Leading During A Crisis with Henry J. Evans at Dynamic Results

In this episode, we explore what it takes to lead effectively through crisis and why disruption is becoming faster, more complex, and more intense. We discuss why past experience alone isn't enough when leaders face unfamiliar challenges, and why a practical crisis management system matters. We explore Henry J. Evans's background in C-suite coaching and his business failure after 9/11, which shaped his approach to crisis leadership. Henry shares his framework for managing crisis, beginning with self-management and simple techniques like box breathing to help leaders stay calm and make better decisions under pressure. We also discuss the three phases of crisis, why decision-making should move to the lowest intelligent level within an organization, and why crisis plans should focus on the most critical actions. Finally, we explore simulations, scenario planning, pre-mortems, and the value of including pessimists to identify risks before they become problems. Episode Highlights & Time Stamps 0:09 Crisis Leadership in a Faster World 1:08 What Counts as a Real Crisis 4:40 Henry's Counterterrorism Background 7:09 Why Old Successes Stop Working 10:09 Lead Yourself First 15:04 Three Phases of Crisis 20:27 Decision-Making in Crisis 24:57 Building Trust Before Crisis 27:52 Stress-Test Your Team 29:42 Pre-Mortem Planning Works 31:04 Final Thoughts on Crisis Prep Key Takeaways ✅Past crisis experience is valuable, but it isn't enough by itself. ✅Leaders need a repeatable system for managing disruption. ✅Self-management is the starting point of effective crisis leadership. ✅Learning to respond rather than react can improve decision-making under pressure. ✅Crises can be viewed through three phases: incubating, emerging, and acute. ✅Decision-making should move toward the people with the most relevant expertise. ✅Crisis teams should focus on the few actions that matter most. ✅Leadership teams should practice crisis scenarios before a real crisis occurs. ✅Pre-mortems can help organizations identify vulnerabilities before they become problems. ✅Pessimistic perspectives can be valuable for identifying risks and blind spots. Connect With Today's Guest Henry J. Evans is a C-suite coach, strategic planning facilitator, and author with extensive experience in crisis leadership and national security. He has accumulated more than 16,000 hours of C-suite coaching and approximately 6,000 hours facilitating strategic planning sessions for multinational organizations. He also spent 22 years working with national security threats, primarily in counterterrorism. Henry's perspective on crisis leadership is also shaped by personal experience. After building a successful company, his business experienced a significant decline in revenue following 9/11 and ultimately went through Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That experience led to a new chapter in his career involving national security and counterterrorism work. He is the author of Bombs, Bacon, and Bankruptcy: The Art of Crisis Leadership, a book focused on the principles and systems leaders can use to navigate crisis more effectively. How to Connect with Henry J. Evans LinkedIn: Henry J. Evans (LinkedIn) https://www.linkedin.com/in/henryevansdynamicresults/ Company Website: dynamicresults.com– to learn more about his work and platform Get In Touch with Henry: henryjevans.com Resources & Next Steps Ready to take your leadership energy to the next level? Explore free training and resources at training.coreelevation.com to help you identify energy leaks, strengthen your leadership presence, and elevate your team's performance. 🌐 Explore More: training.coreelevation.com 🎧 Listen to the Full Episode: Growth Think Tank Podcast

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If you by your wits and/or luck were able to survive crises in the past, that does have some value when you face your next one. But the rate of disruption and the intensity of crisis is increasing year over year. And I think all of your listeners are feeling that. So you think about the dot com bust and, and COVID. Well, you've got almost 12 years between those. Now you're getting hit with three or four disruptions every year. So you actually need a system for managing crisis or, or to your point, working harder is not going to help you. Working smarter and within a system will.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  If you're a founder who's built something real and now your business can't grow without you in the middle of everything, you're in the right place. I'm Gene Hammond. This is Growth Think Tank, where founders who are ready to stop being the ceiling of their own company come to think differently, lead better and build a company that doesn't need them. This is the longest running leadership podcast in the world. Hundreds of Inc. 5000 CEOs have told their stories here. Let's get to it. Today, we're going to talk about leading in a crisis. Every time you think about your business, you may think about you're, you're running strong, you're running through some, some fires. You have some things that are not the way you want them to. That's not quite the crisis we're talking about.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  We're talking about when the real shit hits the fan, when, when things like COVID hit or a terrorist attack happens, or maybe something just outside the norm affects the way you guys do business. Leading in a crisis is very important for you to understand the core principles. In my opinion, this is an area where you want to be intentional. You want to, you want to plan some things. Inside the podcast, we're going to give you some things to think about, some things you can do that might be a little bit different than what you're doing today that will prepare you for any crisis that might become. My guest is Henry J. Evans. He is the author of Bombs, Bacon and Bankruptcy.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  He's got a very colorful background that involved counterterrorism, involved coaching other C-level executives and has even lost his business before through bankruptcy. So all that being said, Henry and I talk about leading in a crisis, the phases of a crisis and some of the, the real critical elements that you need to be able to do. We get very tactical in some areas. We're not as able to go as deep as I wanted to, but I will tell you, it's a great interview for you to be prepared for how to lead during a crisis. When you think of your own business, I want you to think about the, the crises that you

