How Does a 21st Century Leader Respond to Crisis?



Sir Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony
Picture from AP

 The CEO of Sony, Sir Howard Stringer was in a wheelchair heading for a hospital in New York City when the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. Stringer had just arrived in New York City for emergency surgery on a slipped disk in his back, and he postponed the surgery for a day to get on the phone with his senior staff to rescue and protect workers in Japan. The disaster planning was quickly overcome by the extent of the tragedy, but having a creative and capable group of executives in place, he was able to turn it over to them and head for the surgical suite.


That sounded to me like a leader who has nimble and collaborative structures in place to respond to the changes and chances of the 21st century, so I did a little research on him.


When Sir Howard moved from head of Sony’s American subsidiary to CEO of Sony in 2005, he flew to all points of the globe to rally Sony’s scattered enterprises to a turnaround plan.


“As part of that plan he has set out to streamline and reorganize Sony's core electronics business, which accounts for 70 percent of the company's $64 billion in sales. More crucially, he is trying to overhaul Sony's culture to become more internally collaborative and much more software-savvy. And he is tackling these challenges at an enterprise that is so large and diverse that it simultaneously produces some of the coolest gizmos on the planet (like Sony's Location Free TV viewer or its latest CyberShot camera), yet appears lumbering and clueless in other aspects (think of the faded glories of the Walkman or the Sony Connect downloading service).” (Richard Siklos and Martin Fackler, “Sony’s Road Warrior,” New York Times, Business, Published: May 28, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/business/yourmoney/28sony.html, accessed 3-21-11)


That collaborative, horizontal culture came in for its biggest test when the earthquake and Tsunami hit Japan. Stringer was pleased with the resiliency of his Japanese employees. “Engineers at the flooded plant, while waiting for help to arrive, had started to build homemade boats using office furniture and salvaged tsunami debris, using them to bring food to still stranded townspeople” (Brooks Barnes, “A Disaster Spares the Heart of Sony,” New York Times, Monday, March 21, 2011, p. B6).


As I read this article and researched Stringer, I thought about heads of institutions who fall back on their hero-savior roles and attempt to navigate these financial hard times all by themselves. Often they have caring and competent colleagues and workers who could make the decision-making more effective; sometimes they have avoided hiring or keeping mature and helpful team members in place. And I thought about all the times that governing boards fall back on hierarchical approaches that lead to stilted decisions.


The church at local, regional and national levels makes a big mistake when it thinks it is following “good management practices” with hero-savior leaders and hierarchical controls. And that mistake stifles the church’s ability to adapt to the rapidly changing needs and emerging concerns in the contemporary environment. Truly good management practice would install or improve structures that are more complex, horizontal and collaborative in order to navigate the turbulent waters of the early 21st century. President Obama put this very succinctly, (quoted on NPR ‘s Morning Edition, “Obama Agency Review Looks to Snip Red Tape,” March 24, 2011)—“We can’t win the future with a government built for the past.”