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  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 by Leonard J. Marcus, Eric J. McNulty, Joseph M. Henderson, and Barry C. Dorn

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Marcus, Leonard J., author.

  Title: You’re it : crisis, change, and how to lead when it matters most / Leonard J. Marcus, Eric J. McNulty, Joseph M. Henderson, Barry C. Dorn. Other titles: You are it

  Description: New York : PublicAffairs, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018053723| ISBN 9781541768031 (hard cover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781541768055 (ebook : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Crisis management. | Leadership.

  Classification: LCC HD49 .M366 2019 | DDC 658.4/056—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018053723

  ISBNs: 978-1-5417-6803-1 (hardcover); 978-1-5417-6805-5 (ebook)

  E3-20190508-JV-NF-ORI

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  FOREWORD

  INTRODUCTION

  ONE

  102 HOURS IN CRISIS: THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBINGS RESPONSE

  TWO

  SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY: YOU’RE IT!

  THREE

  COMPLEXITY IS…

  FOUR

  META-LEADERSHIP THINKING: THE CONE-IN-THE-CUBE

  FIVE

  GENERATING LEVERAGE: INFLUENCE BEYOND YOUR AUTHORITY

  SIX

  DIMENSION ONE: BECOMING THE PERSON OF THE META-LEADER

  SEVEN

  DIMENSION TWO: GRASPING THE SITUATION

  EIGHT

  DIMENSION THREE: BUILDING CONNECTIVITY

  NINE

  CONNECTIVITY: NAVIGATING AUTHORITY DYNAMICS

  TEN

  CONNECTIVITY: LEADING BEYOND TO RECRAFT RELATIONSHIPS

  ELEVEN

  THE WALK IN THE WOODS: NEGOTIATING DIFFERENCES AND RESOLVING CONFLICT TO BUILD COLLABORATION

  TWELVE

  WHEN IT MATTERS MOST: MASTERING THE PIVOTS

  THIRTEEN

  SHAPING THE CHANGE: META-LEADING ACROSS THE ARC OF TIME

  FOURTEEN

  THE META-LEADERSHIP IMPERATIVE: YOU’RE IT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DISCOVER MORE

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  THE META-LEADER’S BOOKSHELF

  PRAISE FOR YOU’RE IT

  INDEX

  To you, our readers: You’re it!

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  FOREWORD

  Nearly every Baby Boomer can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard that President John F. Kennedy had been shot, just as nearly every Millennial can remember when word reached them that airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. There were many similarities between the events: the sense of horror that gripped at Americans’ throats, the fear that we might be under a sustained attack, the worry about loved ones. Each of these tragedies helped define a generation.

  But there was one significant difference between the two: America was much better prepared for the 9/11 disaster than for the Kennedy assassination. The presidential assassination was a bolt from the blue, something we had not experienced since 1901, something we had never witnessed before on live television. And as we saw when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot, the locals were simply not ready.

  By contrast, an earlier attempt to blow up the Trade Center prompted officials in New York City to make themselves ready. Officials many times practiced what they would do if terrorists struck again; the fire and police forces knew what to do and were prepared to sacrifice their lives in order to spare others; even as the Secret Service moved President Bush into temporary seclusion, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani stepped forward and, in his finest hour, calmed the nation. Readiness matters.

  Even if officials were prepared to act, events surrounding 9/11 also had a ripple effect across the country. Soon after the attacks, as described in this book, the Centers for Disease Control’s first Director of the Office of Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response met with Lenny Marcus and me to see what could be done to strengthen national response leadership. Shortly thereafter, government leaders along with faculty from across the university gathered at Harvard to inaugurate the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative—or NPLI—in the early 2000s. They together foresaw that the country and world might be entering an era of turbulence when terrorists might hit Anywhere, USA, and they wanted to partner to develop an executive education platform that would study and train first responder leaders from local, state, and federal offices in emergency preparedness. They recognized that to make the country safer, leadership matters. And as this book shows, they also recognized that these same lessons apply to business leaders of all kinds as they face their own crises—whether it’s a product recall or a media controversy.

  The NPLI was on a roller coaster in its early years. It turned out that starting an education program across government agencies and across jurisdictions was harder than it looked, and getting different parts of a university to collaborate could be even more challenging. Money had to be found in different corners of government to pay for training. No one knew whether it would survive periodic budget cuts.