• 2:48Speaker 01

  could have, the crises that could derail your goals, that could derail the way your business operates and maybe even write those things down and think about what would, how would we show up for that? We talk about that a little bit deeper inside of, of this, but that's just one of the elements that, that came up in today's conversation with Henry. My name is Gene Hammond. I am a founder coach, CEO coach. We work in leadership development with companies that are growing and they grow to a certain level, like 15, 20, 30, 40 employees. And they realize that the way they communicate, the way they lead, all those things don't work as well at that scale with that number of people.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  And to keep moving forward, keep growth, you've got to learn to lead differently. One thing I've noticed in the hundreds and hundreds of interviews through the Inc. 5000 is that my view of leadership is a founder that hustles really hard can have a level of success to reach the Inc. level. They can get to 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, 5 million, maybe even 10 million, depending on your business model. But at some point in time, if hustling harder is all you have, then you won't be able to be the leader you really need to be. You've got to learn to lead differently and that's the core of our business. If you want to get our latest book, go ahead and download it now at getfounderfreedom.com.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Get Founder Freedom will give you the eight freedoms and it's kind of a pathway to think about your own journey to create freedom for yourself. It's absolutely free right now, but if you download it, we're happy to support you in your growth. If you have any questions, make sure you continue to follow us along and listen to more podcast episodes. Now here's the interview with Henry. Hey, Henry, how are you?

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Things are going well, Gene. Nice to see you.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Great to have you here on the podcast. I'm gonna, I've already introduced you a little bit, but tell the, the audience a little bit about your background. What makes them want to listen to you today, Henry?

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Well, last year I found out through an internal audit in our firm that I crossed 16,000 hours of C-suite coaching. I've got about 6,000 hours of facilitating strategic planning sessions for multinationals. And I'm revealing in the new book that I just finished a 22-year career dealing with national security threats, mostly in the counterterrorism arena. And I have a business failure under my belt, which is, I think, a credential as well.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Well, you know, all of those are very interesting. I'm very interested in the terrorism and the business failure. Where, where do you want to kind of go from here?

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Well, you know, nine 11 was kind of the catalyst for both. So I had built up as a college dropout, I had become a millionaire by 30 with a small company I started, double-digit EBITDA for 10 years, top 5% of the industry. And I had it highly leveraged against the advice of wiser people when nine 11 hit and we had a 60% drop in revenue. I wasn't using other people's money to build a new product and we ended up going through a chapter 11. And as I was emerging out of the 11, a friend's husband that I knew did some kind of cloak

• 6:16Speaker 00

  and dagger stuff, asked me if I would go to an air force base and help his team think about a problem for a couple of weeks. And without telling that whole story, that began a 22-year journey.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Okay, well, the audiences have listened to me more times than, than just today. Know that I've been through some ups and downs, bankruptcy, failed business, that I look at that as a good part of my success and really look like it was one of the worst days that ever happened, but also the best things ever happened to me as far as a transition point. You've written a new book too. You didn't mention that, so let's go ahead and put that on the table, The Bombs, Bacon and Bankruptcy.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that title is meant to cause a WTF moment and people want to know what that's about. And the subtitle, The Art of Crisis Leadership, should answer that question.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Well, we're going to dive in here today. You know, a little bit about our audience, but those of you who are listening in, you're probably running your businesses and you're probably feeling like, if I just work a little bit harder, everything will turn around. Maybe you're even thinking, if I hire that next key executive, it'll all be easier from there. And from my experience, none of those two things really are the solution to you having the business of your dreams. I know being, you know, writing a book about crisis leadership, every one of our businesses is, is either has been or will go through a massive crisis.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  What are the keys to being successful inside of crisis leadership?

