How A Pilot Helped Me Navigate The Coronavirus Crisis

Perry Maddox writes about crisis management at a multi-million pound NGO, explaining how they navigated the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic.

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We lost £1 million of income that week.

Six businesses called in one day to apologetically cancel donations. Our flagship event that raised £400,000 last year was cancelled days later.

Coronavirus hit hard. It hit quickly.

Halfway into our fiscal year, these income losses equalled our reserves. Worse yet, those were our best million pounds, the unrestricted funding that is the lifeblood of organisations that seek to do more than just deliver programmes. 

We had rapidly gone from closing our best fiscal year ever to wondering if we’d open the next one. 

Faced with an extreme, immediate crisis management situation, we took inspiration in an old pilot’s saying. Three simple words:

Aviate, navigate, communicate.

Step One: Keep the Plane in the Air.

Aviate.

Job one for pilots in crisis is simple. Keep the plane in the air.  This is a brutal, critical lesson for leaders.  In a crisis, we cannot afford to get ahead of ourselves, to lose focus or to delay action.

You can’t fly a plane that has crashed.

I explained to our leadership team, simply and directly, that we would redirect almost all resources to the crisis, giving permission for the rest to wait.  We paused critical work, like the development of our next global strategy, resourcing model, and salary scales. 

All stopped within hours to keep the plane in the air, allowing us to: ensure over 2000 people’s safety, communicate with hundreds of funders, risk assess 60 programmes, clarify our financial picture, and ensure operational continuity across 10 countries. 

Those were the first 5 days. 

Step Two: Chart the Way out of this Mess.

Navigate. 

Once pilots stabilize the plane, the next step is to chart a way out of trouble. 

So we did.  On the fifth day, we moved from survival to redeploying our agency to help slow the pandemic, leveraging our unique assets and abilities.  We packaged offers to attract funding to make it happen and reworked budgets to ensure financial health.

Our response shifted from tactical to strategic course-setting. We anticipated two years’ worth of disruption and asked what needed to change now for us to emerge well-positioned for that new world. Then we took action to make it happen.

Step Three: Reach Out and Get in Touch.

Communicate.

Once you’ve stabilised and charted the way out, get on the radio to the control tower and to the people in the back of the plane to communicate the plan.

Midway through week two, we called an emergency meeting with our board of trustees and communicated in detail with our teams globally.  Of course, we’d been in touch from the outset. But now our focus shifted from reactive, survival communications to our strategic direction. 

This was the time to bring our people with us, to listen and to take on their feedback, and to move forward together confidently, with clarity despite the storm of ambiguity around us.

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate: Crisis Management for Leaders

The pilot’s saying simplifies crisis management into a clear 3-step order. 

The mantra gives clarity and direction when they are needed most, helping us to guide teams through key transitions in crisis response:

1. Aviate. Early on, people may be shell shocked, confused or afraid.  By giving clarity – what to prioritise and what to pause – we protect our people and help them reclaim power in the face of crisis. We lift morale by breaking the insurmountable down into clear actions that rally teams.
2. Navigate.  Your people are occupied with survival to this point, but it’s no use flying a plane with nowhere to land. Here your role is pivotal, because teams preoccupied with reacting will not have space to look ahead. As soon as you have your team aviating-  whether that’s in 5 days, 5 hours or 5 weeks – transition their focus toward the way out.
3. Communicate.  So far communications have been basic, prioritising safety and operational clarity. Now bring people with you on the bigger, more promising journey ahead.  Don’t be silent to this point, but remember that until you’ve kept the plane in the air and charted a way out, hold off forward-looking communications or risk confusion, distraction or harm. 

Within three weeks, we’d stabilized our agency.  

Rather than facing the end, we faced a challenging mid-year position. Tough times and decisions still to come, yes, but we had confidence in our ability to weather them.

Most importantly, our people were safe and our leadership team were united around a plan.

After all, no pilot flies alone.