  But over time, as results piled up, NPLI gained traction and now has reached its fifteenth year. It has a proud record of training thousands of senior leaders—from government, humanitarian organizations, and businesses large and small, and from across the country and around the world—to meet a wide variety of emergencies. That training includes bringing leaders to the Harvard campus twice over a six-month period, the first time for intensive training by faculty from across the university and the second as a follow-up to see how lessons from the classroom have played out in the field. Importantly through this work, officials from different departments and different levels of responsibility have formed a close network of colleagues and friends who are there for each other. In the midst of any big emergency, there are frequently several NPLI alumni working across boundaries with each other, pulling on the leadership knowledge, skills, and practices they’ve gained during their time at Harvard.

  One of the strengths of the program has been its adaptability. When it comes to disaster relief, the NPLI initially focused on responses to terror, but as weather-related disasters have grown ferociously in
recent years, classes now turn more frequently to the effects of climate change. And in their private-sector training, they’ve added a focus on cyber security, and are helping corporations identify the moments of crisis more quickly as the speed of technology demands. No doubt, they will continue to evolve in the future.

  Of course, no one would argue that NPLI is a panacea. Preparedness is an all-hands-on-deck requirement in addressing emergencies. In the battle against Hurricane Katrina, for example, Admiral Thad Allen and his Coast Guard contingent—who assumed leadership late in the response—were valiant in saving lives and inspiring confidence. By contrast, the local leadership in New Orleans was widely seen as ineffectual and over its head. Clearly, every jurisdiction in the country now has an interest in training up its top people and its responders to meet once-in-a-hundred-years storms or the ravages of uncontrolled fires.

  What the NPLI can do that is very hard in government is to play to its strengths: discovering and amassing knowledge, sorting out best practices, teaching others—the lifeblood of universities. There are definitely lessons to be learned about emergencies, both from the American experience and from the experience of others.

  I well remember when the chief of London police visited an NPLI program several years ago. In Britain, the police—not a national team—are responsible for dealing with terrorist incidents. The London chief outlined how the officer in charge of first responses would have at his side someone with equivalent experience to his own to be a second pair of eyes and ears for the chief. The officer in charge, said our London visitor, might be so focused on one aspect of the response that he or she would miss the big picture. The companion is there to be a quiet voice in the ear of the leader. Listening, I was reminded of a short film that is popular in universities: it shows a half-dozen students with a basketball and asks students to count the number of times the ball is thrown quickly back and forth. After the film ends, the teacher asks students how many passes occurred. Guesses vary. Then the teacher asks the students if they saw anything else in the film. At least a quarter of viewers (I remember; I was one of them) say no. What they miss is that while the ball was flying back and forth, an upright gorilla walks through their midst. Aha, I thought, that’s why the Brits have a second observer for emergencies. Notice what might be obscured by the circumstances. Point well taken.

  As this valuable book shows, the NPLI team has developed a number of concepts and tools that apply to emergency preparedness and response as well as to the requirements of everyday leadership. One of the most important is the idea of “meta-leadership”—the concept that in complex systems, a big part of leadership is the capacity to work well with and help steer organizations beyond one’s immediate circle. They start with “who are you?” as a leader, the person, and how do you adjust your sights to assess the situation at hand. Then, building connectivity: How can different groups work together toward a common goal? How do they forge the coordination of effort that allows them to leverage what each knows and can do? How do they unify large groups of people to work together toward that common purpose, what they call in this book “swarm leadership?” Examples are countless, and emergency leaders and business leaders find meta-leadership training to be foundational. The authors have compiled their years of research and teaching into this volume.

  A related focus central to this book is crisis training. In an emergency, attention pivots quickly to the person in charge. “You’re It!” the leader suddenly finds, and it’s too late to go back to the classroom for answers. Crisis leaders have to be psychologically and physically ready to act on a moment’s notice. And as our soldiers and sailors discovered on the beaches of Normandy over seventy years ago, the person in charge may not make it—and the second in command realizes, “Hey, you’re it now.” The historian Steven Ambrose believed that the US forces succeeded that day because so many soldiers, as “sons of democracy,” had grown up behind a plow, were independent in spirit, and weren’t afraid to lead.

  President Kennedy once said after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, “Victory has many fathers while defeat is always an orphan.” There was a time years ago when NPLI looked like it might go down, but a wonderfully strong team pulled it together. Once a near-orphan, it now has many fathers. The single most important—the man who has carried the program on his broad shoulders since the beginning—is Lenny Marcus. He not only was the chief creator of the program but has year after year steered it forward. Lenny is the “It” of the NPLI. I was proud to work with Lenny years ago in helping to get things off the ground.

  Fortunately, he has had great partners along the way—Joe Henderson, long a leader at the CDC, and the guy that got the original ball rolling, has recently retired from federal service and is now investing more of his talent into the NPLI, along with Eric McNulty, who is bringing so much intellectual strength to NPLI leadership thinking and practice, as well as Barry Dorn, the wise sage who was with the program from its inception.

