In my blog on Crisis Leadership, part 2 I talked about the importance of clear vision and values for an organization (or church) undergoing change. Anonymous commented and concluded, “For another time. The power of crisis.”
Sounds intriguing, but since I don’t know where Anonymous will post that, I’m hoping he will comment again.
We often talk about ‘stress management,’ by which we usually mean reducing the impact of stress-ors in our lives. Of course, we don’t really want stress to go to zero. It’s pretty boring with zero stress. In fact, manageable stress is what makes life interesting. Without stress, there is no impetus for us to grow or change.
I imagine crises work the same way. An organization (or church) can become bogged down in bureaucracy, laziness, and uncritical thinking, but a good crisis can jar them out of it. In what other ways is there power in crisis?
Thanks for your offer to comment on crisis. I believe crisis reveals spoken and unspoken values in a company or church. Often during trouble rivals will unify to fix the greater problem. Putting aside smaller issues that once divided a group. For example, I know of a pastor who wanted to reach the younger generation in his city. The problem was the influencers in the church wanted to keep things the same. Hymms, in their case, were the only acceptable form of music. In their minds it was the best. After a long stalemate the the frustrated pastor created a crisis. He had everyone at the meeting stand-up. “remain standing if your kids are going to church.” Over half sat dowm. “now remain standing if your kids come to this church.” The remaining slowly sat down. “That is why we need to change. We’re not reaching your kids.” The group valued their kids more than hymms and let the pasor make changes.
A crisis caused deep values to surface and created a comman goal in the process.
This is the power of Crisis.