Bring out the best without crisis

I just read an article posted on businessweek.com (http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/feb2010/ca2010029_389441.htm, the article is from Harvard Business Review) titled Crisis Response Factors-Without a Crisis. To summarize the article, the author, Ron Ashkenas uses people and organization respond to the earthquake in Haiti as an example of how organizations could use the power of the three human response factors, Urgency, Empathy, and Innovation, to get tasks and projects accomplished quickly. In nature disaster like the earthquake in Haiti, the three factors comes together to respond to the human tragedy. First, we realize the urgency of the responses that could determine the life and death of tens of thousands of Haitians; second, we are connected to the people when we see the devastations on the news and TVs and empathize with them; third, we find new ways to get things done bypassing the normal procedures. The article further discusses how to sustain the three factors within the organizations.
I found this article is very helpful in today’s business world, especially in large organizations. Too often, IT projects failed (more often than you think, the latest from CHAOS Report 2009 indicates that only 32% of the IT projects are successful). There are many reasons for the failures, but the three factors mentioned above are some of the important reasons behind the failures. In big organizations, different departments have their own priorities. The mentalities of your top projects are not mine is so often seen in projects large and small. For example, business and security have different goals of their own. Business wants easy access to information while security wants to secure information. How do you resolve this conflict? Perhaps looking back to the Haiti earthquake will give us a clue. Business and security will come together to find a solution when both share the same urgency. Personal performances in large organizations are largely determined by the accomplishments within the department instead of the whole organization. Recently, perhaps not too far ago, during the banking crisis, some people defended their bonus (very big) by stating that they made money for the banks and they were not responsible for crisis that required federal government to bail out the whole banking system. They did not see themselves as part of organization and did not care about success or the failure of the organization. In another word, they did not empathize with the company. When people are in the crisis mode, they tend to think fast and find ways to the solutions. In the normal project, people tend to lack the urgency and go through regular procedures. While procedures are necessary to follow, but innovation thinking can bring efficiency and improve existing procedures.
I totally agree with author’s statement that in order to bring out the best performance, managers need to find a way to bring employees to the crisis mode without a crisis happening and build it into long term success of the organization.