basest instincts

Might as well panic is Seth Godin's latest. I like it. Essentially, panic is the only sure impetus to creating real outcomes, or as he put it "panic is an acceptable substitute for forethought."

It is a management and leadership travesty how easily we overlook bad planning and lack of anticipation. We routinely forgive offenders that have the ability to freak out well, explode into frenetic activity, and come up with a plan overnight that should either have taken substantially more deliberate thinking, or been avoided altogether because people were keeping their eye on the ball and reacted ahead of catastrophe.

There is no shortage of examples - you only have to look at 90% of what the US Congress does to know this. Their "sudden" realization that the economy was in the dumper, and then the gun-held-to-everyone's-head reaction (TARP), is but one example. The FEMA non-response to Hurricane Katrina (something they knew was coming), and the panic and uncertainty last year with Gustav despite knowing how badly things went with Katrina is embarrassing. Even something as irrelevant Congress' random hearings on drugs in baseball should simply not be allowed to happen. Talk about panic gone bad.

In most cases, these knee-jerk reactions results in some action, certainly the perception of activity, but rarely well-thought-out, strategic approaches to complex problems that result in long-lasting solutions that make sense. The only thing you can be assured of is that a limelight-grabbing exercise will happen.

Panic-driven management is of course not limited to the public sector, it happens every day in the commercial world. Speaking from personal experience, I know of more than one "long-term corporate strategy" that panic-stricken leaders at my employer(s) authored overnight or over a weekend in response to a competitive act or even a worrying report from an industry analyst. In some cases, the ideas are good, but not "fully-baked," and end up "evolving" in the weeks that follow. The result is a more expensive strategy, as certain actions need to be undone or written-off and the ship's course needs to be tweaked so that it is aiming correctly.

In most cases though, the ideas suck, but because "we need something to present to the big boss in three hours," we put lipstick on the pig and go with it. The hope is that he is just as panicked, won't notice, and we get to live another day. In this case, the recovery cost is much higher because somehow in the post-meeting-survival euphoria, we forget how stupid the idea was, now believe our own spin, actually get the minions to go implement, blithely ignore their incredulous looks, and of course, declare victory.

Two characteristics are consistently present when you think of well-run organizations. First their strategies force others to react (i.e. they make or shape markets); and second even when things are done unto them, their effective responses make it seem as if they'd already anticipated that contingency, and had a plan that was ready to go.

Why aren't more companies like this? Why aren't more governments like this?

Simple - they're not paid to be and there is no "executive" motivation to be. Why pave the way when someone else can do the difficult, market-making work and you can follow along and ride their wake? Why bother building all those contingency plans or even do some game-theory analysis to figure out what might happen three-to-five years out when you will almost certainly be in a different job then and won't even care about this?

Cynical? Yes - but I bet if you look at the organization where you work, you will find some hints of this type of behavior. More than that, you will find that those who argue for better planning or analysis are laughed at and told to sit in the back of the room and let the action-oriented MBAs take over.

Here are three suggestions for how to avoid this (besides the obvious, which is to change human perception and expectation :-)):

Be smaller - you must sense, respond and adapt. Being smaller allows you to be most in tune with your environment and able to respond quickly.

Be more transparent - the more you expose and communicate as a leader, the more insightful, engaged and motivated your organization will be. Ivory towers are never a good thing. The out-behave manifesto must expand to include executive accessibility and transparency, so that the employees can rescue their bosses.

Create a community of committed supporters - this one is tougher. Companies like Apple, Ben & Jerry's and others have managed to do this really well - it's about creating fellow travelers that will ally with you and be as committed to your well-being as you are. I think it starts with being absolute and visible about your integrity; those that share your ideals will be there for you.

All three acts require concerted leadership and a willingness to stay with it. They don't require re-shaping human nature, or altering the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately market mentality. They are all possible, they are all practical, and they all exhibit what I believe is an organizational sense of what's right.

This is one way for us to transcend our basest instincts.