  Writing on behalf of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, I want to express my gratitude and shared pride in the everyday contributions these leaders, and our alumni, are making to the safety of our country and its challenges ahead. First responders across the nation have certainly benefitted from the lessons of NPLI, as will others who now read this valuable new book.

  David Gergen

  Center for Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

  INTRODUCTION

  It was a relaxing spring day on Cape Cod. Staring out at the ocean, Lenny Marcus whispered to his wife, “People on the Gulf Coast look at this same scene and have to worry about the oil hitting their shores.” It was May 2, 2010. Twelve days earlier, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig erupted, killing eleven workers and threatening the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem with the largest oil spill in history.

  It was a busy weekend for crisis leaders. The day before, a mammoth water main break west of Boston interrupted service to two million people. Massachusetts officials were coordinating with local leaders to ensure a safe water supply for the metropolis. The night before in New York, vigilant Times Square street vendors spotted a suspicious car and alerted police, thwarting what would have been a deadly terrorist explosion. Lenny knew that alumni of the crisis leadership program he codirects at Harvard were active in each of these incidents.

  Suddenly, his phone rang. The screen read “Peter Neffenger.” Quietly, he said, “Sorry, I need to take this one.”

  Peter was a captain in the Coast Guard when he completed Harvard’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative executive crisis leadership program. Afterwards, Peter and Lenny stayed in touch. Peter had been promoted to admiral and led Coast Guard operations on the Great Lakes. “Lenny, Thad Allen [commandant of the Coast Guard] asked me to head to New Orleans and serve as deputy national incident commander for the oil spill response. I want you to come down and observe what’s going on.”

  Lenny sat up. He had gotten calls like this before. When H1N1/swine flu erupted the year before, Joe Henderson at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called, and Lenny was quickly on a flight to their offices in Atlanta. During the Hurricane Katrina response in 2005, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Michael Brown, emailed him from New Orleans: “You want to study leadership? Come on down.”

  By Friday, May 7, Eric McNulty and Lenny Marcus (two of the four authors of this book) were also in New Orleans to observe Admiral Neffenger as he assumed duties as deputy national incident commander. The next day Peter, his staff, Lenny, and Eric were flying over the oil spill in the Gulf. Barry Dorn later joined the national incident commander, Admiral Thad Allen, in New Orleans. The inquiry about leadership of the spill response would stretch all the way from the Gulf to Washington as they observed both the government interagency collaboration and the wrangling that marked the crisis response. There were frequent update calls to discuss ongoing leadership quandaries.

  From one crisis to the next, the “come on down” call
s continued. Each at a pivotal moment. Each when it mattered most.

  Your leadership moment. The curtain rises and everyone looks to you. They count on you. A solution must be found. You take the helm. You’re it.

  Some situations you anticipate. Others come as a surprise. Whether you are a crisis leader professional, an organizational leader, or an unsuspecting bystander, in an instant you can be leading a crisis response or leading a part of it. Suddenly, you are responsible. What do you do?

  The pages ahead chart steps for those crisis moments: ideas, methods, and pragmatic tools that will guide you as you guide others. Bringing those lessons to life are examples of real-life leaders in crisis scenarios: a terrorist attack, a pandemic, an oil spill, an active shooter, hurricanes. Crises, large and small, will happen. Financial shortfall, sexual harassment allegations, product liability—you as a leader must be prepared for whatever comes.

  We, your authors, believe that you’ll be most likely to embrace and execute the crisis leadership practices you’ll learn about in this book if they are rooted in your everyday leadership and relationships. At the crisis moment, you’ll pivot, using the same practices already deeply embedded in your leadership tool box. With precision, you seamlessly adapt what you do to the situation at hand.

  Leadership moments and complex problems routinely arise. Workplace leaders face situations demanding change. At home, there are personal issues, life-and-death decisions, disappointments, and transitions. Then there are the life-changing crises—you find yourself in the midst of an active shooter scenario, a terrorist attack, or a weather-related disaster. No matter the situation, when you are the leader, others await your direction and instructions. They count on you to have the confidence to respond effectively.

  You own your thinking, behaviors, and actions. Refining them—as you become the leader you hope to be—is the theme of this book. Your life and your career traverse a wide range of human dilemmas, crises, and opportunities. And the way forward isn’t simply through the words you find here. You are the starting point for exploring and enhancing your capacity to lead. It’s important to be continually reflective and intentional about who you are, what you do, and how you do it. We turn the attention and responsibility upon you, the leader.