Leadership & Immobilization

 Good decisions require good facts, deductive reasoning and intuition.  My best staff have always been those who sense the right direction from past experience, an eye to the future and comfort with the unknown.  Making order with not enough information or total disorder is the challenge.

 Unforeseen events are often often outside our most extreme 'what if' scenario planning.  My approach was to challenge my IT staff with the routine scenarios (e.g. server failure, security intrusion) and the extreme.  "How do we recover if we're hit by a meteor?"  "How do we process payroll, as required on Tuesday, if two super hero's destroy our internet connectivity?"  Good comes from the extreme.

Keeping your staff challenged, happy and productive during times of overwork, lack of resources and corporate oppression requires one to find opportunity in hopeless situations.  Shackleton, who's ship, Endurance, was hopelessly locked in sea ice.  "Put up the sails."  The ship was ultimately crushed but his leadership gave hope and saved his crews life.  Our challenge as managers is often no less.