Press PAUSE ⏸️ and shift your crisis approach
Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash
Since we have shifted to our “new normal” post-pandemic, many leaders have struggled to navigate the challenges of a sustained crisis following the sudden crisis.
Today, we’ll dig into how you can succeed in this new environment.
Today’s agenda:
🌋 Sudden vs. sustained crises
🎡 Reaching your customers at every stage
🥛 Optimism in the face of rapid change
💼 Briefly — our quick news roundup
⏱️ Up & coming
The leadership shift in sustained crises
Harvard leadership and management experts Michaela J. Kerrissey and Amy C. Edmondson recently explored what makes a sudden crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, different from the sustained crisis we currently are experiencing.
💥 Sudden crisis
Unexpected and/or dangerous situation that requires immediate action
Presents a clear goal to limit harm
Limited timeframe and obvious stakes
🚃 Sustained crisis
Ongoing period of difficulty and uncertainty
Ambiguous signals and no clear start date or tradeoffs
Longer timeframe and subtle stakes
🔑 The key, according to the writers, is understanding that what works for a sudden crisis does not work for a sustained crisis.
Actions that worked in the sudden crisis can lead to exhaustion and frustration in a sustained crisis, and create a habit of prioritizing urgent matters over important matters.
👉 Instead, the authors suggest the following tactics to move forward:
Call out a shift toward pausing, experimenting, and finding new solutions
Stop rewarding habits of urgency
Create space for experimenting and inviting diverse voices
Recognizing the subtle shift can differentiate great leaders from the rest.
Stages of the customer journey
How well do you understand your audience’s journey from awareness to loyalty?
Giraffe Social Media has created a handy infographic to help your team guide the content and experiences that meet your customers’ needs — at every stage.
🎢 The customer journey
Awareness — customers become aware of their issue and need solutions
Consideration — customers are actively searching for solutions
Decision — customers are ready to make the purchase, whether it’s your brand or not
Retention or Loyalty — customer purchased from you and needs to be nurtured to purchase again and again in the future
It’s important to create the right types of content to match where the customer is in their journey.
For example, blog posts, ebooks, checklists, infographics, videos, and podcasts are excellent content types to educate your customer in the awareness stage and offer the solutions that your brand can offer.
A hot take on AI from a ‘tempermental’ optimist
“Seeing the problems of the new technology is cheap,” says WIRED cofounder Kevin Kelly in an article for the magazine. “Everybody can do it.”
While Kelly believes that addressing the problems is important, “we need more people addressing the unintended benefits.”
🤖 He says that there are huge benefits from AI that none of us can yet foresee, and while the problems are growing, real, and serious, our capacity to solve them will also increase “even faster.”
Fear of an AI apocalypse is a “romantic fantasy,” he says, and a human’s optimism that we can prevail is the “ace card” against AI.
In a world growing increasingly concerned about AI’s potential, it may be a breath of fresh air to consider that, just maybe, we can figure this out, too.
Briefly
💻 The FCC is asking for public comment for an investigation into broadband internet data caps and how it especially affects those with disabilities, low-income consumers, and historically disadvantaged communities
✉️ 10 tips from HubSpot for writing strong email copy that will boost your lead-nurturing campaigns
🤖 A study found that a “significant portion” of those who are training AI models may be outsourcing this work to AI
🏠 Mortgage News Daily explores the two ways to look at existing home sales data
📱 How to protect your brand reputation on social media, including the available safety tools on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube
🍎 Apple expands its self-service repair program to include some of the latest devices
Up & Coming
A few top traders are feeling confident that we’ll see positive inflation news in the coming months.
Read their insights here.