19th August 2010
The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
Anonymous
I recall another quotation by Jon F Kennedy `When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity'. Though all of us would love to avoid difficulties, it is only in tough times that we test and hone our survival skills.
We have enormous talents just waiting to be used. Any resource which is not used well will become useless. It applies to our crisis management skill also. If we don't come across a crisis at all in our life, we will not get an opportunity to manage the same. A road less used will become bad over a period of time.
Recall a crisis you faced during the last six months. It could be a flight that you missed or an air ticket you misplaced. Recall how you managed the situation. List all the lessons that you learnt while you managed the crisis.
The ability to stretch your capacity grows only in difficult times and not when you are operating in a comfort zone. If your income is going to be reduced by fifty percent, how will you be able to manage? If there is going to be a fuel crisis, but if you have to double your travel, how will you manage? If you are heading a production and if the production capacity is going to be cut down by fifty percent, how are you going to manage?
The best way is to simulate a hypothetical crisis situation and do a mental drill like what the mock drill of the fire department. Its something like the army being trained to fight the enemy troops. They cannot wait till a war breaks out to test their readiness!
N C Sridharan
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