invested in going to SXSW in Texas, which was scheduled for early-mid March. We were set to unleash a new curriculum on the world of education and sport, and I needed to decide if we were going to send our people or not.
The decision quickly went from difficult to clear. Easy, even.
Of course we wouldn’t go.
My text to Andy, preceded by an article about Los Angeles declaring an emergency, read “Away we go. Decisions will get easier…”
What I meant by that is that, in the hardest times — times of crisis — decisions often become easier. Or even better, clearer. Even the unpleasant ones.
Often times the classic dichotomy of decision making boils down to “easy or hard” decisions. Often that’s not exactly right. Decisions typically are “hard” or “clear”, but not easy. These “easy” decisions are often still hard, but they are at least clear and thereby not nearly as difficult.
In the early days of the pandemic, the new coronavirus was wreaking havoc on our society. It was, in retrospect, a clear decision to move workers remote and out of downtown offices. Classroom Champions made this decision and executed it within days.
It was also a clear decision to close schools. The hard part was what happened next for parents and teachers — but the actual concept of not bringing millions of kids together to spread an unknown disease was made simpler by the veracity of the virus.
Ultimately it was also a clear decision to postpone the Olympic Games for the first time in history. One week after the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) President Thomas Bach publicly said postponing wasn’t an option, the Prime Minister of Japan announced the one-year delay. (I had plenty to say in the midst of all of that, addressed to IOC President Thomas Bach, here.)
I’d like to emphasize: the consequences of these decisions were incredibly complex. Dealing with the result of these decisions wasn’t easy nor clear. Whether it was online schooling or postponing the world’s largest gathering, life was difficult for everyone as we all tried to deal with the outcome of these choices. But the actual decisions were getting easier and easier the worse the virus got.
Once the virus got rolling, every leader was able to do what was considered the obvious thing and close it all down. Within a three-week period between March 4 and March 25 the western economy went from regular operations to a once-every-one-hundred-year shutdown. No one living and still working had experienced anything like it.
Leaders across business, education, government, and sport all mobilized to keep people safe. Those, like myself, who saw this decision as fairly clear, understood that the first thing that had to happen was a controlling of the virus. By separating people, we hoped we could shorten the length of the self-imposed, and then government-imposed, quarantines around the world. The sooner we were through it, the sooner we could “open” back up.
As I write this, we’re a little more than seven months in. And you might think that because we’ve learned so much collectively about how to cope with the situation that decisions would be getting even clearer.
But in reality, it’s the opposite.
As a leader, my personal day-to-day occupies three very different arenas: business, early education, and sports. In each of these industries, I can see that decisions are getting more complex, not clearer. Whether it’s re-opening schools, returning to the office, or returning to the field of play, the decisions have become more complicated than the preceding ones.
To stay “open” or “closed”, for example, is a pretty straightforward decision. But now we need to consider new options, alternatives and considerations: more complex hybrid approaches, new hotspots, government regulations, mandatory or suggested masks, occupancy limits, stakeholder and community relations. The list goes on and on.
And that’s the paradoxical situation that leaders are facing in their decision making processes today.
When situations are dire — decisions are clear. The more dier, the clearer the decision.
That happens because your choices are narrowed with limited information. If you only know a few factors, you only need to bring those few factors into the equation.
But as things get a little less acute and just a little less dire, we actually need to work harder with our decision making.
When the bobsled was going in the completely wrong direction in a curve and we were about to crash, the only option was to pull the steering as hard as we could away from the danger. That’s what we all did in March — we steered straight away from the danger.
In my years of seeking ultimate performance I had to balance risks and rewards constantly, and for leaders today it’s not all that different. At Classroom Champions we’re navigating how to best support teachers, schools, families, and athletes in a new, trauma-filled world; and in the Olympic and Paralympic worlds our athletes are juggling the potential loss of their dreams while training to compete when their time comes.
In bobsled, we were always racing on the edge of fast and crashing. But leading in a pandemic means looking further down the track.
We have to predict multiple turns at a time, not just the current one that’s going to crash us. We’re going to need to look at the trendlines of the virus, understand that history tells us a second wave will likely be materially worse than the first, learn from our mistakes over the past six months, and focus on a small number of variables we can control.
It’s going to get harder. As soon as we as leaders come to terms with that, we’re all going to be able to better help those we lead.
This series will explore the various paradoxes and tensions that affect decision-makers today. In the coming essays, I’ll share some of the biggest pitfalls I’ve seen leaders fall into — and the opportunities for us to do better. Stay tuned for more…
You can reach Steve via email at smesler@classroomchampions.org and on Twitter at @SteveMesler.