• 7:55Speaker 00

  So there are many and Gene, I wrote about three case studies. So one of them is an eight-year counterterrorism mission I worked on, which was to eradicate roadside bombs. That was ultimately successful, even though we were failing catastrophically for the first two years. The second is about a giant supermarket. We helped navigate COVID, another checkmark success. And the third one is about an organization in crisis we tried to help that failed and everybody lost their jobs after their founder died in a pretty horrific accident. So it's a crisis leadership system.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  And what people need to think about in crisis is that what makes them successful out of crisis in terms of prioritizing, decision-making, delegating, probably goes out the window in crisis.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Well, that's a big bomb to drop us on us because I think a lot of people go, well, I'll just double down on what got me to this point. What do you really mean by those things not working inside of a crisis?

• 9:07Speaker 00

  So I think some of the common mistakes in crisis are thinking that because you've survived other crises. So I hear this from executives I'm working with a lot. Well, Henry, I've already been through the 2008.com bubble. I've already been through COVID. So I feel like whatever comes up, I'm going to be able to handle it. And if you by your wits and/or luck were able to survive crises in the past, that does have some value when you face your next one. But the rate of disruption and the intensity of crisis is increasing year over year. And I think all of your listeners are feeling that. So you think about the dot com bust and COVID.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Well, you've got almost 12 years between those. Now you're getting hit with three or four disruptions every year. So you actually need a system for managing crisis, or to your point, working harder is not going to help you. Working smarter and within a system will.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  I guess I'm curious now, where does the system start from your experience?

• 10:14Speaker 00

  I think it starts with self. So a mistake that people make a lot is they forget how contagious their own emotions are as a leader. So I haven't, if I haven't done something to center myself as a leader, I shouldn't be expecting my team to have any form of objective thinking. I think emotions like germs are contagious. So one of the first tools we offer is something that special operators use on missions, which is called box breathing. And it's a way to hack your limbic system so you can get back into an objective state of thinking quickly. So it's basically inhaling for four seconds, holding the inhale for four seconds, exhaling for four

• 10:57Speaker 00

  seconds, holding your empty lungs for four seconds, and repeating the cycle two or three times. And if you do that math, you're basically done in about a minute. And what you've done is you've cut off the production of adrenaline and cortisol, and you've forced blood back into your prefrontal cortex, where your objective intelligent thinking happens.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  I know anytime I've tried to use box breathing, whether it be for just to calm myself down, or maybe it's a, in a moment of a jujitsu match beforehand, taking that anxiety and not letting it control me. I have to put so much effort into the holding and thinking and accounting that I can't think about anything else. Is that part of the benefit of a box breathing?

• 11:44Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So if you were to think about an interrogation, a job interview, or a good first date, you're really hoping that both people can be fully present and fully focused in that moment. So part of getting focused is putting that thought vacuum on yourself and sucking all the other ideas out of your psyche, so that you can then turn and focus on one thing. Another hack I wrote about in the book, which is backed by a lot of research, Gene, is you can ask yourself any question. So say you say something, and it pisses me off in a meeting, and I get hijacked. If I say to myself, what did I eat for breakfast yesterday? What color underwear am I wearing?

• 12:27Speaker 00

  What's the last good movie I saw? That same limbic system hacking is happening. Blood is being pushed into my prefrontal cortex, so I can think objectively. If I practice this enough, my questions aren't that mundane. It might be what's something I can say or ask with Gene right now that'll let him know I'm on his side? Or what is something I can say or ask that will let Gene know I want to work through this with him? But any question will give you the same benefit.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  I have a question I've used, and I've given this to clients, that I'll share with you and the audience, and you can give me some feedback on it. Maybe it's ways to improve it. But I, I remember many different times where something has frustrated me. And I can stay in that frustration. And all of a sudden, you probably know, it's very hard to listen, it's very hard to participate, be really who you are, when you're in a moment of frustration. And it doesn't matter what triggers it. It could be someone saying something stupid. It could be someone, you know, pulling, you know, not doing what they're supposed to do, whatever it is. And I will say, who am I being in this moment? And if I say frustrated, I'm like, okay, that's, is

