Which came first? The hero or the crisis?
Some individuals and teams thrive during crisis, swinging into action without a moment’s thought and – like in an American blockbuster – narrowly saving the day. Everyone congratulates one another and then waits for the next opportunity to play the hero. But is this a model for a company culture?
Everyone – individuals, teams, organizations – takes legitimate pride in their ability to overcome a crisis. But they don’t realize that prizing heroism may actually help provoke crises. In short, a heroic culture generates counterproductive behavior:
- It encourages us to constantly put ourselves in untenable situations by (for example) reducing resources and deadlines;
- It creates one-upmanship in terms of commitment (or, more accurately, exhaustion) among co-workers. Everyone wants to show that they sleep the least and work the most among the team;
- This creates a climate of constant stress that can easily lead to burnout.
It’s a culture of immaturity. The aim should be to avert crises rather than clearing them up. To break out of a heroic culture, allocate your resources realistically. Put a high value on teamwork in order to limit the temptation for an individual employee to play the hero. Finally, make sure you facilitate cross-functional teamwork, as the potential for crises often lies at organizational boundaries.
To go further
“Does your company lurch from crisis to crisis ?”
by Ron Carucci (Harvard Business Review, March 2021).
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