On your journey as a CEO or entrepreneur, you will inevitably face a significant crisis at some point. Maybe it will be the loss of a key employee. Or perhaps it will involve getting in trouble with your bank or the failure of a new product launch. The point is that something will go wrong in a way that you never planned for.
In the wake of such a crisis, it’s the natural tendency of CEOs and entrepreneurs to step in and fix the problem. We want to put the fire out. Maybe that’s jumping in to find a replacement for the person who left or even worse, take charge of your R&D team. While those moves might help stop the bleeding, they aren’t likely to push your company forward over the long run.
That’s why I want to change your thinking on this topic. I believe that the best leaders never waste a good crisis because it affords you the chance to make the kind of large wholesale changes you organization needs that you’ve also been putting off for too long. To put that another way, sometimes the best move is to let the fire do its work so that you can rebuild something stronger from the ashes.
Let’s return to the example of losing a top employee; let’s say your best salesperson. While it might seem like the obvious solution is to rehire for that position, the smart CEO asks some questions instead: Is there a better way to go about this? Maybe you should hire two new junior people instead? Maybe the clients that ex-salesperson worked with warrant your VP of Sales stepping in to take over? Or, just maybe, you’re better off losing that client anyway.