• 13:44Speaker 01

  that a choice? Or am I just at default? And when I realize that I'm at choice, I can choose another way. And I remember very distinctly, one of these things had hijacked me in a moment. And I wouldn't say crisis, but it was just like a moment of frustration. And I could, I went an hour, probably in frustration, not knowing what to say, trying to figure out who in the room had said what they, you know, attacked me in some way. And I've said, you know what? This is not, this is not really helping. So who do I need to become? Those are the questions I ask. And then I get, I get to be at choice.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what I, what I hear you speaking to, and I have a theory that people think that people who think like they do are smart people. So because I agree with what you just said, I think you're a genius. You're talking about responding rather than reacting.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  So, so the reaction is something that I didn't plan if I were ever in this situation. And it's also something I'm probably going to feel ashamed of later because it wasn't my highest or best self.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  The response, just like you do in jujitsu, you practice how you're going to counter various moves. So when you're experiencing that offense, you have a response in the form of defense. And one of the mistakes leaders make, because of our limbic system in crisis, and I'm going full circle back to your first question, is they assume, because of how our limbic system works, because of our emotional system, that all crises are crises. Well, they're not. There are three levels of crisis. I learned this in counterterrorism. And by the way, this is applicable in our personal lives. The first one is called incubating. So let's say, Gene,

• 15:34Speaker 00

  you and I want to go have a beer. And somebody says, you know, that bar you guys are planning on going to has a rough crowd. I know you both do martial arts, but be aware. And you and I think, okay, well, we've grown up in tough neighborhoods. We've been to tough bars. It'll be fine. We don't have a plan. We go into the bar, we get a table, and some rough dudes come in, and they don't start messing with us, but they start a fight with guys sitting at the bar. That's what we would call the next level up. That's emerging. So we knew this was possible by reputation. But now that we see it happening to somebody else, we need to make a plan. So I might look for where the exits are. You might look for where the heaviest thing to pick up and

• 16:16Speaker 00

  hit somebody with is, but we talk about a plan. Acute is when they look at us and start saying, what are you two morons looking at? And they start coming towards us. We better already have a plan. So what we do in organizations and with individuals is we help them look out at their landscape. What are you worried about? Or what aren't you worried about that maybe you should be? Or what are your competitors worried about? Or what's a potential threat that you think is bullshit? And if it isn't happening to somebody else, we would say it's incubating, you don't need to make a plan. If it is happening to somebody else, make a plan so that you're not having to scramble and make one once it becomes acute. Does that make sense?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  It does. I love phases. You know, when I wrote How to Have Tough Conversations, my wife is like, we don't need phases of tough conversations. And I said, well, the third time someone does something that needs feedback, do you handle that differently than the first time? So we have four phases of that. So I love the crisis, incubating, emerging, and acute, because it gives you a chance to take a beat and say, which phase are we in? Because you, the way you react is going to be very different.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, if you look at COVID, I think anybody with a driver's license had heard, read a movie, seen, seen a movie, read a book about a pandemic, and they knew that that type of thing is theoretically possible. That's what you would call an incubating threat. You may, you and your wife may not have a strategy for what you would do if a global pandemic started. When the news in Wuhan, China comes out that there is one, and it is rapidly spreading, and it is possibly lethal, that's a good time to start talking about what you two will do with your own house and family, if it becomes acute, meaning it's come to your town.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got me thinking, Henry. And not, I don't want to derail us, but I thought pretty early, because I was in the moment. It was like February. I remember it was like middle of February. March was kind of the real kind of crux of this.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  And I was smart enough to plan to have extra food in the house. We already had extra toilet paper. I wasn't, that wasn't on the thing. That was, I was just luck. But what I knocked myself on is I should have sat back and said, you know, what are the stock plays I should make if this thing really does hit? I did not think that through. I had thought about the food.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Well, you know, those of us, those of us who had been trained in geopolitical threats, were not listening to the news at all. It's really easy math, right? You have tens of thousands of international flights in the air at any time. So if it's in China, that means it's everywhere. That people have already left China, gone through international airports, that are just hubbing out into all these other international airports, and then going into communities. So there was no question that it would spread globally. The question was how long, and what's the impact of it when it hits? So another crisis leadership tool for your listeners would be when

• 19:29Speaker 00

  you think you're in a crisis, and you're choosing whether or not to pay attention to it, think about it on two axes. So one is likelihood. How likely is it to actually happen? And the other is impact. So what would the impact be if it happened? If the likelihood is low, but the impact would be catastrophic, make a plan. If the impact is low and the likelihood is high, you might not even make a plan for it. So you have calories left for planning for something that might be more impactful. If you're listening to this show, chances are you're a founder who's built something significant. But you're still too deep in the day to day to see the path forward. That's exactly what the Founder Freedom Strategy call is for.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  It's free. It's 30 minutes with me personally. And we'll pinpoint exactly what's keeping you stuck and what you need to do about it. Book your time with me at my personal URL, schedulewithgene.com. Now, back to the podcast.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  We've been talking about the first step of this was self. And I feel like we haven't really scratched, we're just scratching the surface of this because that was the, the box breathing is the moment the crisis hits. But what happens after that moment?

