Last week I went for a socially-distanced bike ride with our Director of Customer Acquisition, Ryan Sandrew. He’s great about candid feedback, so I asked how informed he felt about our overall response to COVID-19 and our subsequent plans. Sandrew explained that while he felt informed, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s Stay-at-Home announcement earlier in the week left him and his team with many questions. And while he assumed the impact to our Baltimore supply-chain was minimal-to-none, he didn’t really know. Sandrew remarked that, “even updates where you say there is no update would be helpful.”
He’s right.
As we rode, I thought about how I had communicated our company’s plans so far. Week one: as the virus closed in on Seattle, I sent a company-wide email outlining our response and scheduled an all-hands video conference the next day detailing our new Baltimore fulfillment center safety protocols and work-from-home plans for our bicoastal offices. Week two: I sent a follow-up email making work-from-home mandatory for teammates that could and dropped in on each department’s weekly meeting to talk about our in-progress contingency plans. But at week three, I didn’t have any new updates—nothing had substantially changed.
Why did my conversation with Sandrew spark a retroactive look into week three of COVID-19 communications? Let’s rewind.
Back in 2008 I was forward deployed via a helicopter squadron detachment to Iwakuni, Japan. We embarked on the USS Harpers Ferry en route to Pattaya City, Thailand, to participate in COBRA GOLD 2018—a multinational exercise that improves planning coordination between countries. A few days before we arrived off the coast, tropical Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Myanmar—a category 4 storm with 130mph winds—and it completely devastated the country. Initial reports said tens of thousands were missing or presumed dead; we’d later learn that number was actually in the hundreds of thousands.
The exercise was officially cancelled and our response to the natural disaster was unknown. Would we steam north to provide humanitarian relief from off the coast? Or would we execute our original plans, fly into Thailand, and wait for government clearances to operate from a bordering country?
Our Officer in Charge (OIC) was then-LCDR J.D. McBryde. I had come to deeply respect him. He was a servant leader, a Naval Academy graduate and football player who understood what it meant to take care of his Sailors—much like Captain Crozier. He was transparent, he overcommunicated and he showed concern for his team. I remember when our squadron was playing the Japanese Navy’s softball team, the ever-competitive OIC sat on the bench and let everyone else play. That’s the type of guy he is.
The morning we awoke in our troop berthing to the news of Cyclone Nargis, we were still scheduled to fly into Thailand, but our mission was changing by the hour. It would have been easy for our OIC to simply say “standby to standby” while he worked out the details with the Chain of Command. But he didn’t. We met on the flight deck hourly. And every hour the mission changed—we carried our sea bags to the helos, only to turn around and carry them back to the berthing. It was a half-day of constant changes.
Most leaders in that situation would default to silence for fear of frustrating the team, or fear of instilling a lack of trust in subordinates because higher authorities couldn’t make up their minds, or simply a fear of looking personally indecisive. This has been my observed status quo—and it’s dead wrong.
This timely information from the OIC, no matter how inconclusive, gave us a sense of empowerment. We felt like we were sharing the burden of the chaos—like we were a part of the decision-making process.
When we’re provided with an outlet where we can share concerns and ideas, we feel heard, even if our ideas aren’t used for the ultimate solution. Most importantly, we feel respected.
And that’s leading through adversity—overcommunication. Saying things like “I don’t know” or “no change” is better than nothing at all.
So I took Sandrew’s advice and started creating short videos using Loom to update our team. When there’s no COVID-19 updates or impacts, I say so. I talk about our continued preparation for unknowns, but that business operations are normal and our mission remains strong and on-course.
I thank our team for their hard work—updating them on the results of their efforts, for example, the increase in our North Star Metric, which is the number of Daily Hunt A Killer Episodes completed by our Members.
Now my default approach is this: if I’m questioning if our team feels informed, that’s probably the same moment they have questions. And then I know it’s time to communicate.
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