Pos Malaysia: Leadership Lessons in Crisis Management

Viral post - it can make someone famous instantly and it also can kill a brand instantly.

There has been a viral post recently about some of the Pos Malaysia general worker throwing some Poslaju parcel while shipping it to the consumer. It creates a mixed reaction towards the general public and majority gave some bad comment about it.

Recently, Pos Malaysia created a video to counter the viral post that has shifted the perception towards their brand. However, the way the CEO handles the situation provides us (or at least me) some lessons in leadership.

Here are some of the lessons that come to my mind after viewing the video:

Best Practices are Stupid?

Well, the title sounds controversial. Yes, this is the title of the book written by Stephen Shapiro. He is the type that would challenge the status quo and promote the culture of innovation. Well true enough, if we follow what everybody is doing, we will become a mediocre. And he got his argument to back-up his statement. Steve Jobs said Leadership is about innovation. And leaders should not be a follower to follow what others did well. Furthermore, the best practice might not suit to our environment.

Innovation distinguished between a leader and a follower - Steve Jobs

Face it, the world is changing. As my previous post the world no longer looking for productivity or quality. If we are looking into that, following the best practice might help. However, we are now looking at Innovation. Innovation is creating something new, something different. But if we follow the traditional wisdom that worked in the past, how do you expect us to be different? How can we be innovative?

Latest Book by Stephen Shapiro

5 topics that has been discussed by Stephen Shapiro. (Watch the video at the end of this post) These 5 topics are:

1) Stop Asking for Ideas
2) Don't Think Outside the Box - Build a Better Box
3) Hire People You Don't Like
4) Stop Praising People
5) Expertise is the Enemy of Innovation

STOP ASKING FOR IDEAS
As we asked for ideas, people will contribute the ideas as many as they can. In the BP oil spill case, 123,000 submission of ideas. But guess how many ideas that really count? About a dozen. This means that 99.99% of the ideas goes to the drain. Think of how much cumulative time were wasted for people to think, input and the staff to screen and debate those ideas?

In engineering we studied signal-to-noise ration (SNR). In real life, the signal is things that really matters and noise is things that does not matter. Output is no good if the noise is too high. And most organizations are spending time for things that does not matter.

How to do?
Frame something that is solvable and let people contribute their ideas within that parameters. This will help people to focus. We don't need everybody to contribute in order to make the best ideas. But if that small group can focus, they can find great solutions without wasting to much of time.

The myth on Management vs Leadership

I believe that the success of a country, an organization, a family, a community or any group of people is highly depending on leadership. I have a simple philosophy - Good leaders can turn a mediocre person to a superstar, bad leaders can turn a superstar to a nobody. Leadership is very important, that it can affects the whole group or members, even the whole world.

Often people said that we don't want to create more managers, but we want to create more leaders. (in fact, one of my 'manager' said this). This statement is totally misleading. Why? Because leadership and management is two different things.

In his article John Kotter mentioned that there are 3 mistakes on how people view leadership and management:

Mistake #1: People use the terms "management" and "leadership" interchangeably. This shows that they don't see the crucial difference between the two and the vital functions that each role plays.