• 20:42Speaker 00

  So I think that decision-making rights in, in crisis are often different than they are out of crisis. One of the things I talk about when I'm giving a keynote about crisis leadership is burn your organizational chart. Set it on fire because I might be the CEO and I might even be a subject matter expert on a key part of our business. But there are going to be these nuanced areas of expertise we need to navigate this crisis. And needless to say, if I'm the smartest person in the room on all topics, I'm a terrible CEO. I haven't hired or developed expertise under me.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  If you're the subject matter expert, then I'm going to need to push decision-making rights to the lowest intelligent level of the organization as quickly as I can do it so that somebody with more expertise than I do is driving the organization's activity in that sub-arena.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  When crisis leadership probably has a lot of phases, we probably won't get to any, you know, all of it today. You've written a book on bombs, bacon and bankruptcy, looking at, you know, through their counterterrorism, through your, your business experience. What are the biggest principles that drive your leadership?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  For successful companies that are able to, to manage crisis?

• 22:12Speaker 00

  I think that, I think the first thing is kind of like what you do in jujitsu. You practice and build crisis resilience when you're not in crisis. So I can give you a practical process example, and I can give you a relational human example.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  On the process side,

• 22:31Speaker 00

  out of crisis, let's say that I'm the subject matter expert on supply chain. Straight of Hormuz closes and I start panicking. Your subject matter competent in supply chain, but you're courageous and ready to attack this problem. And you're more influential in the company. People have more faith in you. They believe in you more than me as a leader. Well, we're not losing my subject matter expertise, but don't put me in charge of, of the team. Let's put Gene in charge of the team and Gene can tap Henry on the shoulder for subject matter expertise whenever he needs it.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  So start looking at who in your organization has the enthusiasm and enough skill to lead teams and while still leveraging the experts. On the emotional side, if you've done a good job as my boss of letting me know when we're not in crisis, that you care about me, that you trust me, that you appreciate me. If I start feeling a lot of feelings during a crisis, you actually don't have to spend as much time coddling me. You can say, Henry, I think you know I care about you. We don't have time to talk about how you feel right now. We need to do the following three things in the next three hours. Will you help me?

• 23:48Speaker 00

  And how you prioritize and identify those three things is also different in a crisis. Out of crisis, we can write a strategic plan over months. In a crisis, we have to in 30 minutes or less, say, what are the top three or four things we have to do right now? What are the next steps to get momentum in those top three to four max areas? And let's get those four things in action. We call it generating a crisis response that outpaces the crisis. A crisis has a momentum and you need to activate your team and get them moving at a rate that is faster than the crisis is moving.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  Just like we just saw people in Nepal in the last week, that there were people who could see what was coming and they ran uphill. And the ones who lived ran uphill at a pace that was faster than that wave of debris was coming. I know that sounds like a really mundane, simple example, but I like mundane, simple examples because they're memorable. So you have to be able to outpace, outrun what's coming at you.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  I, I wanna, as we wrap up today, I want to ask you a question that very much related to this. And I'm thinking about my own book, right? I wrote a book on tough conversations and I explain to leaders a lot, it's like, I don't think the shit sandwich works. You know what that is?

• 25:15Speaker 00

  Oh yeah. I advise against it as well.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  The, the, the compliment, you know, hard topic and then compliment again, because people only, some people only hear the compliments. And so the shit sandwich doesn't work. And what I try to remind my leaders of is if you've got to give feedback as a leader, which we all do, what you want to do is appreciate people outside of the norm times, build trust, build, build that, that capital of leadership. I want to turn that to you on crisis. Like what is it we do in non-crisis times that makes our leadership work in times of crisis?

