01 Jul Vanishing trick – when your chips are down
According to Google AI: “My chips are down” is an idiom that means you are in a difficult or challenging situation, especially one where you need to rely on yourself or where the stakes are high. It implies a sense of urgency, potential hardship, or a moment of truth where your true character or the value of things is revealed. The phrase originates from poker, where chips represent money being bet, so when the chips are down, the game is on, and the outcome is uncertain.
South African people and organisations, like any in the world, experience unexpected structural shifts that suddenly and unexpectedly have catastrophic effects. There are constructive ways to face them.
What do we mean by structural shifts? Here are a few examples, drawn from recent client experiences.
In the last few years, many in the entertainment industry found that their customers had vanished because of both the Covid pandemic and the digital entertainment explosion – customers were staying home. In healthcare and social support, the overnight termination of USAID programs meant that funding sources suddenly vanished. The decision of the South African minister of Home Affairs to raise by 10,000% the cost of identity verification will hurt all organisations that provide financial services to the poor and unbanked. For local importers, their global principals can suddenly slash distribution margins as technology enables them to do more from their home country and rely less on local services. These are just a few ways in which structural shifts create business unusual.
People react to these changes as human beings – they typically progress through predictable stages. The most relevant model of catastrophic change is from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1969), describing the transitions through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We have seen first-hand how executives process catastrophic news in this fashion – potentially taking years to complete the transitions. In that time, what happens to employees? How do they make sense of the changes that inevitably affect them, when their leaders are caught in their own transition cycle?
The same effect can be seen in the home of a person who loses their job. While they are processing their transition, what happens to family members and how do they make sense of what is happening?
The inevitable action – whether it is an organisation or a home – is that costs are cut. Income dries up and every conceivable way to reduce expenditure is found. At the same time, the hunt for new revenue must begin – and so all kinds of efforts are made to resume normal operations.
Under threat, human biology releases stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol – raising the heart rate, increasing blood pressure, and heightening senses. When this happens to an executive group, their heightened stress levels are likely to accentuate the aggression and determination that made them executives in the first place. Their need to look like they are in command of the situation can ramp up quickly. So – costs are rapidly cut, recruitment is frozen, roles are combined, and any perceived frills are removed. At the same time, executive attitudes harden as they enter survival mode, forgiving themselves for indiscretions in the name of “hard reality.” Sometimes this is the same effect in the home of someone who has lost their job. Without their own reserves of empathy, the affected person might tell family members to suck it up, deal with the reality, stop whining.
For those who are able – the call to leadership (or a better way of being) has three elements:
1. Practice vulnerability. Let people know that you do NOT have answers, and that you are hurting, and struggling to find a way forward. This develops trust, as it is honest. It replaces bluster and bull$#t with honesty and vulnerability. Getting staff together regularly to talk through the facts and the possible consequences, and to share whatever is happening even when no solution is yet found is a better way of being than distancing and cutting off from the people who are as or more affected than you are.
2. Actively enlist and enrol help – and role model the new normal. The biggest complaint employees share in unexpected tough times is a lack of communication, and a sense of not knowing what they can do. When executives reach out, spell out what they know, and ask for people to help in specific ways – many people feel that willing to make sacrifices or to put in extra effort. Especially if they can see the executive doing the same. It’s the equivalent of the retrenched person putting in extra effort around the house while searching for new work, instead of expecting others to make do with less while carrying on living the good life.
3. Take care of yourself. Carefully review your sleep, eating, hydration and exercise routines. One executive took six months to “wake up” to the fact that his sleep patterns had so badly collapsed that his mood and decision-making were seriously impaired. Pay attention to yourself amid the anxiety and stress.
In conclusion, shocking tough times are part of the organisational and life cycle. Recognising that and firing up vulnerability while enrolling help is a positive way to respond and is the route to healthy organisational resilience.
Please join us on 23 July when we will look at “Dealing with poor performance.” Several clients have reported some form of avoidance in dealing with poor performers. This is not limited to first time managers – we have stories of divisional executives who are conflict avoidant and delegate the work of dealing with inferior performance. Of course, we also have many stories of first-time managers who understand the processes and systems, but do not know how to begin to have a performance conversation with another human being. This topic is loosely related to our investigation of leadership and management – where we see people more comfortable with “setting direction” than maintaining the course.
Given that not all organisations are the same and given that dealing with poor performance is one of the key functions of managers, what are the reasons for any reluctance to have these conversations – and more importantly perhaps, what can we do to increase the likelihood that managers at all levels will “course correct” their groups and teams. Linked to performance management, the performance conversation is a critical element of organisational effectiveness. It is also central to organisational health – as the way that organisations deal with inferior performance speaks volumes about their culture and overall character as an organisation.
Register HERE for the free, 90-minute online conversation on “Dealing with poor performance,” scheduled for 23 July 2025.
Written by: Craig Yeatman