Boards

Executives and Boards, Avoid These Missteps in a Crisis

Three decision-making traps.

by

Heidi K. Gardner

and

Randall S. Peterson

by

Heidi K. Gardner

and

Randall S. Peterson

April 24, 2020

xxmmxx/Getty Images

Summary.

Executive teams and boards of directors are facing unprecedented challenges as they simultaneously contend with the immediate pandemic crisis and try to plan for the uncertain world that it is creating. In such high-anxiety situations, executives and directors often fall into three traps: They settle for existing remedies, defer to the leader, and agree to conform. This article, which is based on the authors’ research and consulting work, offers ways that executive teams and boards can avoid those traps.

The scale of Covid-19 pandemic’s impact is fully sinking in. Organizations of all types are feeling the pressure to simultaneously wrestle with surviving the immediate crisis and planning for a radically changed future. How do they share the economic pain among stakeholders? How should they revamp their supply chains in order to make them more resilient? How do they avoid the mistakes they made in the last financial crisis — whether that was waiting too long to respond, overreacting by cutting so deeply it hampered their recovery, or simply cutting in the wrong places?

Heidi K. Gardner, PhD, is a distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School, author of the new book Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work, and founder of the research and advisory firm Gardner & Co.
Randall S. Peterson is the academic director of the Leadership Institute and a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School. He teaches leadership on the School’s Senior Executive and Accelerated Development Program.

Executives and Boards, Avoid These Missteps in a Crisis

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