• 25:54Speaker 00

  That's a profound question. I think the answer between you and I, with the experience we have coaching would be way too long for a rap. But one thing we can do is practice some of these crisis leadership skills when we're not in crisis. So, so that could mean you're my CEO. I have not proven that I'm good at doing something, but I'm really enthusiastic about doing it. Well, let me try it when we're not in crisis. So you can start to calibrate how accurate my self-belief is with my actual ability. And you can start to see who has an honest picture of themselves and who doesn't.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  A warning I would give your listeners about crisis is that I might be super high performing for you out of crisis. And I might be paralyzed in crisis. And I could also be a colleague who is just making the mark out of crisis. So I'm, I'm not bad enough that you want to let me go, but I'm not earning any kind of bonus. And I might be a superstar in crisis. A crisis might actually wake me up and bring out my best. So we have to drop our old narratives about our teams that we built out of crisis when we're in crisis and objectively see who's capable of what, so we can operate like special operators do.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Would you recommend for teams to, even though there's a lot of work to be done, maybe even operationally, you know, we're behind in some ways. But to have some type of time each quarter, each year, whatever it may be of saying, what are the potential crises that would hit us? You know, how would we operate in a COVID if we did this? How, what are the other things that would happen if, if we were faced with something? Just get them on the board and discuss these things, even if they're wild and crazy. Like, is that a fun exercise for, I don't know if fun's the right word, but is that a worthwhile exercise for leadership teams?

• 27:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, those are two different questions. Fun, it's going to be fun for your type A people who think they can do anything in the world and have a great track record. It's going to be super intimidating to maybe an introvert, somebody sitting in a really analytical role with, with a high risk aversion. But useful? Absolutely. I mean, here's a, here's, here's an exercise we recommend our, our clients run and we help facilitate it simulations. So we'll tell our clients that we're having a typical strategic planning meeting as we do with them every 90 days. And then we'll start a meeting by saying, there's been a terrorist attack in your company, in your company's region.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  And the power grid is down and all comms are down. You have 15 minutes to figure out what you're doing first. And then we spend a couple of hours debriefing what happened in the 15 minutes and then showing them the crisis leadership tools that are needed for wherever their, their gaps were.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Right. I, I like that. I, I want to wrap this up with something I've been, I think I borrowed this from another guest that's been on the show. Cause that's one of the reasons why I have smart people like you on the show that has different perspectives is so it makes me a better coach. And some military person said, let's do a pre-mortem. Why will this fail? Maybe it's not a crisis thing, but are you, you're, I see you nod your head there, a pre-mortem. I had one of my clients, I mentioned to, to it recently and I'm going to be honest with you. They're like, yeah, that sounds interesting, but we have so much work to do. We, we, we can't do a pre-mortem. Three weeks later, he goes, I wish we would have done that thing because it come out, it came back to slap us and.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Is that, how would you structure a pre-mortem in a kind of just a quick way to get the most benefit out of it?

• 29:47Speaker 00

  So let's talk about the, the people on, on your team. I know that I was a CEO for the first time at way too young of an age. I was 25. It was my own company. And I would ostracize people with a pessimistic or a negative bias. I didn't like them in the room. I didn't like them in meetings. I even made the mistake of letting a few of them go just because of their natural baseline. And what I didn't know yet was that they are capable of seeing roadblocks, obstacles and barriers that a person like me with an optimistic bias that thinks they can do anything literally can't see or recognize. So we recommend, and most of your listeners who are in those senior C-suite roles, they've got that optimistic bias. They believe their whole life they can accomplish anything.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  Invite some pessimists to your planning teams. Invite some pessimists to your planning dialogues and focus on making them feel rewarded and appreciated for contributing what, what might go wrong. That's best practice one. Best practice two is don't then expect them to generate the right solution because that's not their strength. Their strength is noticing the problem.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  Which is something that I know I lack as a capability. And I've got a couple of them on my team that are very helpful.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Henry, I've had a great time. You want to say any fun words of your book, Bombs, Bacon and Bankruptcy?

• 31:13Speaker 00

  The Art of Crisis Leadership. Well, if you want to know more about the four stages of crisis leadership, or we've been really lucky with pre-orders, you can go to henryjevans.com. That's the landing page for the book. It'll ship on November 10th and Gene, I really appreciate being on your podcast.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Thanks for being here.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  What a great episode. We talked about a crisis throughout this entire episode. And I'm kind of curious, do you know what the top two or three crises that could happen to your business that would derail it? Do you know how your team would handle that? Are you ready? My guess is you're probably not. You're probably going to be scrambling. But what could you do to prepare yourself and your team for a crisis? Maybe it's scenario planning like Henry suggested. Maybe it's really thinking about what kind of things you guys want to do and how you want to lead when things happen. What has to change from current leadership?

• 32:19Speaker 01

  All of these things are useful conversations to have because it will create new opportunities for you guys to, to build some trust, build some understanding of each other, in my opinion. If I can help you in any way, grow your business, create the, the freedom you want, reach out, [email protected]. When you think of growth and you think of leadership, think of growth, think tank. As always, leave a courage. We'll see you next time.